The Story of Catherine Lee

[Catherineli]

Hello everyone! My name is Catherine. I've been a member with this forum for over seven years.  I love CFL as my Candle Garden. Yes, it's my "Candle Garden". After I arrived in the United States, I was as busy as a skeeter in a colony of nudists. The stress of a new comer's thriving job kept me away from my Candle Garden for several years. However, CFL is always special in my heart. Now I'm to post my story to bless back my Garden.  After my life was established in OK, I wrote a memoir of my family beginning from my great grandfather's generation.  But I'll only publish my story beginning from my own life. Please know that we don't ask or talk about the politics. I canceled political part in my story. 

Oh, recently I love to play a spelling game called Wordy Game. Here is the website: https://www.wireclub.com/chat/room/wordy  If someone likes to practice the brain by spelling words, it's a nice way and place to go. 

Here starts my story:

                A Land Lord’s Baby Girl Was Born

 

       Mother and Father got married in 1961. It was the 12^th year after the civil war ended between Communist Party and Guomintang. The postwar situation meant a disaster of hell for a country.  The schools had to be rebuilt. All infrastructures such as railways, bridges and roads had been bombed to pieces. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       Obviously, Father and Mother’s marriage was a political marriage in the political extremity. Father’s social identity labeled him a “bad man.” My father was working in the city where the living situation was very different from the countryside. He had no house and he had no farm. One of the benefits of a socialist country was free housing for city citizens. My father was supposed to have his house, free, from his company but he was too young as a new graduate. As a “Rich” employee, he was not favored by his company leader. My father was very prudent not to apply for anything called “home”.

       Father and Mother’s first home was a clay shed by the east wall of Grandma’s house. They extended the shabby shell as their home, very low and damp against my grandmother's house which meant they only built three walls and a roof for their house because the fourth wall was also my grandmother's wall. My mother was still happy with her first home and she believed that she was given the right husband because of the manner in which he approached the building of their new house. He took time to measure the house size, to collect the wood and the nails. I am not sure if they had the tins that they needed for the roof. Father even planned the depth of the holes he would dig for the long poles that would serve to hold the siding together because his major at college was to architecture. The weather was cool then. It was in October, so he did little sweating as he worked, and he rested often to see it went well. After all, it would hold his family. Did he dig the holes deep enough? One thing was certain, they did not have the limestone and cement mixture used to anchor the poles into the ground. It is not known how he put together the sides of the new room, which should have been from long poles that were tied to corrugated tin and fastened together tight and strong. The floor was very organic! It was just the natural dirt. That is to say, the floor was not formed with sand, and smoothed over a layer of water to help settle and harden the soil. Ironically my father’s job was to design nice buildings for the city but he built himself a slum with thatch in the countryside. The thatch and grass filled in the cracks and the roof all over his house. 

     Next, there should have been a house warming party.  My father and my mother would have made a ceremony out of adding pieces of furniture to the house, a bench, a wooden sofa, a bed, a carved table, whether it was borrowed or given by friends or family.  But unfortunately,  the fact was not the case. My parents had nothing, completely nothing inside of their home. They only had a Kang. The Kang was a place for them to sleep for the night, to sit and eat for the day.

        Both of my grandmother’s house and my parents’ first house were all built of clay and grass. Bricks and cement were only a dream to them. It was impossible in their financial situation. In retrospect, I’m amazed at how the houses stayed standing for many decades without being washed away or destroyed by the rain. Fortunately, there was no tornado or any huge storms.

     By the time I was about to make my way out of my mother’s womb, my grandmother moved my mother and my father to the north Kang of her house. My parents’ house condition was too difficult for a woman to give birth to a child. A curtain was put up to erect a border or a privacy for Mother and Father. My uncles and my aunties all stayed in the south Kang with my grandparents. South Kang and north Kang were sitting across each other in one room. I spent most of my childhood in this two-Kang room. There was a table of two drawers standing in between the two Kangs. The table was the only furniture my grandmother owned. They had no chairs or stools to sit on.  Grandmother had two eating tables placed on their long Kang for people to sit and eat. The dining tables were as high as a coffee table or a foot stool. The family sat on Kang around the table eating meals. The eating time was hilarious with many people eating together. Grandmother had never had delicious food to bring to the dining tables but everyone loved everyone and each member of the family enjoyed whatever Grandmother cooked. Their daily meal was mainly corn bread. As a matter of fact, corn bread was the only food they had. 

     The primitive old days produced many jokes about people’s ignorance of sexuality.  Mother often recalled that she did not know the physical difference between a man and a woman in her twenties. When for the first time she saw Father’s underwear with a fly in front, Mother was shocked and believed the hole must have been from a mouse bite.  She showed it to my grandmother who only responded with one word, “silly.” “Silly” was the only education that my mother got about sex. I think my father’s underwear must have been worn out or he must have cut the hole with a pair of scissors by his own clumsy hand. Otherwise I can’t believe my mother was so innocent and she had not seen men’s underwear. There was a funny joke as well relating to Father’s ignorance of sex knowledge. When my mother was about to give birth to me, my father was cutting crops in the fields for my grandmother. Someone passed a word to my father to get a mid-wife from the village but my father hesitated and said,

     “Tell her to wait. Don’t give birth for now. Let her hold the baby for a little while. I’m busy right now.”

    Gosh, I was not my mother’s urine!

     The villagers didn’t turn to a hospital if someone needed to give birth or if someone had some physical need. There was no hospital in the countryside. The villagers probably did not have the transportation to carry a patient or a laboring mother to a hospital. They only had a villager who acted as a midwife. If difficult birth occurred, often a tragedy occurred as well. Death was the subsequent consequence from lack of facilities in the village. However, there was at least one mid-wife in each village. All the midwives were all well respected as they were the only hope for the villagers when a baby was to be delivered. It was the traditional way to give birth to a baby at home.

     The only medical tools that a mid-wife had was a towel, a pair of scissors and a basin when she was delivering a baby. The towel was usually worn out but washed very clean. The scissors were very big and the color was usually black. To sterilize the tools, the midwife just boiled them in boiling water. Husband was never allowed to be around when the wife was in labor even if it was in his own home. When writing this book, I asked my two aunties where they were when my mother was giving birth to me.  Were they asked to go out when my mother was screaming with pain?

    “No,” I was told, “other people still stayed inside but the curtain pulled up for privacy so Grandmother’s family were on the other side of the curtain.” 

     I didn’t expect that my grandmother’s family were all listening to Mother’s labor pain. My mother was just lying in her Kang twisting her body with the pain. She did not have an obstetric bed with a holder to grip. All that Mother had was the Kang and her quilt.

        There was a local custom as far as a birth were concerned. When a baby was being delivered, the family had to make sure to open all the room doors. They also opened the windows, the wardrobes, the drawers, stove door and all bags had to open as well. When she was helping my mother push through the labor pain, the mid-wife sang like this over and over:

   “Open, open,

   Everywhere is open,

   Access, access,

   Baby see it, baby see it,

   Welcome and welcome.”

     Maybe I heard the mid wife’s invitation by singing, maybe I was eager to see my mother. I started to try to squeeze out. I first tilted my left shoulder and pushed myself, then my right shoulder pushing and pushing.

 “Open, open,

Everywhere is open,

baby, baby, welcome, welcome.”  The midwife’s soft and melodious singing echoed in my ears. 

      After several tries, I made a bigger effort and gave myself the last kick and suddenly I felt myself standing on a big man’s shoulder, high enough to see the outside world.  “Whaaaaa---,” it was my first cry as if declaring “I’m coming-------!!” 

 

(To be continued )

Edited November 29, 2021 by Catherineli (see edit history)