With Ma and Family This Week

I’m flying out to California this afternoon to be near Ma during this final stage of her life. Truth be told, I really can’t bring myself to write about the outside world, even as our family arrives from all corners of it in the coming days. Ma is our collective priority.

I credit most of my love of writing to Ma. She was a prolific author throughout most of her adult life, publishing hundreds of popular essays and short stories and establishing herself as a beloved contributor to some well-established Chinese periodicals. She wrote under different pseudonyms so that she could put her pen to politics without drawing attention to herself. She did all this while raising three sons and a daughter, somehow finding time to read to us regularly.

I don’t know what drove Ma’s insatiable desire to write. Perhaps she sensed the act of writing itself was a cry against our own mortality. The moment the first of our ancestors put dream to picture on a cave wall, we were all forever changed, with images and then words freezing and recording ideas for others to see and learn. With each stroke—by dye or ink or keyboard—writers create a time bridge for others to cross. And if, as the physicists say, information can never truly be lost or destroyed, then everything we put out into the universe, through words on a page or bits on a drive, will reverberate through eons to come, long after we are gone. Through her words and stories, Ma will always be with us.

Ma’s greatest pride has always been her children, who have all become writers of sorts. She was tickled by the idea that I would one day assemble the many tales she had regaled me with, of her life and her family, and commit them to a single book. Happily, I was able to let her know that MA IN ALL CAPS will be coming out in print this spring. When I first told her, she scowled through a smile, a very Ma level skill, questioning who would ever want to read such a thing.

When love is what motivates and inspires a writer, it doesn’t feel like work, but rather more like purpose. Writing the book about Ma brought me closer to her than I’ve ever felt, each sentence a filament linking our spirits tighter. And now, our family will have a time capsule of Ma’s life, cherished lore to pass down through generations. The book also, and rather unexpectedly, has granted me much closure and solace as I ponder a world without Ma in it.

Such is the power of words.