Grandpa

The recipe book he gave me was full of basic know-how of cooking, such as how to clean a fish, how to slice it so it would be more tasty; how to cut meat; how to cut potatoes so that they cook easily, and so on

By An-Yue

It was during the 2002 New Year's Eve program, "The Red and White Singing Contest" in Japan that I first heard the song, "My Grandfather's Clock". I took to it immediately because my grandfather, like the grandfather in the song, had gone to heaven. The sad mood described in the song was just how I felt.

Changing clothes in the winter

Grandpa was a short elderly man with thick glasses. I heard that he had worked in his parents' restaurant from the age of 12. Because of his long hours spent doing the accounts in the restaurant every night, he had poor eyesight. My grandparents had eight children, and my mother was their third child. They had thirteen grandchildren and almost all of them as pre-schoolers had been cared for by Grandpa and Grandma. When I was little, I loved to go to visit our grandparents. It was like going to see a show, only all the actors in the show were family members. Every day the show was different. In winter, all the cousins would gather together at Grandparents' house and stay there for a time. It was such a happy time for us. When it got dark at night, we would all go to bed together and Grandpa would tell us bed-time stories. Grandma and Grandpa were Christians, so naturally the stories were Bible stories. Grandpa knew almost the whole of the Bible off by heart and he could tell Bible stories in such a vivid way. I especially loved the story of Joseph being sold to Egypt, then later on saving his whole family.

Just before I went to elementary school, our local government began to allow Christian gatherings again. A meeting was held in the home of a pastor who had just been released from labor camp. Every Sunday, my Grandparents would get up very early to get ready for church - washing their faces, combing their hair and changing into clean clothes. In winter, we wore so many layers of clothes, it always took a long time to get changed. The Grandparents helped each other change. When Grandma was trying to help Grandpa take off his clothes, Grandpa would sometimes pretend that he was in great pain as if Grandma were peeling off his "old skin". He was trying to make us laugh as we watched them from our cozy beds.

Even today, I still remember the scene of Grandpa and Grandma changing their clothes in the dim light of a winter morning. I think they viewed Sunday as a very important day, so they needed to dress neatly to meet God.

I also went along with them to the pastor's home. It was a very small house and I would always sit in the kitchen. Although the sermon was quite short, I could not understand much of it. For instance, "No-one puts new wine into old wineskins" always puzzled me. It's only in recent years that I have come to understand that it means that a person needs to be born again. A man needs to accept Jesus to have a new-born life.

Later on the people offered enough money to build a church. Grandpa served as the worship leader and he would play the piano to teach us the hymns. Grandpa really loved music. He also wrote a number of songs and one of them was even included in a published hymnal. Before it was distributed to the public, Grandpa was presented with one as a souvenir. He was thrilled, since it was the only hymnal in his church.

Grandpa copied the whole hymnal down in his notebook. Each week, he would copy the hymns that he planned to teach in church onto a big poster made from four pages of calendar paper. Every day, Grandpa worked on the poster, sticking the calendar papers together and writing on it using a Chinese pen brush with black ink. His skinny hands were always stained black.

Before Grandpa taught the new praise songs in church, he would ask Grandma to learn them first at home. That way, when he taught the others, they would already have some "foundation". Normally Grandma was the one who took care of every thing at home, but when it came to learning hymns, she would obey Grandpa implicitly. No mistakes were allowed. Whenever Grandma made a mistake, Grandpa would stop playing. The first praise song I learned was Psalm 23 "The LORD is my shepherd.", when I was in the first or second grade. This song was still my daughter's favorite bed time song when she wanted me to sing to her.

I asked Grandpa what was meant by "My cup runs over." Grandpa lifted up the front end of his shirt to make a big basin and said, "I want to use this basin to hold the treasures and blessings God has given me. But it can't hold them all, because there are so many blessings and they overflow."

In reality, Grandpa had suffered a great deal. During all the political movements, first Grandpa's piano club then his painting club, restaurant and house were all confiscated. He was also sent to a sand factory as a laborer. On his tiny income, he raised his family of eight children. Often during political "struggles", he was labeled and "criticized". Although he had suffered so much, he still delighted in telling me how abundant and unlimited God's grace had been.

The treasure drawers

One of Grandpa's soft spots was that he loved collecting treasures. He had two drawers with huge padlocks on them. Every time he opened a drawer, he would first carefully open it just a crack; he was afraid that his grand children might rummage around with his treasures. When I passed the high school entrance exam, Grandpa called me over and told me that he wanted to give me a present. He opened one of his treasure drawers and got out a pocket watch. He told me that he had bought the watch in his younger days, when he was well-off. He could not remember whether it was made in Germany or Switzerland. But because it no longer worked and the trend at the time was for electronic watches, I was very disappointed and carelessly threw it into my store of bits and pieces. Later on I lost sight of it. Even today I feel regretful about this, as this was the first gift Grandpa had given me.

The summer that I had my first broken college love affair, I shut myself away at home. At noon one hot day, Grandpa came around with a bag of green beans for us, saying that Grandma had wanted him to get them as their house was near the market and it was easy for them to get fresh vegetables. After accepting the beans, I was starting to pour a glass of water for Grandpa, but he said he needed to go on to the church and could not stay. As I walked him to the door, he pulled a letter from his pocket and gave it to me.

It was a very long letter, more than 10 pages, and was written with a Chinese pen brush. Since Grandpa was near-sighted, he could not always keep his words on the line as he wrote, so the words on the page were all slanty. I could not imagine how long it must have taken him to finish the letter. In the letter, he described how, when he was young, he had fallen in love with a very beautiful and clever girl. But his mother had objected to him marrying her. She wanted him to marry my grandmother who was not that smart, but was a believer. Grandpa was very sad at first, but eventually he obeyed his mother's decision. Grandpa said that God had blessed his marriage. All of his eight children, although some are not as smart as the others, are very good to their parents. They all survived the difficult times and are strong and healthy. Grandpa gave all his first three daughters the same middle name, "truth"; the two sons were given the same middle name, "receiving"; and the last three daughters, the middle name, "blessing". Combining all three middle names together, it became "truly receive blessings". Grandpa always said, "In the Christian life you have to learn many lessons. You need to learn how to trust and obey God. If we want to be happy, we should trust God in everything."

I was happily married many years later. After our trip to the Mountain of Huang, we took photos to share with the Grandparents. Grandpa was delighted and he gave me a book wrapped in a big paper bag from his drawer. It was a hand-bound recipe book filled with hand written recipes and hand illustrated pictures.

When Grandpa was growing up, he had learned to cook from a chef who worked in his parents' restaurant. Grandpa cooked only once a year, for his children and their families when they came to visit on Chinese New Year. As Grandpa worked away in the kitchen, he would also demonstrate the difficult steps to my second aunt, my dad and my fifth aunt who loved gourmet cooking.

This recipe book which he gave me was full of basic cooking know-how, such as how to clean a fish, how to slice it before cooking so it would be more tasty; how to cut meat; how to cut potatoes so they cook easily, and so on. That year, Grandpa was 76 years old. He was severely near-sighted and had cataracts. How he had worked on that book was beyond my understanding. When I received the gift, I had had more life experience and knew what things should be treasured. So this book has been taken good care of all these years.

Still able to sing

In the second year of our marriage, my daughter was born. When we went to visit Grandparents, there were three people in our family. My child was growing older each day, and so was Grandpa. Once when I visited them, I saw that Grandpa was no longer wearing glasses. He said that it didn't matter any more whether he wore glasses or not. I guessed that he could only see me as a blurry image. His hearing was also getting bad. Grandma had to shout into his ear to tell that their granddaughter had come too. He was so happy that he opened his treasure drawer and got out a piece of heavy paper. Like a blind man, he struggled to fold it into a toy that would make a funny sound.

My daughter was thrilled to receive this toy, but she would not let this old man with the white beard and the two lifeless eyes touch her. Looking sad, but still smiling, Grandpa sat quietly beside us. While we were chatting with Grandma, although he could not be involved with our talk, he kept the smile on his face as if he was happy just to enjoy the atmosphere.

Then we went abroad and could not get back to visit them very often. When Grandpa was 80 years old, he had cerebellar ataxia, SCA and he could not go out any more. Later he became bed-ridden. My oldest and number four aunts lived far away, so my mother and the other three aunts took turns at taking care of him. In summer 2002 I went back to see Grandpa. He was 84 years old. His daughters were taking good care of him. He was tucked up neatly in bed. When I shouted into his ear and asked him how many children he had, he answered, 'Maybe about 10". He thought he had not given me a very good answer so he smiled bashfully. Grandpa had forgotten the things of this world. Perhaps he had also forgotten about his two treasure drawers. Later I asked him, "Can you still sing?" "Jehovah...my shepherd...I .... All the days of my life... goodness and loving-kindness, ...in the house of ...." Although the lyrics and melody were all mixed up, I knew that Grandpa was singing Psalm 23. That psalm was not only stored in his brain, it was a part of his whole being. If he only opened his mouth, it would flow out naturally. Grandpa did not recognize who I was, but he was like a young student handing in his assignment and solemnly sang the song over and over again. I tried hard to turn my face away from Grandma so that she would not see the tears streaming down my face. In my heart, I was saying goodbye to Grandpa over and over again.

That fall, Grandpa went to Heaven. Mother said that for 40 days before he passed away, he could neither eat nor drink.. A month before he died, my number four aunt came back from Her-Nan. As she was taking Grandpa's temperature, Aunt was pillowing him with her arm as he lay in bed. So Grandpa went to Heaven in Aunt's arms. When I heard about this, I was deeply grateful for my aunt.

I thank God for letting me be born into this big family. I also thank my grandparents for leading me to the Lord when I was little, so that I could receive God's discipline and His blessings.

The author is from Da-Lan, China. She now lives in Tokyo, Japan and works in software programming.