{"id":3760,"date":"2014-12-15T02:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-12-15T07:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/?p=3760"},"modified":"2014-12-15T19:11:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T00:11:13","slug":"a-son-remembering-his-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dontow.com\/2014\/12\/a-son-remembering-his-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"A Son Remembering His Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"
When I think of my 103 year-old mother, so many memories flash through my mind, from her winning the 50-meter sprint championship as a teenager, to a mother who lost her oldest son at a young age, to her raving beauty throughout her life, to a woman who had to pull up roots five times, including a move to a country with no friends and not speaking a word of the language, to a 100+ year-old great grandmother who no longer recognizes me, his youngest son.
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\nSo much turmoil has gone through her life, including pulling up roots with the whole family on five different occasions, with the first four due to war and the last one due to wanting to provide more opportunities for her children. I started my life in my mom\u2019s tummy during one of those tumultuous times when we moved (or ran) away from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong in the spring of 1942 to Taishan (also spelled Toyshan), a village in the Guangdong Province in the southern part of China that was not under Japanese occupation. We stayed in Taishan until the end of WWII in 1945 when we moved back to Guangzhou (used to be called Canton) which was my parents\u2019 original residence before they moved from there to Hong Kong in 1937 due to China\u2019s civil war and the impending Japanese invasion from Northern China to Southern China.<\/p>\n
When she was young, my mom was very athletic.\u00a0 Besides being one of the top players on her high school softball team, she was the county 50-meter sprint champion.<\/p>\n