The Goddess Speaks
The Goddess Speaks
I still cry over scenes from the movie "The Joy Luck Club," about Chinese women and their interwoven lives. In one, at a train station in China, the main character meets her twin sisters from her mother's first marriage for the first time. In another, a daughter tells her mother that feels she can never please her, as they both stare in a beauty salon's mirror at the other's reflection. This revelation, however, is what pleases the mother, and as they begin to cry, I'm sobbing, too. Joyous few degrees
of separationFamily is so important, yet so easy to take for granted. We have to earn our friendships, but are born into our families.
My immediate family is small, but my extended family is vast; in fact, we've been frighteningly prolific. I could very well be related to the person behind the grocery store check-out stand, who patiently waits while I rummage through my purse for my Maika'i card. I could be a distance niece of the man in the car trying to nudge into my lane. I'd better wave him in.
In tiny Hawaii, especially, we are all connected. If we are not related by blood or marriage to the person in line behind us at the movie theater, then we all know the person who knows such and such, or is related to him or her, or works at this or that company. A conversation with a stranger reveals a link.
As I stumble upon coincidences that connect people, I realize we are not specks of dust floating aimlessly.
A few months ago, the Star-Bulletin published a "Goddess Speaks" column that I had submitted. About a week later, I received an e-mail from a woman who wrote that she was the same age, going through the same feelings, and appreciating the same simple things in life, like spending time with family.
When I read her name, Deanne White, I realized that she is my cousin! Her maiden name was Yee and her grandmother, Miriam Lum Lau, and my grandfather, Mun Luke Lum, were sister and brother.
Our great-grandparents were Lum Boone, who came from China, and Yuen Ngan Shee, who was born in Hawaii and who may have been part-Hawaiian. They married in the late 1800s and had 14 children.
After not seeing each other in maybe 15 years, we got together for breakfast. We decided that we would attempt to contact our second and third cousins, women in our age range, and organize a lunch. Maybe we would meet over dim sum, bringing together a group linked by blood, yet pulled by fate in different directions.
"It will be like the Joy Luck Club," I say.
Recently, another cousin appeared in my life through my job. She's a radio station executive, Sandy Siu, whose grandfather, Wah Hung Lum, was the oldest of my grandfather's brothers. I wonder if my great-grandparents foresaw this network of descendants. The connections bewilder and please me, reinforcing the notion that we are each a small part of a much bigger picture.
Now, I ask this of YOU, "Are we related?"
Cathy Lee Chong is Iolani School's
Director of Communications.
The Goddess Speaks runs every Tuesday
and is a column by and about women, our strengths, weaknesses,
quirks and quandaries. If you have something to say, write it and
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