My grandmother visited the Niagara once.
I was 7, she was 79, and we spent the day giggling like two little schoolgirls. We kept seven steps in front of my parents on the slippery walk to the observation platform. To keep up with me, skipping giddily and carelessly, my grandmother clutched her cane until her fist was white and smooth. But when my parents asked us to slow down, she rolled her eyes and sped up, spitefully.
We leaned over every railing and accessed the fall to the rocks below. We reached our fingers out towards the falls until we felt the mist running through our hands. We whooped passionately as we rode the Maid of the Mist, a boat tour that promised to “explore the roar” by veering dangerously near the white water. Tilting our faces up to the mist, we let the water run down our ponchos and laughed.
When we learned about Annie Taylor, the 63 year old Victorian daredevil who rode down the waterfall in a barrel, she scoffed. I could do that too, she murmured, eyeing the Niagara with a subtle disdain. It looks…fun. I don’t get what all this hassle is about, she says pointedly at a museum display dedicated to Taylor.
My parents laughed, cooing at her determination, but I knew she meant it. I knew that, one day, my grandmother would hoist herself into a rickety wooden bucket and take on the Niagara.
Her wrinkled features would become splintered and bruised. The icy current would put her in bed with the flu for weeks. Her hair would become a nest, wild and sullen. But when my grandmother’s wooden barrel reached the shore, she’d jump out victoriously and laugh with an infectious sound. It is a laugh that carries with it, all the goodness in the world. One that tells you that the plunge over the falls was worth it’s sickness and toil, it’s doubts and disbeliefs. For this very moment. For right now.
My grandmother loves to eat fish. She never cries when she scoops out the seeds from a Sichuanese chili pepper. She enjoys bucket hats, and reading the morning paper, and long games of Mahjong. Whenever I visit Chengdu, she makes me a steamed egg every morning, and rates it as she watches me eat. Too much water today”. “Too little soy sauce”. “Not enough heat”.
She is heavy-handed with the chili oil whenever she cooks, but favors all of the sweetest concoctions. She could talk to someone for hours, and as she’s gotten older, she’ll often repeat the same six phrases over and over in a conversation. But her laughter is infectious and her hands never shake, even when the rest of her body does.
We used to make crafts together, she and I, spending the afternoons gathering discarded pieces of newspaper, empty bottles and acorns. My favorite project of ours was a little birds nest, filled with intricately decorated eggs. Another afternoon, we spent gallivanting around the backyard, blowing bubbles from sparkly pink wands. My parents gathered around us, rushing to snap photos of our cheeks, red from laughter, as we made bubbles fall like rain.
I am 23 now. I am much taller than my grandmother, who can barely touch my shoulders. Her eyes widen whenever she sees me. “You are Snow White”, she’d declare, “and I am all 7 of the dwarves”.
Oftentimes, this would launch her into a lecture about how getting uglier is a natural part of aging. She’d sigh dramatically, patting her face as she stared into the vanity mirror. To combat these worries, my grandmother would frequently ask me to help draw in her eyebrows or choose between the three flowery tops that she had hand-selected for lunch. During the last night that I ever spent with her, I showed her a portrait that I’d taken of her and my aunt. Ecstatic, she proclaimed: Look at me! I still have the face of a little girl!
I have never known my grandmother as a young girl. I have barely even seen any pictures. But sometimes, when I am helping my grandmother apply lipstick or handing her a hot cup of tea, she will smile at me and I will find myself face to face with her younger self. Somehow, I will know that she’s had her heart broken countless times. That the rapid of her youth was not easy. Flipping through the chapters of her life must be to flip through stories of war, famine, and revolution. But, somehow, I know that she took it all on with the biggest of smiles. With the ferocity and flexibility and relief of white water.
I am 23 now. I am barely past a quarter of my life, yet, I am already closed off, cautious, and easily hurt. I falter at the doorway of new, unfamiliar rooms. I stop myself from talking, earnestly, to strangers. Love no longer happens easily, and healing no longer comes with intensity. Most days, I wake up, jaded and scared and unsure of my place in this world.
But, once, I overheard my grandmother telling my mom: “happiness is a choice”. Happiness is a choice. Happiness is something that I am still learning, but I imagine that my grandmother must’ve chosen it way that she chose everything: stubbornly, spitefully, every single morning.
I did not get to say goodbye to my grandmother when she returned to China after her first — and only — visit to our suburban American home. I can still remember, so vividly, running to her room at the cracks of dawn, only to find it stripped and bare. She had left for the airport late at night, and my parents did not wake me.
I am told that I was inconsolable for a day or two. I cried at the foot of her stripped bed, and clutched our emptied bubble wands, before completely forgetting about my heartbreak soon afterwards. I healed in the way that only a little girl can, and I loved her in the way that only a little girl does.
With complete devotion. Without fear or reservation. For making art & crafts with me.
Perhaps it is also because I was a little girl that I did not understand the slight tremors of her hand when she handed me a red packet before bedtime. Perhaps I was too young to catch the sadness in her eyes when she wished me good night. Perhaps I thought it meant nothing when she packaged, so carefully, the bird’s nest we made together. It still sits in her cabinet today. The paper is brittle, and the color of the eggs, worn — but otherwise, it has been kept flawlessly.
I have said goodbye to my grandmother dozens of times after that, and each time I am afraid that it will be the last. This morning, I learned that the last time actually was. That after fighting several terminal illnesses for years, last night, she finally traveled to the place where the mist never stops falling.
My grandmother never cared what I wanted to become, or how I meant to spend the long days of adulthood. She did not believe, I think, that a person was a profession, because she always cared more about the after-work meal. The long nightly games of Mahjong with the neighbors. The phone calls home, which she would stretch past their natural end, repeating the same six phrases, delighted by each one as if she had not just said it. On our last nights together she would always sit me down for the same talk. I just hope you can grow up to help lots of people. A verb, not a noun; a direction, not a destination. I also hope that one day, you'll take me on my first high-speed sports car ride. She would giggle. She did not have a license either; neither of us has ever driven anything. But even if not, I just want you to be happy and healthy.
I am 23 now, and I do not have a high-speed sports car. I do not even have a driver's license. Most days I feel utterly lost, confused, unsure of how to navigate life. But somehow I know she is not disappointed. For this morning, when I found out that my grandmother, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world, had passed, I did not sink into inconsolable despair.
I am 23 and I am closed off, cautious, and easily hurt. But whenever living feels uneasy, I remember how my grandmother eyed the Niagara with a stubborn resolve. I’ll remember how she leapt up those steps, shaking her head in annoyance whenever my parents offered her their hands. Her muscles ached for days afterwards. She’d winced whenever she lowered herself onto the dining room table, but scooped spoonfuls of chili oil onto her rice, all the same. I’ll remember, so vividly, the sound of her laugh — still the loudest I’ve ever heard, the most full of joy.
I am 23 and every day, I remind myself of her a little bit more. Like when I laugh so loudly that I snort a little. Or when I bluff, pretending a super spicy chili pepper was not so spicy at all. Whenever I get a little too competitive at Mahjong. Or when I catch myself repeating the same story twice in one conversation, and telling it with just as much delight the second time. When I am way too heavy-handed with the chili oil. Or when I roll my eyes at anyone who offers me a hand.
I am 23 and I will say that it has been a long time since I’ve fallen in love, but the truth is, every day I come close to it. Every morning I am met with the urgency to love desperately and without fear. Maybe this impulse is childish. Maybe it signals that I still do not understand something fundamental about life. But I am beginning to believe otherwise.
I am beginning to believe that happiness is a choice, a choice that lies somewhere here, with my grandmother and the Niagara. The mist falls onto her skin. The white water roars, and the crows migrate like blue birds.
I am a girl again, standing on my tippy toes and looking at my grandmother as she challenges the Niagara. The plastic rain poncho swallows her slight frame, but her gaze is hardened as she assesses the rocks with subtle disdain. Around us, the whitewater throws itself against the rocks, over and over, indifferent and violent and deafening. My grandmother only smirks at it.
What was she was trying to tell me, tracing the route that she'd take down the Niagara with her finger? Why did the pride flood her eyes when I mapped out mine?
How I wish I could return to this moment when my grandmother’s chest is puffed like a proud bird. “We could ride down the waterfall too”, she declares proudly. And I believe her. I believe her with everything I have. And as we plot our descent down white water, I lean closer to her chest, memorizing the sound of our giggles, like two little schoolgirls.
To my grandmother, my hero and my biggest role model: I will always love you how a little girl does. In your next life, I hope that you are loud and fearless and free and cruel. I’d recognize you in any form. But until then, I will form my life around yours.
Very excellent Peng