We took our first family portrait when I was barely two. I remembered my cousin demanding why she wasn’t in the picture every time we showed her the photo. But I was five years older and when this portrait was taken, she was just another cell waiting for its turn at life.
I don’t ever recall having been part of this photograph. But from what I can see, we decided to go to a professional photography place to get it taken. The floor was covered by red carpet, with three inclined stairs six, seven steps back. Beside the two stairways were two Roman-styled white marble columns intricately entangled with lush green leaves and vines. The stairs led to a wallpaper backdrop of a great Roman hall decorated with more parallel marble columns and translucent wavy turquoise curtains.
Standing in the back row from the left were my aunt, uncle, my dad, mom and my second aunt. In the front was my two year old self, standing, flanked by my grandparents sitting on two wooden chairs, who each held one palm of my hand.
Snap.
Grandpa looked so much younger in this picture. His face was less wrinkled and glowed as if beams of light reflected off of his face. But the feature that stood out among all others was his black silky hair. I never really realized how much whiter grandpa’s hair had gotten until I saw this picture. Fifteen years had passed since this portrait was taken and grandpa’s black strands of hair had suffered the toll of time.
Grandpa grew up in the suburbs, or “xiang xia” as the Chinese would call them, where people lived in houses with no electricity, no hot water, and no heating, where 3 pennies a month were considered “allowance”, where the men worked in the rice paddies and the women stayed home to cook and to take care of the young so they could grow up, be educated, and earn a living out in the cities. Money was hard to come by in “xiang xia.” Families never ate meat, except maybe during Chinese New Year, when a white, meaty pig might be slaughtered and cooked as part of the celebration. But otherwise, people who lived there got by with yellow, grainy corn flour buns and steamed vegetables harvested from the fields. Cooking oil was too expensive.
Perhaps growing up in “xiang xia” made Grandpa a frugal man. I used to love going to the arcades in the city mall when I was a kid. Mom would always leave money for us to take the bus there. But grandpa would just strap me in on his bike and make the forty-five minute ride there instead, so we can save the ten Chinese Yuan bus fare. I never thought about how hot and exhausting it was for him to ride up those black asphalt slopes on the way in the scorching sun, how dangerous it was for him to carry me on a bike, riding on roads congested with vans, trucks and hundreds of other cyclists pedaling frantically to their destinations.
Mom always got mad at both of us when we returned from the mall. She said I was a selfish little snob for making grandpa carry me on his bike just so I can waste both money and time for my personal enjoyment. She didn't spare Grandpa either, demanding why he did not use the money she left to take the bus instead. I never could shield myself from mom’s accusations, but Grandpa merely deflected them, telling her to use the leftover money to buy something else more useful.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I have outgrown the arcades and that bike Grandpa carried me with. But Grandpa still has not outgrown his frugality, riding it wherever he can. Staring at the family portrait, I wonder if any of Grandpa’s hairs ever became white from those energy draining bicycles rides to the arcades. I have changed so much since this picture was taken. But that man holding my hand, sitting next to me, has not at all, except for the color of his hair.
