Breaking Tradition

Could I write a “how to” book about trying to become a single mom, or being a mom at all? Could anyone? Well, maybe “Popo,” as we called my father’s grandmother. She raised mullet in the Hanaloa fishpond at Pearl Harbor, which kept her 10 kids fed and afforded them to go to college. She’d have something to say, and I bet she wouldn’t write a book. She’d tell me, though, “Just do what you gotta do.”

I’ve heard stories about her my whole life—Popo sleeping over Friday nights at my grandparents’ house so she could play mahjong all night; jai not really being jai unless it’s her version; Popo meeting Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Soong Mei-ling, while touring Taiwan.

Photo: Courtesy of Virginia Loo

Growing up, there was always a family photo from 1949 on the wall of my parents’ house. It showed all of Popo’s children and spouses, along with my father sitting cross-legged in the front row with the rest of the grandkids. In the photo, taken for her 60th birthday, Popo was seated in her black cheongsam, sporting a cattleya corsage the size of her head. She was the epitome of a matriarch, a tiger mom of her era.

Initially, while writing my book, How to B, I thought I had a story the opposite of Popo’s life. I wanted to tell the funny, sometimes wacky story about getting pregnant without a partner. I wanted to share the etiquette of asking someone to be a sperm donor; how going to an infertility clinic makes you feel like a tiger jumping through hoops on fire; and learning to parent while living with your own parents. That’s what the book was supposed to be about.

But writing it took me somewhere unexpected. Choosing to have a kid on my own and wearing the mantle of single mom felt counter to all the expectations I was raised with—to go to a good school, get married to a nice boy, buy a house and have 2.5 kids. Writing How to B helped me unravel how and why my choices turned out so differently and allowed me to unpack the fear of not meeting my Chinese family’s expectations.

After I finished the book, I remembered Popo was a single mom herself. Her husband, my great-grandfather, was killed in a car accident when her youngest child was just 9 days old. She learned to drive herself to the fishpond. She got a lawyer to prevent her husband’s family from taking away the business. She raised those kids on her own, became a Buddhist late in life, and toured Europe with her daughters in her late 70s. So much for doing what is expected of you. Becoming a parent, especially becoming a mom, can change your entire sense of self. I lost myself for a bit, got mired in the tropes of trying to be a mom “the right way.” Popo would have told me, “No such thing, you just do what you gotta do.”

I never met Popo, unless you count going to bai san at Nu‘uanu Memorial Park where she is buried. Every April when I was young, our large extended family would gather to lay out a five-course mock meat meal on her gravestone, pouring liquor from red porcelain cups into the grass and tossing gold paper into a burning barrel. Each generation lined up to pay respect, foreheads kissing the grass, the youngest children bowing last.

We haven’t done the full ritual in years, but our family still gathers there in April, whoever is in town, bringing buckets of flowers picked from the yard. It’s a time to catch up on family gossip. Then it’s time: All the kids line up and bow on Popo’s grave, my 12-year-old son now the last to pay respects. I realize, what I thought seemed so far off the path is exactly how it’s always been.

SEE ALSO: What Should We Do About Our Parents?

Virginia Loo is the author of the recently published book, How to B, which shares her story as a globe-trotting epidemiologist who decides to have a child with no partner.