Lucky

In loving memory of Fen Fen Chang, the woman who loved me unconditionally for 12 years and continues to watch over me today.

I stole for the first time when I was 9 years old.

It was a cold winter night. My parents had been out to a wedding all night, so I knew it was the perfect time to steal. I went to my mother's room and took out 200 Taiwanese dollars from her drawer. I slept that night with the fear of being caught, and of having to lose this precious money before I could make good use of it. The next morning I woke up early, skipped breakfast and ran to school for the most important school event of the year- the book fair.

Later when my mother found out that I had stolen money from her to buy books, she wasn't happy about it. But she eventually learned to resign herself to the reality that her daughter had taken after her and had become another hopeless bookworm, and would do anything to get her hands on a book.

My mother taught literature in a high school. As a parent and an educator, my mother understood the power of reading in shaping a child's character. She understood that reading fictions stimulates children's imagination and opens up a world of possibilities for them. She believed that reading about people's lives teaches children and young adults to be empathetic and compassionate. So I grew up in a house with a huge study where every wall was stacked with books from top to bottom. When I close my eyes and think back on my childhood, I see my mother reading to us 4 kids in our favorite reading spot. My mother made sure that if anything, the house would never run out of books to read, stories to be told, and wild fantasies to be imagined.

Unfortunately, on another cold winter day, my world fell apart. The chapter on my happy childhood came to an end. I was 12 years old and my mother was 42. A heart attack that happened within seconds took her life and left me without a mother. I grew up overnight.

Shortly after my mother's death, my father sent my siblings and me to boarding schools in the U.S. At age 13, I started living in dormitories without parental supervision in a foreign country. I didn’t speak English very well and I wasn't very good at making friends. I was always lonely, and I was very scared. After I finished all the Chinese books I could lay my hands on, I resorted to reading English novels. I could go on for days without speaking to anyone at school, but I learned to appreciate English literature before I could even speak a word of it.

In books and literature, through beautifully written language, I found escape. I found escape from living the life of a miserable teenager in a foreign land. I was often instantly transported into different parts of the world. I could easily be in Tokyo one morning with Haruki Murakami listening to his favorite jazz melodies, or witnessing the cruelty of the Vietnam War with Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried. And of course, hanging out with Africa's number 1 lady detective was always top priority.

My last year in high school, I took a creative writing course called the Found Voices. I started writing, and I wrote like a mad woman. I wrote one story after another. I wrote mysteries and love stories. I wrote dramas. And I wrote about my mother. I wrote about the life of this extraordinary woman, about how well respected she had been and how much she was missed in the neighborhood. I wrote about the pain and the heartache of losing her. I wrote about life without a mother as a teenager. I wrote about the love of reading she wanted to instill into me when I was a child. I wrote about the time that we had spent together.

In my writing, I told my mother the things that I never had a chance to tell her. I apologized to her for being rude to her the night before she passed away. I made promises to her that I would not let her down. And I promised myself that I would always stay true to my feelings in my writing. At age16, I couldn't think of a better way to feel closer to my mother.

At the end of the school year, I was awarded The English Award. I was the first student whose native language was not English to receive the award in the high school's history. And I thought I was going to win the math or science award like other Asian kids.

I thought long and hard about how you could possibly get to know me better. I thought about telling you the one time when I ran naked in college. I thought about telling you how it is like living in 4 countries in 5 years. But then I realized that, nothing would do a better job than telling you about how I came to build my life around reading and writing.

If there was one thing that my mother wanted me to understand, it was to love and appreciate literature and the joy it brings. There is a Taiwanese folklore that goes: children who have mothers are precious beings and children who don’t are wild grass. But I have always known that my mother had already given me the best present before she had to go. And because of that, I never became wild grass. I know in my heart that I will always be the luckiest child.