| Standing Up Once Again: With love, everyone can survive the torrential river of life | ||||||||
| By Qiu Ru-lian Translated by Hsieh Jen-ting Photos courtesy of Lu Yi-jie | ||||||||
Although she is just a teenager, Yi-jie has long carried a heavy burden upon her shoulders. At an age when she should have been cared for by adults, she began serving as the caregiver for her physically challenged mother. When she was little, her mom fed her milk and changed her diapers. Now, in a reversal of roles, the daughter is repaying her mother for raising her. Lu Yi-jie (呂詒婕) is a 17-year-old schoolgirl. Although hairstyles for students in Taiwan are no longer regulated, she still prefers to wear her hair straight in the traditional style. When she smiles, her eyes smile with her and a dimple appears on her cheek. In her uniform, she looks just like any other schoolgirl her age. However, she has a lot more on her mind than her schoolmates. They may only be concerned with the heavy schoolwork, endless exams, and perhaps how to act properly in front of the boys they have a crush on. Yi-jie, on the other hand, has had to face the realities of life since she was very young, and the life she leads after school is very different from those of her peers. In the evening, her school bus pulls to the side of a busy street and stops to let her off. She walks along a path that leads to her home, where she lives with her mother. A breeze blows across the paddy fields along the way, making lovely, harmonious sounds. Not far off she can see her house, a yellow light glowing from within. Picking up her pace, she soon arrives home. She drops her school bag just inside the door, but instead of going out to play or calling her friends and chatting on the phone, she rushes to the rice cooker to start a fresh batch of rice. Next, she stir-fries some greens and some sunny-side-up eggs. When she’s done, she has prepared a delicious dinner for her mother and herself. After dinner, she washes up the dishes and does some housework. Last but not least, she takes the time to massage her mom’s legs. Taking care of her mother every day is a top priority for Yi-Jie. Huang Xiang-ling (黃湘鈴), Yi-jie’s mom, suffers from a congenital dislocation of the hip. This abnormality causes the ligaments of the hip to easily become loose or stretched. As a result, Xiang-ling has trouble walking properly. It also causes her pain and makes her feel tired easily. Nevertheless, after she was divorced from her husband and had to take her daughter and move back in with her mother, she managed to find herself a job as a hairdresser. With the help of a custom-made chair, she was able to serve her customers in a beauty parlor with no problems. Though Xiang-ling did not earn much money, by living frugally she was able to support herself and her daughter. The fact that they were not materially well-off did not stop them from being happy.
Shaken lives It is said that life is like a river. The upstream portion can be perfectly calm, and then all of a sudden the downstream portion can become turbulent. A major earthquake that hit Taiwan on September 21, 1999, suddenly caused such unexpected turbulence in the smooth-flowing lives of Xiang-ling and Yi-jie. It took them a lot of effort to make it through this disturbance in their lives. When the quake hit, Xiang-ling and Yi-jie were living near the epicenter in Nantou County. Yi-jie was just three years old at the time. When Xiang-ling felt the earth begin to shake violently, she quickly grabbed her baby girl under one arm and started to climb upstairs to escape from danger. But before she even realized what was happening, a deep crack had opened up beneath her. She fell and became stuck in it. Xiang-ling tried to free herself, but couldn’t. Aftershocks soon hit, causing the gap to close with Xiang-ling still trapped within. Her already fragile hip bone was shattered. Eventually, Xiang-ling was freed and sent to a hospital. But when she got there, she discovered that it was full of other quake victims in more urgent need of treatment. It was impossible for her to have an operation immediately to set her fractured hip bone. The doctors could only give her some painkillers and send her back to her dilapidated home. She endured two weeks of pain before she was finally scheduled for surgery. Since her upper body was in a plaster cast after the surgery and she needed to lie in bed to recuperate, her own mother, over 60 years old, had to take care of both her and little Yi-jie. Later they moved into a prefabricated house built for quake survivors. When her grandmother was out working, little Yi-jie would stay quietly at home with her mother. Although she hadn’t learned to read yet, she learned to administer medicine to her mother on time. One day, Yi-jie accidentally gave her mother an overdose of sleeping pills. When her grandma returned home and found Xiang-ling speaking incoherently, she immediately called for an ambulance to take her to the emergency room. Xiang-ling still remembers that day: “The door of our prefab house was too small to let the stretcher in, so a wall was torn down. When I was being carried out to the ambulance, Yi-jie wailed loudly, ‘Mom, don’t die!’” Yi-jie cannot recall that tearful moment now. But after that frightful incident, she began carefully learning how to look after her bedridden mom, including applying her medicine, changing her diapers, and washing her. When asked how she learned, she replied, “I simply did what my grandmother had been doing.” Having a bedridden mom to care for, she was forced to grow up faster than most young girls her age. Even after three operations, Xiang-ling still could not stand up, and she was confined to a wheelchair. Because of that, Yi-jie started doing the housework very early on, including cooking the meals. She soon got pretty good in the kitchen. “When she was still little, she’d take a stool and stand on it so she could reach the stove and fry an egg,” Xiang-ling recalls, smiling while trying to hold back tears in her eyes. Xiang-ling feels for her daughter because of what she has had to go through at her young age.
Having each other For years after that, Xiang-ling’s mother looked after Xiang-ling and Yi-jie. But Xiang-ling did not want to be a burden to her aged mother. After her brother got married, she and Yi-jie moved to Taichung, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) away. Xiang-ling and Yi-jie settled into a small room of about 140 square feet. Being disabled, Xiang-ling found it difficult to land a job. Thus, they had no choice but to live on government subsidies for the disabled and financial assistance from Taiwan Funds for Families and Children, a charity foundation. Even with the welfare money, they had little left after paying the rent. They were living right on the edge, often without enough money for food. One Sunday, Yi-jie started running a fever, but Xiang-ling had no money to take her to see a doctor. She was so worried that she sought help from everyone she could think of, asking them for money to get Yi-jie some medical attention. She promised to pay them back as soon as she received her subsidies the next day. But her pleas were to no avail; she was turned down time and again. Someone even said to her, “I’m not running a charity organization, am I?” The more Yi-jie’s temperature went up, the more worried Xiang-ling became. Finally, Yi-jie plucked up her courage and walked to the home of one of her classmates who lived nearby to ask his mother for help. “Ma’am, may I borrow some money from you?” the little girl asked. “What do you need the money for?” came the reply. Yi-jie told her classmate’s mother that she needed the money to buy some over-the-counter medicine for her fever, and some food so she could fill up her stomach before taking the medicine. Not only did the kind woman lend Yi-jie the money she needed, but she even took her to the doctor and then to a noodle stand for some noodle soup. Even today, Yi-jie and Xiang-ling still feel deeply grateful for the help that lady provided. Because they often had no food to eat, Yi-jie began getting up at an early hour to go to a nearby breakfast shop and ask for leftover bread crusts that the shop owner was about to throw away. Before entering the shop, she would take a quick look around to make sure that none of her schoolmates were inside. When the owner asked what she needed the crusts for, she answered, “They’re for my puppy at home.” Yi-jie then went back home with her bagful of bread crusts. She still had to prepare breakfast and lunch for her mom and herself before rushing off to school. She was often late. “I’m sorry. I’m not being a good mom. Instead of taking care of you, I have to let you look after me,” Xiang-ling would say apologetically to her daughter. “When I was a baby, you fed me, changed my diapers, and took good care of me. Now it’s my turn to take care of you and repay you for raising me,” Yi-jie would reply, comforting her mom the best she could. Yi-jie was in junior high at this time. For a girl her age, peer acceptance is usually more important than anything else. Adolescents usually try their best to avoid any risk of being mocked by their schoolmates. How did Yi-jie ever find the courage to walk into the breakfast shop and ask for leftover bread crusts when she knew that her schoolmates would laugh at her if they found out? She answered without hesitation: “Because my mom is everything I have now….” A light in their dark room Xiang-ling was left all alone in their tiny room after Yi-jie went to school each day. She had no one to speak to all day long, and since she could not move around, she’d lie on her bed and stare up at the ceiling until her daughter came home to clean away her waste and wash her. The all-consuming gloom that filled the room made her very depressed. “Eventually, Mom refused to eat anything,” Yi-jie remembers. At first, Yi-jie found that her mom would throw up the food she ate. Gradually, she couldn’t eat anything at all and only drank water, which made her weight drop drastically. “I was really scared. I begged my mom every day not to leave me all alone in this world,” she recalls. Feeling helpless, Yi-jie mustered her courage and wrote to the Taichung County government to ask for help. When social workers came to visit them, they found that Xiang-ling was little more than skin and bones, not having eaten properly in eight months. Even moving her eyes was something of an effort for her. The social workers immediately took her to the hospital. Just by coincidence, Xiang-ling’s mother happened to be at the hospital to see a doctor that day. “It was at that hospital that I saw my daughter and granddaughter again,” she said. When she saw her daughter, collapsed in a wheelchair, and her tearful granddaughter, she was so shocked that she almost fell into a heap on the ground. Her heart ached unbearably after she learned of the suffering the two of them had endured after they had moved out of her house. With words of encouragement from both Yi-jie and her mother, Xiang-ling decided to seek medical treatment for her depression. She ended up at Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital. Moved by the tenderness with which the Tzu Chi volunteers at the hospital treated her mom, Yi-jie wrote a letter to the Tzu Chi Taichung branch office asking for help. In March 2011, volunteers from the branch office visited Yi-jie and Xiang-ling for the first time. They saw a dim, cramped room crammed with a table and a bunk bed donated by the Taichung City government. Though the room was small and crowded, Yi-jie had kept it very clean. The volunteers were deeply moved after learning about what Yi-jie had done for her mom all these years and the challenges the mother and daughter had had to face. The volunteers visited Xiang-ling regularly from that day on. They also helped take care of things for her when she was hospitalized. “Our home would be filled with laughter every time Tzu Chi volunteers visited us. They really brought us happiness and joy!” Yi-jie said. “The volunteers indeed took good care of me,” Xiang-ling recalled. “But back then, I still suffered badly from depression….” She trailed off. Even though she was receiving treatment, she was often emotionally unstable during that period of time, to such an extent that one time she even refused to let the volunteers into her house. In 2011, volunteers brought her a cake to celebrate Mother’s Day. However, instead of being pleased, Xiang-ling flatly rejected their kindness and said coldly to them through the door intercom, “Go help people who need your care more. We don’t need it!” Xiang-ling thought that by shooing them away so rudely, the volunteers would never come back again. But quite the opposite happened—the volunteers realized how badly she was suffering, and they resolved to not be so easily daunted. They continued to pay her regular visits, hoping they could serve as her emotional outlet by being attentive and sympathetic listeners. As for the cake, the volunteers said with a smile: “We took it back home and finished it ourselves.” After a later operation to treat her hip bone, Xiang-ling was able to walk with the help of a walker. She later found herself a sewing job through an employment center. With the assistance of Tzu Chi volunteers, Xiang-ling’s considerable medical expense was partially covered by the government’s social medical aid system. She insisted on paying the remainder of her bill in installments. “Even though I can only pay back NT$500 [US$17] a month, I want to move forward on my own strength,” Xiang-ling said.
If not for her In April 2012, Xiang-ling was once again hospitalized with a ruptured lens in her eye. Tzu Chi volunteers offered to defray the treatment fees, but she turned down their offer, saying once again that she wanted to rely on her own efforts to foot the bill. However, by September, Xiang-ling found herself deeply in debt. She couldn’t afford Yi-jie’s tuition, so Tzu Chi volunteers reached out to them and helped pay it. To cut down on expenses, Yi-jie never asks her mother to buy her new clothes. If a T-shirt is worn out, she wears it as a pajama instead. To save on utility bills, she forbids herself to open the fridge after seven o’clock in the evening, and she unplugs electronic devices when not in use. She even cuts toilet paper in half so she can make it last longer. Xiang-ling takes great comfort in the thoughtfulness of her daughter. But that very thoughtfulness also makes Xiang-ling’s heart ache. “Throughout her three years in junior high school, Yi-jie only bought herself one pair of socks. Even after she had worn holes in the socks, she still said she didn’t need a new pair. She always told me that with her shoes on, no one could see the holes, so it made no difference.” But one fateful day, a class activity required all of the students to take off their shoes. Yi-jie’s classmates had a good laugh at her worn-out socks. “Though she told me the story with a smile, it broke my heart,” Xiang-ling remarked. “If it hadn’t been for her, I couldn’t have made it this far in life.” A while ago, at the encouragement of Xiang-ling, Yi-jie ate out with her classmates. That was Yi-jie’s first time eating out, and it truly made her day. “I hope that every now and then she can take time off from looking after me to hang out with her friends a bit,” said her mother. It is not just because Yi-jie needs to look after her mom that she turns down her friends’ invitations to go out, but also because she wants to save up as much as she can. When asked if she ever felt lonely, she fell silent as tears suddenly started streaming down her face. She longs for the things that any teenage girl would want. But unlike other teenage girls, she keeps telling herself that her mother comes first. Last year on Mother’s Day and again during the Chinese New Year, Yi-jie took money out of the savings she had pinched and scraped together and gave a hong-bao to her grandmother to thank her for the care she had given her and her mother over the years. Hong-baos are red envelopes containing money, a traditional gift in Chinese society. Even though there was not much money in each envelope, her grandmother was deeply moved. Xiang-ling got into the habit of watching Da Ai TV, which is run by Tzu Chi, when she was hospitalized at Taichung Tzu Chi Hospital. “It has become my emotional support,” she said. Yi-jie also watches it with her quite often. Inspired by programs on Tzu Chi’s body donors, Yi-jie even encouraged Xiang-ling to sign organ and body donor cards with her. What’s more, they make a monthly donation of 200 NT dollars (US$6.70) to Tzu Chi to help other needy people like themselves. Yi-jie has two coin banks she received from Tzu Chi volunteers at a year-end reunion meal that the foundation held for its care recipients. Whenever she has spare change, she puts it into the banks. When they are full, she donates the money to Tzu Chi. With a friend’s help, Xiang-ling found a cheaper place to rent in June 2012. After she and her daughter moved into their new home, Tzu Chi volunteers brought some food to celebrate the occasion with them. Xiang-ling also invited several friends who had helped her along the way. “The new place has good ventilation and enjoys pleasant surroundings,” one of the volunteers said. “It opens out to green, lush paddy fields. We can feel Xiang-ling getting more and more cheerful.” They were really happy to see the mother and daughter settling down in a good place. Recently, Xiang-ling suffered a fall and injured her spine. Fortunately she recovered well after surgery, and just one week after being discharged from the hospital she could move about with a walking aid. When Tzu Chi volunteers visited her, she told them that she had recently gone with some friends to visit a single-parent family, in which a mother had to support her six children on her own and could not keep them fed. Seeing their miserable condition, Xiang-ling took out all the money she had in her pockets—US$6.70—and gave it to the mother to buy food for her kids. “Compared to them, I now feel I’m very blessed,” Xiang-ling said. Yi-jie was recently awarded a scholarship from the Tzu Chi Foundation. When volunteers asked her how she was going to use the money, she replied without a second thought, “I plan to buy my mom a pair of comfortable shoes and some warm clothes, and to donate the rest of the money to help people who are more in need than me.” Indeed, life is like a river and can be very turbulent at times. But with love, we can survive even the worst turmoil.
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