The Swirling Tides: A Tiger Mother's Journey Toward Love

By T. Y. Huang

When Ai-ling joins thousands of the brightest university graduates to emigrate to the U.S., Taiwan is still ruled by martial law and the White Terror. At a graduate school in the Midwest, she meets Winston, a Vietnam War veteran. After they marry and start a family, her way of raising children in the tiger mother fashion is rooted in Taiwan's culture.

Ai-ling retires from a Fortune 20 company in 2008 when financial crisis begins to rock the U.S. She has finally fulfilled her American dream: a marriage of more than 30 years, two accomplished children, a beautiful home, and a satisfying run in the corporate world. In her blissful state, she looks forward to enjoying her golden years.

But her happiness comes crashing down at a shipboard wedding when she unexpectedly witnesses Winston dancing with his sister-in-law, who left Winston to marry his older brother years ago when Winston was fighting the war in Vietnam. Unexplainable anger and grief consumes Ai-ling for the next few months. The emotional turmoil quickly tears apart her marriage and her relationship with her grown children.

As Winston gets drawn deeper into his brother and sister-in-law's complicated world, an urgent matter calls Ai-ling to travel alone to Taiwan. She has no idea a chain of events will soon develop to exacerbate her situation even further. In her most distressed moment, Lady White Snake, the most beloved folktale in all of Taiwan and China, becomes the story of her own self-discovery and redemption. Will a journey into the swirling tides reconnect Ai-ling with her loved ones?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532049408

T. Y. Huang

T. Y. Huang grew up in Hualien, Taiwan. She graduated from National Taiwan University with a B.A. in foreign literature and languages and later earned an M.A. in English from Western Illinois University. She is a published author of short stories and novellas in Chinese. After working in the technical field in Chicago area for more than two decades, she retires from a Fortune 10 company. Currently she lives with her husband in Minneapolis. She has two grown children and two grandsons.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

S tanding in front of the lighthouse, Ai-ling (Love the Tinkling of Jade) smiled to the camera. She had to hold tight the straw fedora over her head lest the Atlantic wind should blow it away. Her traveling attire of T-shirt, blue jeans, and running shoes felt comfortable and befitting to a woman at the stage of her life. She had recently retired and was doing her best to relax and to do away with the more rigid dress code expected of corporate employees. She was letting go of a more disciplined life.

She remembered the time, one year after she had arrived in the States, when she flew from the Midwest to New York City to look for a summer job. But her liberal arts degree from Taiwan had not landed her a suitable position in the Big Apple. Instead, through a Catholic church, she had found an opportunity to work at a beachfront resort in Montauk on Long Island.

Her first American job had paid her one dollar an hour plus tips and a room in dormitory-like housing for the resort’s cleaning and maintenance crew. She had picked up additional earnings from cleaning a vacation beach house for a wealthy family. In just a few months, she had earned enough money to pay back a loan to her late father. Though a small loan in today’s terms, it had allowed her to pursue a graduate degree in the States and later a chance to meet Winston.

So many years had passed, but the beauty of this seaside town and the humble beginning of her immigrant life had always stayed close to her heart. She was delighted that Winston had agreed to come to Montauk because the place had meant a lot to her many years ago. After a quick drive along the coastline and taking more pictures of the ocean, they rushed back to Manhattan to attend a black-tie wedding on a yacht.

The wedding was for Winston’s nephew, a full-blooded Chinese doctor in his early thirties. His bride was of Norwegian descent, young and fair, who reminded Ai-ling of a beautiful Easter lily. As the yacht leisurely cruised along the Hudson River, the couple exchanged solemn vows to stay true to each other till death do us part. With the minister’s blessing, they kissed as man and wife. Their union was sanctioned by God and witnessed by cheering families and friends.

During the reception, Ai-ling went up onto the deck to get some fresh air and to take a view of the city’s skyline. Leaning against the railing, she felt the chill of an early October evening. When a pretty brunette joined her, she recognized her to be the maid-of-honor. Ai-ling struck up a friendly conversation with her and delightfully learned some particulars of the bride’s background.

Her mother owns homes in San Francisco, London, and New York, said the new acquaintance. And she flies her own private jet.

Where did she get that kind of money?

She was in real estate and she married a rich client.

Wow! Ai-ling thought she had an amazing story to tell Winston.

When she returned to the dining table, Ai-ling did not see Winston. She found her brother-in-law Roy drinking alone. Sitting in a chair, his wrist on the table flashed an expensive watch. She followed his fixated eyes toward the dancing floor. Soon she saw Winston’s mop of gray. He was looking particularly handsome in his tux. And he was dancing. His arms and legs moved energetically, with great abandon and restraint at the same time, to the pulsating beat of a live band. Immediately she said to herself that she would not be ashamed to admit she had married this man for his movie star good looks. Ai-ling felt something stirring like the awakening of romance after a long period of dormancy.

When her eyes glanced to the side, she saw Katherine, Roy’s wife, was also dancing. Katherine happened to be shaking her head and swinging her long flowing hair with the same abandon. Ai-ling quickly averted her eyes. Her stomach sank with sensation that struck her like a sudden bolt of lightning and yet its intensity grew stronger by the second. When it became unbearable, she sat down to keep steady. She felt she needed to break free from her tight formal gown so she could breathe better. Staring at the fresh flower arrangement at the center of table, she became oblivious to her surroundings. The wedding festivity that had impressed her earlier as a magic tale simply faded away for the rest of the evening.

Years later when she looked back on that day, Ai-ling mused that had she chosen to brush past that gut-wrenching feeling that night, she might have been able to avoid a downward spiral that had sunk her to the bottom of a personal agony. Anger had rebounded from hurt, and sometimes she wished she had set her path more prudently.

CHAPTER 1

A i-ling had met Winston at a small university in downstate Illinois during the spring of 1972, the second year after her arrival in the States. One Friday evening he walked into the Taiwanese student clubhouse. Ai-ling happened to be in the entranceway, trying to find a space on the coat rack. She saw his green U.S. Army jacket and immediately recognized him to be a veteran of the Vietnam War.

Hi, I’m Winston Tam. I’m here to play ping pong. Do you know any good player here? he asked.

That one. She pointed at a red-shirted man.

Winston scanned the room. They both watched the man running back and forth behind one end of a table, returning the ball to his opponent with his paddle. The man quickly delivered a backhand smash and earned several good ball comments in Mandarin from the spectators.

Not bad! I will get in line then, he remarked.

You don’t have a chance. He is a Chinese player.

Ha. You’re saying I’m not Chinese?

You look Chinese, but your army jacket tells me you’re American. And I know the Americans hold the paddle differently, not great for spinning. Ai-ling offered her opinion.

You should just wait and see. You might be surprised. He winked at her.

Ai-ling suddenly felt bashful. She unconsciously brushed her hair away from her face to behind the ear.

To her surprise, Winston actually tied with the best player in the room.

She later found out that this six-foot-tall man majored in physics, and could speak perfect American English and some Cantonese. Ai-ling herself was five-foot-two, fluent in Mandarin and Taiwanese, but struggled with spoken English. Her study of foreign literature and languages at National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan had given her a lot of exposure to British and American literature, but not much experience with English conversation. She felt he was too good-looking, and she knew her eye glasses and her height did not make her a good match in their outward appearance. But she enjoyed occasionally riding in his bright red Volkswagen Beetle.

After working on Long Island the following summer, Ai-ling returned to the university and moved into a co-ed dormitory. She began to see Winston again at the dining hall, and sometimes he would sit down to eat with her and her Taiwanese friends. He was friendly with everyone, and he played ping pong with some of them. A close girlfriend mentioned that Winston might be seeing a tall girl from a general’s family in Taiwan. Nevertheless, when one of his friends was looking for a place to put his girlfriend up for the weekend, Ai-ling eagerly volunteered the spare bed in her dormitory room.

The four of them started double dating whenever the girlfriend came to visit. They frequented pizza joints, bowling alleys, and movie theaters. Ai-ling’s tailored clothes from Taiwan were in sharp contrast to the T-shirts and blue jeans worn by her companions and almost everyone other student on campus. Though the two of them were different in physique and background, Winston and Ai-ling were drawn to each other by the law of opposites attract, as often happens to couples in love.

On one occasion when the crowd had thinned out at the student union, they took a table by the big window to watch the fall colors of tall trees on the outside. Winston began to tell her of the time after he had just been discharged by the U.S. Army.

After surviving the war, I just wanted to live in peace. I wanted to live a normal life, to finish school, and to find a job after graduation. I wanted a quiet campus to continue my graduate study, using the GI bill. And oh, I wanted to thank God for the GI bill, too. He looked up, acting as if he were showing gratitude to the superior being above. They both laughed.

But the unpopularity of the Vietnam War does not allow me that kind of luxury, he continued. Just a few days ago, you saw how passionately the students demonstrate against the war. And the public is calling the returned veterans ‘baby killers.’ Can you believe it? Am I a baby killer? The landlord of my apartment once questioned my patriotism. I was shipped across the ocean against my will and not only did I risk my life in battle with the enemy, but I also risked being shot from both sides of the battle lines. The North Vietnamese soldiers could shoot me for my American uniform and the American soldiers could shoot me for my black hair and yellow skin. I wanted to punch my landlord, and tell him that I indeed was a patriot. But I shrugged it off.

Ai-ling listened thoughtfully. She patted his hand to show that she understood what he was saying and she could feel his pain.

On another occasion, as they walked from the library to the parking lot, under the moonlight and out of the blue, he wistfully confessed that his old girlfriend had sent him a Dear John letter when he was fighting the enemy an ocean away.

It was very painful at first. But as soon as I saw how fast napalm could burn through the jungle, I tossed her pictures and letters into the tangled vegetation. I imagined seeing them burn to ashes. He then murmured someday he might fall in love again, and he would build a new life with his usual optimism.

After she got back to her dormitory room, Ai-ling looked at herself in the wall mirror. She felt the combination of her laced white shirt, bell-bottom jeans, and long straight hair already was giving her the impression of an American girl. Perhaps the fancy lace could go another day. And she wondered what his old girlfriend looked like.

The next spring, when her student visa was due to expire, Ai-ling was still one course short of completing her graduate degree in English. She first thought to make a quick trip back to Taiwan and return immediately. Though it would make her continued stay legal, it would also require her to ask for another loan from her father. She decided marrying a U.S. citizen might be a better option. She gathered all her courage and asked Winston if he would marry her. Winston said he would marry any girl who had walked in the cold to the edge of town to look after him when he was sick.

Indeed, Ai-ling, bundled up from head to toe, had walked a mile to Winston’s apartment that winter when he’d lived alone and was sick with fever. She had stayed in his apartment for several days to nurse him back to health. Ai-ling knew their mutual attraction was real even though she wished Winston had popped the question. With the help of her host family, she informed the school administrators of her intended marriage to a U.S. citizen, and they worked out a plan to extend her stay.

To Winston’s credit, shortly after their engagement, he did tell Ai-ling that his old girlfriend before the war had ended their relationship so she could marry his older brother Roy. But Ai-ling did not think much of it. She was too busy getting married.

After they married, unable to communicate in Chinese to each other, Ai-ling and Winston resorted to speaking English at home. As a result, their children Rose and Neil did not learn to speak any of the three Chinese dialects that their parents could offer. They became children of an English-speaking household. Ai-ling enrolled them in the Chinese school on the weekend. But both balked because the school had placed them with younger children who already spoke Mandarin at home. Ai-ling agreed that her children did look like two clueless giants sitting next to those toddlers. As her children grew and became more and more Americanized, she felt she was left behind like a lonely island.

Decades later, after Ai-ling observed Winston dancing with Roy’s wife Katherine during the shipboard wedding, her reaction quickly deteriorated their marital relationship. Ai-ling’s anger also affected her relations with her children. In February when Rose came home for the Lunar New Year, she became a casualty in the crossfire. Mother and daughter exchanged words in heat. Rose left the house in a fury. Ai-ling was hurt and cried like an injured animal. She stayed in the bedroom for days.

When Neil heard of the growing troubles at home, he phoned Ai-ling from his home in San Francisco. What’s going on? He sounded loud and clear, and as usual, his enthusiasm was contagious.

Ai-ling explained what had taken place at that posh black-tie wedding in New York. She admitted she did not know what she had seen between Winston and Katherine dancing together, except that she had a strong reaction to it. She said she had confided in Rose, and yet, she got no sympathy from her own daughter.

She went to see Katherine after I told her what she had done to me, Ai-ling complained. Why would she remain close to her like they were the best of friends? What she did to me, I would not do to a friend.

Was it jealousy you felt when you saw them dancing? Neil asked.

No. I cannot be jealous of a woman who does nothing all day but take care of her looks.

From what you are saying, you are the only one troubled by it. That’s why you may want to consider counseling.

No counseling! I’m not the crazy one. Why can’t Dad just cut off his relationship with Roy and Katherine?

Neil became angry. You are being nonsensical. Your anger is festering. You need to stop, he said.

Ai-ling tearfully hung up the phone. She wished she had the courage to tell her son what he did not know: his father had once dated his aunt. If she had, Ai-ling thought she might have a chance to convince her son that her anger had a valid basis. But it was not in her nature to speak of a family secret, especially after so many years of silence. Okay, not exactly a secret. No one has ever said not to talk about it. But for sure no one has ever talked about it. She told herself.

She started seeing a psychologist, but quit after just a few sessions. I’m still crying at night, and I really don’t feel any better, Ai-ling explained to Neil. A few months later, she tried again with a different doctor. But Neil was already losing his patience. He called for a family meeting in Minneapolis where Rose lived. He had a weekend to spare from his busy schedule at the hospital, and he hoped that by the time he was flying back to San Francisco, the family discord would have been reasonably resolved.

CHAPTER 2

F rom the Chicago suburb where Winston and Ai-ling Tam lived to Minneapolis where their daughter Rose and her husband Jon lived was a distance of 380 miles. As Winston and Ai-ling took turns driving, they did not speak much. The silence allowed Ai-ling to do some more soul searching, and as time went on, she found more reasons to justify her feelings toward Rose.

Ai-ling and Winston had worked hard and earned two pay checks, but they had lived well below their means so they could save enough money to send both kids to a private college. In their child-rearing years, Winston had driven his blue Pontiac Bonneville to the ground. Ai-ling had dressed like a fresh-off-the boat immigrant, or FOB, as some would say. Many of her tailor-made clothes from Taiwan, including a red silk chipao (Mandarin gown, also known as cheongsam) which she had worn at her wedding banquet, were already destroyed due to her poor knowledge of washing with machines. And some had grown too small after she’d given birth to two children. When it was time to shop for new clothes, she had turned to K-mart and even preferred the blue-light specials to the other already cheaply priced items on the rack.

Her daughter Rose had described her mother’s everyday look in one of her high school essays: plastic shoes, wrong color lipsticks, faux-leather handbag, and loose-fitting shirt and jeans. She even added a loud-talking personality. That had been the first time Ai-ling truly appreciated her daughter’s writing. But more importantly, Ai-ling then knew that her lack of concern with fashion and polished manners had only impressed Rose’s young mind in a negative way. She had given up herself so her children could succeed. So when the mother and daughter relationship had become strained, Ai-ling actually expected some gratitude from Rose because she had sacrificed so much to raise her.

When their black Lexus got off the expressway and exited the ramp, the streets and traffic lights began to look familiar. The mid-July sun was casting a heat wave over the city, and everything in the distance seemed to be shimmering in the intense light. They drove by old apartment buildings, ethnic restaurants, cafes, gasoline stations, organic grocers, a firehouse, and a Somali culture center. Outside the culture center, three Somali women wearing hijabs were sitting on the dirt under a tree, chatting on cell phones. Ai-ling compared the scene with the documentary that Rose had created on the mass exodus of refugees from Somalia to the Twin Cities. She thought her daughter’s reporting had a message of embracing diversity, though she had never told Rose out loud.

They parked the car on the driveway and rang the doorbell. When the door opened, they stepped inside and removed their shoes. A warm exchange of hugs and pleasantries immediately followed.

How was the drive? Someone shouted.

Great! Ai-ling and Winston replied simultaneously.

How was the flight? Winston asked his son.

The airline is getting stingier and stingier. The economy plus seat is as tight as the economy seat just a few years ago. And they are charging more, Neil griped.

Gobi, Rose and Jon’s Rhodesian ridgeback, barked, jumped, and ran in circles to get someone’s attention. He finally settled down and gave Ai-ling a quick lick with his large tongue.

Dressed in a buttoned-down shirt and a pair of old jeans, Neil stood just shy of six feet, but he seemed taller than his dad because of his straight posture. An avid rock climber and a gym workout fiend, with long hair tucked behind his ears, he had a Californian’s free-spirited but fitness-obsessed look. And his smile, so open and bright, often prompted his mother’s adoring comment: That’s what I call a million buck smile. After finishing residency in surgery a year ago, he could have easily secured a job in Chicago. Instead, he had chosen to stay in San Francisco.

Jon, Rose’s husband, came from a small town near the Canadian border. At six-foot-two, white-skinned, and hazel-eyed, he was an all-American boy. In high school, he had played football, basketball, baseball, and run tracks. Wearing a forest green T-shirt over a pair of cargo pants, he was built like a bulldozer, muscular and heavy, yet he often moved around with great speed. He was aggressive and not in the habit of hiding displeasure when he felt offended.

In the dining room, Rose and Jon presented the delivered takeout from a Hong Kong style restaurant on University Ave - Cantonese pan fried noodle, stuffed tofu in casserole, stir fried pea tips with garlic, Peking pork chops, and head-on fried prawns. Everyone shared all the dishes family style, and they drank iced water topped with a slice of lemon.

A large oil painting of a 1930s’ Shanghai woman hung on the wall. She wore a sapphire blue chipao, the high collar pushed her chin up elegantly,