My Journey of Faith: Into Quiet Despair

I. The Journey of Sights and Sounds.

Chapter 2: Into Quiet Despair

I have a faint memory as a little boy walking up that steep Sacramento Street to my Uncle Yet’s apartment. That place was scary since the hallway was dark and climbing up those two flights of stairs was extremely steep. My parents would visit from time to time but for most of us stayed by the doorway or out in the hallway. We couldn’t fit into their apartment with their three children.

I don’t remember where we moved from, but I remembered moving into that big flat apartment, known as Jop Khan Benevolent Association on Joice St. The Tong Association would play mahjong during the week days and weekends. We lived down stairs in a six room flat with one bathroom. The back three rooms were occupied by my parents, my sister Bonnie, and the three of us in the other room. The front three rooms were used as a living room, a dining room, and a bedroom for my two oldest brothers, Keith and Kenneth. The building’s purpose was to provide low income housing for the Tong Association. Needless to say, my parents met the criteria and were able to live there with the stipulation to clean up the upstairs after it was used.

Relatives would stop-by at the Association and my mother and relatives would talk. One day standing outside the living room door, probably around the age 5, I heard my mother bitterly complained how she wished that she didn’t have so many children. Her life would be much easier and happier. Her relatives tried to comfort her by saying that she shouldn’t say such things, but she said it anyway!

Although I didn’t understand Cantonese too well, I understood what my mother was saying to her relatives. I understood that I was an unwanted child by my own mother. She wished that I wasn’t born. Those words were like knives that stabbed into my heart. I walked away from that doorway, crying inwardly. But I wasn’t going to show it. Right there, I determined that I wasn’t going to feel anymore.

I didn’t realize it at that time, but inwardly I wanted my mother to say that she loved me. Only later did I understand that I became the “good” son that I might receive love and acceptance from my mother. I buried those words and feelings deep inside of me, but I never forgot those words by my mother.