My Grandmother

In the textbook, Unit5 talked about the elders, and also introduced us to the organization “the Red Hat Society”. It had been mentioned in this unit that women who were under the age of fifty usually dedicated their lives to their children. It makes me think of my grandmother. So, in the ten minutes short talk, I would like to share this topic with you “My Grandmother”. Besides, I will also associate my grandmother’s life with some social phenomenon in Taiwan.

 

My grandma is now sixty-eight years old. She was born in a poor family in 1942, and there were 6 children in her family. Her parents owned a grocery store and a piece of farmland. When she was a little girl, she had to take care of the store, and sometimes helped her parents with the work in the farmland. At that era, Taiwan was a typical agricultural society, and children were born as labors to help their parents. Especially when it comes to girls, take my grandma for example, at such a young age about 10 or 11; she spent almost of her time taking care of her little sister and brother. It’s easy for me to imagine what will happen if it is my turn to look after my younger brother. It must be a mess!

At the time when my grandma was a teenage girl, her elder brother had already studied for several years. My grandma didn’t have the chance to study; she still buried herself in handling house affairs. Taiwan was a patriarchy society in the early age. Since girls will get married some time in the future, parents do not spend too much money and effort on them. Also, in the traditional thoughts, women without abilities and talents are normal. However, this concept is no longer suitable for the new generation. In recent years, feminism and gender equality have been advocated in Taiwan. In addition, there are more and more women have higher educational degree and social status than men.

When my grandma was sixteen years old, she married my grandpa. And she gave birth to her first son in the next year. The notion of male superiority was prevalent among the silver generation in agrarian society. In order to continue the family name, elders of families wanted to have a grandson. So, it was lucky that grandma’s first child was a boy. During the following ten years, she gave birth to 4 daughters in total. In my grandma’s case, we can see people at that era tend to get married and have children at a very young age. Also, in their opinion, people who have lots of descendants are considered as good fortune.

 

However, people nowadays, especially women, think of getting married as an unnecessary thing to do in their lives. Some of them plan to get married at an older age while others never think of being a wife. The reason why they think so is that women are more independent now. They can do everything by themselves. Besides, living alone is easier than supporting a family.

When it comes to women who get married at older age, there are two different conditions may happened. The first one is getting pregnant at old age. It is danger for both the mother and the baby. According to the research, women over 35 are at greater risk of experiencing complications during their pregnancy, and having children with birth defects, especially Down syndrome.

The second condition is DINK, which is the abbreviation of "double income no kid". Once I read the newspaper, it mentioned that bringing up a child until he or she graduated from university costs about fifteen million NT dollars. No wonder modern people give birth to only one, or even no kid. And, this situation also results in the declination of birth rate.

As grandma is illiterate, she insists that all her children should be well educated. In order to pay the tuition fee, she made some handiwork for meager salary. With the salary of grandma and grandpa, the five children successfully get their educational degree. My grandma is a studious person. When she was in her late forties, she got her driver license. You may wonder how an illiterate person passed the written test. The way she solved this problem was listening to the questions from the tape recorder again and again. When she was 50, she also took the course offered by the community, and gained the basic ability of reading Chinese. There is no doubt that she can stand for this saying “Never too old to learn.”

 

Because my uncle divorced with his wife several years ago, grandma took over the responsibility of raising uncle’s son. In Taiwan , the phenomenon of Grandparenting becomes more and more common. Yet, this situation may cause some problems. Grandparents usually spoil their grandchildren; it makes the grandparents-Raised Children hard to be taught. Moreover, the elders are unable to help their grandchild with the schoolwork, so there may be some difficulties when the kid is learning. When grandma’s offspring all left home, daughters got married, and grandson studied in college, she became an empty nester. All she could do was to deal with housework, and stay accompany with grandpa.

Unfortunately, grandpa passed away two years ago. At the first year of grandpa’s death, grandma suffered from deep grief. She loves him with all her heart: therefore, she can’t endure the loss of her beloved husband. She suffered from Depression. At that time, grandma cried everyday, and lost weight rapidly. We asked her to see a doctor, but she refused. In order to make her happy again, we stayed beside her, and chatted with her. And she took a trip with my aunt to Japan last year. Gradually, grandma recovered from the sadness.

Since the elders dedicate their whole lives to their offspring, we should not ignore them. They brought us up when we are still young, so it is our turn to take care of them when they get old.