seal upon your heart.

It must’ve been either a Friday or Saturday night, because my brother was brought home, and I was six years old. My favorite soap opera had just ended. The protagonist-mother had gathered her five children on their unpaved living room floor to mourn for their dead father, killed in a Japanese bombing in Nanjing. My brother had been crying for hours, shrieking really, not recognizing that he was home. My parents decided to let Aunt and Uncle take care of the baby– just for a short time, they reasoned, while my parents finished things up at the office– and very soon after his birth, my baby brother went to live with them. This was not strange at the time– the Chinese are communal people and often it was aunts, uncles, grandparents who helped raise the child.

My parents were not aware of trends in child psychology then: the importance of bonding and attaching the baby to the mother, the importance of touch and holding, the silent dialogue between parent and child during breast feeding. My brother was not breast fed.

I turned off the TV at nine o’clock: our family rule, and blew my nose with the last tissue. My mother was still at the office. D**D** International Lmt at (02)751-0800. I dialed this number at least once a day, and I dialed it now. “I desire to find my mama,” is the literal traslation of what I said to the receptionist-Auntie. She said, “Hello, Shuan-shuan,” and asked me to hold. Then I went into my room. In it was a bed I’ve never spent the night in– since I slept on my parents’ bed with my mother while my father rolled out a comforter on the tiles. There was a desk, dictionaries of all sorts, and a wardrobe full of clothes my mother handpicked. I put myself in the chair at the desk and began my homework. That night, I wanted to be extra good to comfort my father who could not comfort my brother, and to comfort my brother. Every first-grader was given a green booklet with pages covered in button-size boxes. We were to practice writing characters in them, one character per box, until the page filled with characters.

From the slit of the door, I could see my father cradling the shrieking baby best he knew how. With a terrible sound, fighting against my father’s most gentle hold, my brother did not want to be home. I mimiced the teacher’s character with extra care, and hoped that a perfect arrangment of strokes on the page would comfort my family. Auntie, our household helper, ran in and out of my parents’ room with different techniques to appease the baby: a wet towel, a warm bottle, a cool bottle, a thickened milk, a thinner one, and another wet towel. When the pencil ran out of lead, I prayed, Please, God, let the baby stop crying. Let him go to sleep and not be sad.

I prayed my first prayer that night, and it was for my baby brother.

The baby did not feel at home because he had never known his home. The man holding him felt unfamiliar to him– the texture of his hand and the scent of his chest. My brother rejected his own father, every weekend until he moved to a whole new town when he turned 18, because he felt rejected by his father. i wait for malachi’s prophecy: And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. The Lord will do it. He will do what my father could not do. He will whisper his love to the crying child in brother, who is still crying and who is still a child in many ways, and teach him to smile.

i often walked around the beach park with my camera, the one across from my parents’ new apartment, wondering what hawaii looked like through my black-and-white film camera. the few rolls of film i brought were quickly used up. a samoan family cooking up a bbq, a chinese-hawaiian uncle “just cruising” on the bench nearby, and a few local kids working on their summer tan. my favorite, though, was a man who smiled the most poignant smile, like a child’s, though he had a mustache. i wished i had a medium format, so i could blow up that smile of his in the largest paper they’d sell at imagework, on waialae ave. his buddies said that he was an alcoholic, emptying the tavern clean every night, with money from where i dont know because he was homeless and without a job. he said silly things, feigning stupidity i think, so folks didn’t take him too seriously and figure out what he was all about. but gosh, when he smiled, you couldn’t help but to smile with him, and you look as deeply as you possibly could into his dark-set eyes, and you find that they’re tearing up, for the life he had murdered back in hilo, for all the years in prison, for his addictions, for his family, all dead now, and so you tear up too, because at that moment you feel as if your heart might explode with god’s deep love for this man. a man who had once murdered. a man who knows well the demons behind the shadows, so he drinks them away, he drinks himself into a stupor to not feel enough to kill again.

jerry quoted john 3:16, then some psalms, then ephesians, then revelation, and he stopped his silly talk and wiped away his tears. this man knew god, personally he knew god, yet, the devil’s not too far away from him either. it was the god in him that convicted him of his sins. and he was torn up inside by his sins. perhaps it was his unforgiveness toward his own self that bound him in sin. in shame and guilt and hatred.

what if jerry had been adopted into a family at an early age? a family who loved him through deliverance? who did “holding therapy” with him– holding him night after night, forgiving him fight after fight, meal after meal of broken plates and spilled milk, yet jerry were never to lose his place at the dining table… belonging to a family may have saved a life: jerry’s and the one he took.

eve wedded adam on a monday. in the garden god planted in the east, they kissed and exchanged vows: she is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, adam said of his bride. yet when the serpent, who was an imaginative liar, twisted itself sensuously at eve’s feet, adam did not utter a word– not one word against a liar’s fecundity, nothing along the lines of: “no, thank you, we’ve already eaten.” adam only stood there, silent, as eve plucked off the fruit from the tree with a glutton’s expertise. at the couple’s first bite, their stomachs churned. and they realized that their bodies, still new and inexperienced, were not yet ready to process such a food. perhaps they even vomited.

on a tuesday, which was also the first day of the month, israel’s artists set up the tabernacle, with finely twisted linen and blue, purple, and scarlet yarn. the theophony of god came as a pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night, visible to all the house of israel during their travels in the wilderness. offerings were made. sacrifices. hyssop and goat’s blood. the hyssop plant in the garden had not once touched blood.

in the four hundred and eightieth year after the israelites left egypt, on a wednesday, their wise king, solomon, dedicated a magnificent temple for their god. “may your eyes be open toward this temple night and day, this place of which you said, ‘my name shall be there.’” in the temple, the ark of the covenant held its sacrosanct place. but on thursday, those who did not understand israel’s ways scattered their horses and stopped their children’s play. on a thursday, they tore down the temple. they tore off the women’s dresses and undergarments. they tore off the men’s beards and the children’s hair pieces; ribbons and bows scattered along the temple steps.

friday was hard, but most remembered it to be a good friday, when israel’s messiah hung limp on a crucifix. they were disappointed at first, and disappointments drove people to all sorts of things, such as killings and hate. why did he bother with the lepers and the prostitutes when there was an entire roman army to defeat? why let himself be seen on a dumb donkey by jews around the world who came to jerusalem to celebrate the passover? why go around town, talking nonsense that no one seemed to understand, to fishermen and tax collectors and silly kids and a half-bred samaritan woman? and why on earth was he– a messiah for goodness sake!– bent and kneeling, washing feet? a true embarrassment. when they finally got over their embarrassement, they congregated in each others’ homes on saturday. they shared all that they owned with their neighbor, they drank wine and broke bread, they spoke in languages no one had heard since babel, and they worshiped.

on saturday, they surrendered their unsanctified “whys.” they stopped asking “why”– why was their child abducted, why was their sister trafficked, why had they been sick with illness all these years. the “why’s” were no longer important when they become certain of sunday. when they begin to live from a deep pining, groaning, for sunday.

when we get to saturday, we’ve lived through friday, and have all its promises of the blind seeing and the paralyzed walking– dancing! for friday has made sense monday’s wedding and tuesday’s artistry, completing wednesday’s architecture and forgiving thursday’s war, and it taught us to say on saturday: maranatha! for the land flowing with milk and honey, for the streets paved in gold, for a sabbath that will last from sunday to sunday, maranatha! for sunday.

jesus will return with justice. he will make all the wrong things right.

when i was fourteen, my parents continued to travel between the states and asia for business, oscillating between family and work, never learning to manage the two worlds, and they ended up giving up more than they had planned to: sunday brunches and afternoon naps together on the couch. bedtime kisses and hugs after ballet class. inside jokes.

i had live-in nannies to care for me while my parents were away. the nannies made sure i got to school on time. that i got picked up. that my clothes were washed and i didn’t run out of shampoo and conditioner… but my heart was left unattended. you see– tending my heart was not part of the job description. one cannot require a stranger hired for a particular job to: love. tending the heart is a mother’s forte, usually.

when i was fourteen, my parents continued to travel between the states and asia for business, and alice came to live in our house. she was just one of the nannies my parents had hired throughout the years. we didn’t know that she was a christian then, or perhaps we did, but her christianity didn’t mean very much to us and didn’t make an impression. but her love did. she didn’t see me as just another job– but she cared for me, from the very first day she moved into our house, she cared for me. she cared that a young girl was left in an empty house while her parents flew to foreign cities for business projects. she cared when the girl seemed to want nothing to do with the rest of the world. she cared that the girl didn’t seem to relate well with her peers. she cared about the anger in the girl’s broken heart. she cared about the girl’s secret loneliness, a loneliness no amount of dance classes or ice skating lessons could medicate.

alice sat with me on the living room couch, which was usually unoccupied– living room, the arena where families gather; unoccupied because my family did not gather much– and loved me. there was a nanny before her who used to stuff me with crackers and cream cheese as i sat on that living room couch, alone, unattended. she would help me stuff down my anger and sorrow with cream cheese and tv. alice talked with me for hours about jesus. sometimes we didn’t talk about jesus– we just talked. we just sat in the living room, the place of family gatherings, and just talked.

the battle inside of me was raging– and i had no language for it. only now, learning scholastically about children of trauma and injustice, am i beginning to understand the war inside. i wanted so much to trust alice, yet i couldn’t. i wanted so much to be loved by her, yet i did everything i could to reject her love. the sober part of me wanted to bless her, thank her for humanizing me, yet the wounded part of me hated her, hated that she was not my mother, that my mother was absent 3 weeks out of the month and that i had a strange lady occupying my house– sitting even in my living room, the arena for family gatherings. she was not my family. she could never take the place of my family. yet she was kind. she was the best live-in nanny there was– but why did my mother ever trade her place with a live-in nanny in the first place?

anger settled in me at a young age. i became angry when i became orphaned.

i believed in jesus the very first time i went to church. alice had been living in my house close to a year, and the battle within me had been manifesting between she and me. she talked to our pastor about it several times, wanting to understand why i had been so angry, angry toward her, and what techniques or methods to try with a child like me. my pastor wasn’t trained in child psychology or pathology, and didn’t have children himself, and only offered legalistic, christian platitudes.

if i had known alice then as the adult i am today, i would take her out to coffee, smile my best smile at the woman who so much wanted to love god’s child, and explain to her that oli really isn’t angry with her.  alice, i would say, oli’s just heartbroken by the tragedy that’s become her reality: belonging to no one. every child needs and longs to belong to someone. the ones responsible for her have in a way handed off their responsibility to strangers– live-in nannies, they call them. but oli is extremely protective of her mother and father, and would not admit to herself that it was them that she wanted. it was their decision that caused her so much pain. she felt absolutely powerless over the situation– never once did she even consider asking her parents if they wouldn’t mind leaving the company so that they could be her parents. never once did she blame them. she blamed the nannies instead. she blamed herself instead. she’s the one who’s not strong enough to handle the situation. she’s the one who’s not adjusting well. she’s the one who has to resolve the anger issue.

my suggestions to alice would differ from my suggestions to an adoptive mother. it certainly wasn’t alice’s role to mother me– for i had a mother and was not “up for adoption.” but i needed her in my life then to be a spiritual mentor to usher me toward jesus. to teach me to live in spirit. to teach me to worship in the midst of pain, to provide a safe place for me to tell god of my deep anger. i needed her to pray for me and with me, not just when the anger fits pass, but while the anger was rising up from my stomach and i’m spewing out a tirade of unsightly words, i needed her then to lay hands on me. to touch me. to hug me. to tell me that jesus is with me. that he will never forsake me. that he will never leave me orphaned. that i belong to him.

i belong to him.

the old grandmother walked from city to city when the japanese attacked. her family scattered, and she settled on the outskirt of guangzhou, in a small farming village, a fifteen minute drive from my mother’s company. there, she raised herself, married, and birthed a son and two daugthers. her son married and found a job in construction. on the way to work one day, he thought he heard a child’s cry. perhaps he did not halt at first, mistaking the child to be some wild bird, but the child continued to despair loudly with a vocabulary for sorrow one does not need to learn. in a cardboard box big enough for a few watermellons, an infant child, a girl, beckoned life. there was a note, written by an unseasoned writer, explaining that the child was a month and three days old. the grandmother’s son took her and her box home, and the old grandmother happily fed her rice water. a few weeks later, this son tumbled off of a building he was working on. died. his wife began wandering the village streets, at times laughing, at times crying, but always in clothes for a different season. the little girl called the old grandmother: grandmother, as if she were her own.

my father found this little family tucked away in cement-and-mud when the girl did not come to the feast my mother prepared for the children they granted scholarships to. a bit skeptical– who wouldnt want to come to an elborate banquate, given in honor of them?– my mother went to their home. the girl laid on some wooden planks they called “bed” in a pool of blood.  the grandmother quickened her broom-making, one desiccate weed at a time, to please the hospital bill. the hospitals in that part of china have had many die on their doorstep– unable to produce enough to buy their existence.

when angela and i visited them, the girl was walking. she could see well enough, and would even smile when you tickled her with enough gentleness. later that day, my mother arranged for us to meet at mcdonald’s, the only one in the city, hoping the girl would find the kid’s meal as yummy as american children do. the girl and her grandmother arrived barefoot. angela and i picked out pink sneakers for the girl, maroon sandals for the old grandmother. there, they told us their story, a story that took us beyond the modernity of burgers and fries, plastic booths too modern for the grandmother’s sandpaper blouse. the van driver from my mother’s company translated their dialectical tongue into mandarin, an educated language, and i then translated for angela in english. we asked whether the grandmother kept any sort of religion. with the communist’s anti-religious regime, i didnt expect the old grandmother to respond, happily with her toothless smile, that she believed in “that jesus religion!” a christian! in a little corner of some nameless village! a broom-maker! widow! orphan! we had found a christian… in a place that, through unanointed eyes, seemed as if god himself had forgotten.

there were bones every where on the old grandmother’s body. i felt them when i prayed for her in our van. the driver translated every word, even words he was never taught: grace, blessings, comfort. to a god he did not know. but jesus used this driver to translate a christian prayer.

on the way back to their village, the little girl gurgled something from the back of the van in her dialect. i hungrily asked for a translation, for the girl did not speak much and every word was precious. the driver explained, “the child found a little bird this morning.”  the grandmother had helped the girl make a little cage from the reeds they tied in bundles to make brooms. “it was a little green bird,” the girl added.

losing her mother changed her– her hair grayed, her eyes saddened with a sadness that didn’t peter off with the honolulu company’s decaf au lait. her mother– my grandmother– died holding onto my mother’s hand while my grandmother’s 4 other children waited in the hospital’s conference room with a team of prestigious doctors. my family was not unfamiliar with prestige, which was not much comfort at a time such as this. after a lifetime of conference rooms in hong kong, england, new york, vancouver with buyers and vendors from all over the world, my mother’s sister, the eldest of the family and CEO of the company, was not in the mood now to swank her charm. she became a child again and proffered solutions only a child could think of: did we try to give the cat some chicken soup? what about tying a note for Baba to the kite– he must be able to see the sky from wherever he is.

my mother, the younger sister,  became the mother to her mother. she whispered into my grandmother’s ear how strong she had been. how gracefully she endures pain– a lie. my mother, with much fortitude and sobriety, strengthened her mother as she exited the only world they’ve ever known. there was no room in that moment for my mother to reconstruct her philosophies regarding life and death, heaven and hell– she only wanted her mother to feel as safe as possible and as loved as one ever could. the doctors urged my mother to continue her cooing. “it’s stimulating her heartbeat,” they said. but in the end, it was my grandmother who “gave up.” the doctors used the term “giving up” only because they didn’t know that weeks ago, i had taught my grandmother to call on the name JESUS CHRIST whenever she felt afraid. she must have been afraid then with tubes and wires spidering around her body, and she must have called on jesus’ name then.

my mother’s hair grayed and her eyes saddened, and i wondered when she too would call on the name of her Beloved. her father passed away when she was in her forties, but really, she lost him to majong, a chinese gambling game, and passivity when she was just a child. freshly orphaned at age 55, my mother seemed less sure of what she had once known to be true. she was less ready to receive joy as joy and laughter as laughter. orphanhood threatened to be the impetus for offense.

my mother had lost many things in the past 55 years: hair, sleep, wallets, memory, friendships. however, losing her father and mother, without the knowledge of jesus christ, without the knowledge of the kingdom of god, without the assurance of the city that is to come, the eternity of souls, the uncompromising will of the Good Father, the propitiation who is the Son, and the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit, my mother’s world threatened to become smaller, the capacity of her heart to love and be loved shrunk. there was now room for anger. for unforgiveness. for defeat.

orphans, even at age 55, need a bigger reality than their orphanhood. they need the backdrop of the Lord’s right arm in order to process their many losses. only with the hand of God over our gurgling stomachs and pounding hearts are we able to mourn for what we’ve lost, to weep over the pathos, to suppurate over deaths and wail for the massacre. not feeling the weight of the Lord’s hand over her, my mother didn’t cry nearly enough. she concocted for herself a new definition of “being strong” and was vexed by my uncle’s maudlin wife, who squealed theatrically at the funeral.