Making Up for Lost Time

I feel terrible.  I've been neglecting this project for a couple of weeks now.  I went on vacation and did not have time to work on the book at all.  So this weekend, I've been playing catch up.

What's interesting to me in this process is when I began I thought would really enjoy the chapters about NaiNai and focus mostly on those.  But now, my favorites are the chapters about my great-grandparents.  I suppose it's the hopeless romantic in me.  I see their story is a love story.  It's the story of a family that was struggling under the hand of a repressive matriarch, so they escaped to start a life of their own.  I'm finding myself looking forward to these chapters the most.

Through reading these chapters, I'm discovering where NaiNai found her strength.  She got it from her mother, my great-grandmother.  Here was a woman who was betrothed to a man she had never met.  On her wedding day, he was not there.  Instead, she launched right into her life as the daughter-in-law.  Her mother-in-law was the head of the house.  She was a strict, traditional woman who believed her only goal in life was to produce as many sons for the Tao family as possible.  My great-grandmother was beaten, put down, and consistently humiliated by her mother-in-law and two sisters-in-law.  When my great-grandmother failed to give birth to a boy, she was essentially shunned from the house.  Aside from the work she was required to do, she was otherwise ignored.  When she was pregnant again, no one was around to help her.  She had to go through the childbirth alone.  Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, she lost her first daughter to disease.  Again, she was alone, this time in her grief.  My great-grandfather was away at school and her mother-in-law did not allow her to write him a letter, letting him know about their daughter's death.  Immediately after, NaiNai got sick as well.  My great-grandmother had to travel to Wuhan, a big city, all by herself to find a doctor for a cure.  Where did she find the strength?  Where did she find the courage?  Did I mention she was younger than I am now when she went though all of this?

I am meeting so many extraordinary women through this journey.  This makes me extremely proud to be a part of this family.  I know that my great-grandfather did amazing things as well and he was a very powerful man.  But I simply identify more with these incredible women who survived so much.  They fought for their families.  If I can have half as much fortitude as they did in my lifetime, I will consider myself very lucky.

 Here's my great-grandmother with some of her children.  NaiNai is on the far left.