So I decided to fill in the blanks last night with my mom. Apparently, she brought me to Taiwan when I was three months old, and left me there with my grandmother and aunt until I was two!
Whaaa?!!
I can't imagine what it must have been like to be a brand new mother, and basically sending your newborn away for two years. That means my mom didn't get to see her only child's first steps or hear him say his first words! That's mind boggling. I also wonder what it must have been like to be placed in the position of having to send me away in the first place. She explained that with the hours she had to work (she was a nurse), she couldn't bear to keep waking me up at 4am each morning to take me to the baby sitter and leave me there until 5pm every day. She decided she would feel more at ease if she knew that either my grandmother or my aunt would be watching me 24/7, even if it meant sending me half a world away. So that's what she did.
[I'm wondering if there's more to the story than that. I also briefly wondered where my father was in all this that he couldn't help out with the baby... then quickly realized that this was my father I was wondering about.]
By the time my second 1.5 year tour of Taiwan ended, I was already five and a half. When my mom finally brought me back to the States for good, I had spent less than two years with her total. My very first memories are actually from that second stint in Taiwan, and i still remember that my mom was only a vague theoretical idea at the point. That the two women taking care of me were my grandmother and my aunt, but there was a woman out there in "Mei Guo" ("Beautiful Country" = what the Chinese call "America") who was my actual mother.
It was a strange concept to grasp for a five year old.
My first passport, issued at 2 months old for my first stay in Taiwan.
Baby pic taken in Taiwan.
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