Part 2 - Love and the Triad*** Six months later, I received a letter from the little girl. Her name was Jinsong, which means “Sturdy Pine.” I live among the most sturdy pines in the world, so I loved her name, Sturdy Pine. She wrote me in large block letters on very transparent, onionskin paper, inside a very flimsy airmail envelop: DEAR AMERICAN SIR: I WRITE YOU TODAY. I SAY THANK YOU CAN WALK AND RUN AND JUMP TOO YOU ARE MY FRIEND I LOVE FOREVER WITH BLUE EYES AND GOLD HAIR WHO IS LIVING IN GOLDEN MOUNTAIN. I SEND CLASS PICTURE A LITTLE UGLY ME! XIAO WONG JINSONG PS. MY AMERICAN NAME JENNY. I ASK TEACHER SHE SAY JENNY I LIKE JENNY. I wrote back, addressing her as Jenny, and asked about her school, was she going to school, what were her subjects, her future plans, telling her to be a good girl and study hard, that sort of thing, but I kept it short and simple, a little at a time. I could just imagine her going over each word and looking them up separately then trying to put everything together. After a few letters back and forth, I was amazed by her progress. Another year or so, and we were corresponding every month. She was very exuberant, very much like a live volcano, very quick and full of life. I thought she was simply charming. I don’t remember exactly what year it was, that she first mentioned how she felt about me. I know I felt amused when she wrote: DEAR SIR IN GIANT TREES, I LOOK AT BIG TREES IN PICTURES YOU SEND AND I LOVE THOSE TREES YOU LIVE AT THE BOTTOM OF!!!! I THANKING YOU FOR PICTURES OF TREES AND YOU! STANDING BY TREES! AND I SENDING YOU MY CLASS PICTURE AGAIN BECAUSE I AM “A” STUDENT ALL SUBJECTS AND I RAN RACE WITH OTHERS AND WON BIG VERY BIG! GOT A RIBBON. HERE IS SAME RIBBON FOR YOU FIRST PLACE!!!! AND MY ENGLISH IS MUCH IMPROVE! JENNY AGE 13 GRADE 7 PS IS PS RIGHT I TOLD MY FRIEND I MARRY YOU ONE DAY! IS OK EH?????? I STUDY HARD XOXO Six or seven months later, I sent the money for her to enroll in the Chinese private, preparatory school in Hong Kong. I sent the money direct to the school. Not that I didn’t trust Old Ling with the money, but why tempt an old man. It was almost like I was adopting a child, one like the children you see on television. Of course she probably was never hungry, nor living near the garbage dump where she had to search and find food, and other things to sell, but even so, I thought she was in need. She was the beneficiary, the kid who benefitted, and the cost was simply next to nothing for me. I enjoyed helping her, watching her grow from a distance, watching as she grew into a woman. It was an excellent Chinese school, I guess, and she did well. Now, I am not a very rich man, but I had worked and saved quite a bit from the sale of my programs. Later, I bought a group of office buildings in Fresno with a portion of my programs’ payoff, so I have a very comfortable income, and yet I live very simply, with no bills. Helping Jenny with her schooling was therefore not a problem, not even a slight burden. I didn’t even have to touch my savings. So we were writing each other about once a month. I received a letter from her when she was in the eighth grade. It was her longest letter to date and a little different. She wrote: “My Dear American Sir who is also living in the enormous trees of Golden Mountain. I last week very much angry with best girlfriend of me, but is okay now. She say to me I have boyfriend but you no have boyfriend. What wrong with you, eh? I say I have boyfriend also who lives at top of Golden Mountain. Hah, she say. My boyfriend here and I kiss him three times on mouth already. Well, I say, I kiss my boyfriend also too, on mouth but just one time. I beat you, she say. So, I say. Maybe for now, but later I also get more kissing. She say then, I gotta picture of my boyfriend. I say I gotta picture also too (the one my amah took of you at hospital). Okay, she show me. And her boyfriend looking pretty good. She say look at his eyes, so dark and pretty. He look so intelligence. Okay, I also show her you picture from amah and also the picture of you and trees! She say, He old man. What wrong with you? I say, this old man mine, and also look his eyes. They blue as sky. That mean he see further and also better than someone with dark eyes. Everybody know that! And he has so much intelligence he never have to work. He let other people work, and make so much money he can give money away on street corner if he want. Hah! So she say, my boyfriend gonna be very rich, like Mandarin. I say, my boyfriend is Mandarin of Golden Mountain already! She say but he old. I say I also love old too and you shut up. That what I told her, so you my boyfriend forever! And you must also say this if anybody ask you. We no talk again for four days, but I miss her and she also miss me so she came to house and we make up so we can also study together and talk only good things about you and her boyfriend also too. We both promise to be nice. So goodbye for now. I like also you. Do you not like also me too. Xiao Wong Jinsong.” I wrote her back and suggested she find a boyfriend for herself. That way she could go to the dances and proms and whatever they called them. She wrote back saying she never would have another boyfriend. “You my boyfriend yesterday and today and tomorrow. You will always be forever and forever too.” I thought she was getting a little carried away, and I wrote her telling her to stop acting silly and I also told her to study hard and become a well educated young woman. During her senior year at High School, her letters came with a greater frequency, sometimes as many as three a week. She told me everything in her run on, non-stop style. She wrote me that she looked at my picture every night and told me goodnight before going to bed. She also said she was having dreams in a sensual manner about me and one day would tell me about them. She signed her name as Embarrassed Jenny. I wrote her back, telling her to go out with her classmates and have fun. In time, she graduated. She was very disappointed that I was unable to come to her graduation. I thought about it, but decided it was just too long a trip for a little High School ceremony, although I did not tell her that. I sent her a little computer as a gift. She now began writing me e-mails, and, I don’t remember exactly when, began signing her letters, “With Great Love, Jenny.” Sometimes it was “Great Love,” sometimes, “Noble Love,” or even “Undying Love.” I decided to help her through the university, and sent money to the registrar. When I wrote her once a week or so, I suggested books that she should read. I stuck with the classics: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Lady Murasaki, Cervantes, Lao Tzu, Li Po, Milton, Shakespeare, Swift, Khayyam, Montaigne, Rimbaud, Mark Twain, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Hamsun, Hesse, Joyce, and a few authors like Salinger, and Kerouac that are more modern. She wrote me when she finished each one, telling me how each of the book’s characters had affected her, and what she thought of them. She liked Lao Tzu and Li Po best, and Dostoyevsky’s House of the Dead. Those were also my favorites. I was very impressed with her intelligence, her sensitivity, and her perceptive mind. She loved to read and that endeared her to me even more. I read too; although I’m not much of a writer, I do read constantly, and try too, to spend some time on modern authors, who reflect changes in writing styles. One of the best story-tellers was Dickens, and I compared his style of writing with a modern popular writer like Patterson. There is a big difference, and of course, I preferred Dickens. Who wouldn’t? *** It had been more than nine years since my brief encounter with Jenny in Ling’s Tailor Shop, and she was twenty years old. She sent me a school photo every year, and I lined them up in little frames in my study above my computer. It was interesting to see, not just the growth of a phenomenal beauty, but the changes in her dress and the way she styled her hair, even in the conservative way she used make-up. I sat at my computer every day, often looking at her photos for a time instead of typing, instead of working on my programs, or instead of working around the house or reading the news. Every morning when I passed by my study, I would look in at the photographs of Jenny and say, ”Good morning, Jenny.” I lived alone with my dog and was a little isolated in Yosemite. So I got in the habit of talking to Jenny at times, as if the photographs were a real person. I too sent her my photos each year, which she probably filed away in an old shoebox, if she even kept them. It didn’t matter. In time, I too began signing my letters to her, “Love, Noah.” But this was just friendship love. I was very proud of my friend. She wrote and asked me to come to her graduation from the university. “I am broken in heart if you do not come to see me. You are, you know, my great and only ever love!” High School graduation was not a big deal, but graduating from a prestigious university was a different story. I wanted to go. There was nothing more I would have liked to do, but I was fifty-five years old. What she did not know was, I’d just had a stroke that left the right side of my trunk and my right shoulder a little numb. My right thigh was just a bit numb too, and my right arm was a little weak. The doctor had given me some nitroglycerin pills to take if I felt my heart hurting. I was also taking blood thinners. There was apparently something wrong with my heart as well as my cholesterol being high. My doctor advised against traveling such a long distance. I was very young for heart problems, but there you were. Now I was glad I’d never married, glad I would never leave behind a weeping widow. I didn’t expect to live long. It’s a funny thing about strokes. There’s no warning, it just happens. I’d slept well the night before. One minute I was fine, getting dressed in the morning, feeling fine. The next instant, my right arm was so heavy, I couldn’t lift it without a great effort. On top of that, I had very little control of my whole arm. It flopped around almost as if disembodied. My speech came out as a garbled mess. Strange. I took two large aspirins and it seemed to help. Maybe that was the best thing I could do. I drove into Fresno to go to the hospital. That was probably foolish, driving so soon after a stroke, but I did. What happened was, a blood vessel burst in the left side of my brain so the right side of my body was affected. The weakness began improving within a few hours, but never reached the original level of strength or control. I worked hard and got maybe ninety per cent of my strength and control back. I did recover my normal speech though. My speech came back within a few hours. Even so, I was unable to go to Hong Kong to watch Jenny graduate. It was a terrible disappointment for me. I sent her some money as a graduation gift and explained why I couldn’t be there. It wasn’t much, just a thousand dollars. I figured she would go to work in Hong Kong and meet and marry some Chinese young man. I hoped that she would find someone who would be good to her, and have children I could sometimes write to and maybe direct their education as I had Jenny’s. I probably sound like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady,, but the truth is; “I am an ordinary man, Who desires nothing more than an ordinary chance, to live exactly as he likes, and do precisely what he wants... An average man am I, of no eccentric whim, Who likes to live his life, free of strife, doing whatever he thinks is best, for him, Well... just an ordinary man. Im a very gentle man, even tempered and good natured who you never hear complain, Who has the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein, A patient man am I, down to my fingertips, the sort who never could, ever would, let an insulting remark escape his lips, a Very gentle man... Im a quiet living man, who prefers to spend the evening in the silence of his room, who likes an atmosphere as restful as an undiscovered tomb, A pensive man am I, of philosophical joys, who likes to meditate, contemplate, far for humanities mad inhuman noise, a Quiet living man.... “ I am a quiet man, a soft-spoken man, a gentle person, who is most happy with a good book, a clean environment, a cup of white chocolate mocha, and my dog for company. I like the simple pleasures of life, lying on my back, looking at the stars at night, the smell of my roses wafting into my open window in the mornings with the sounds of singing birds in a festival outside my morning window. I love walking among the giant redwoods during a soft rain, and falling asleep on a spring day under a dry spreading pine and the somber canopy of the great redwoods. This is my church, here where a thousand storms and fires and droughts have had little or no effect. The trees survive, and in their survival, they teach, and give strength, beauty, and the lesson of persistence.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:14:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015