Bridging two Tom Families pt. I
All stories are figments of one's imagination
The name never disappears
Through it I observe the beginning of all things
How do I know how all things begin?
Because of this.
v. 21 ddjThe process of gathering does not always lead to knowing. Sometimes the answers received is invariably a master key for a family of new and undiscovered questions.
We may draw worlds, color within the lines bounded by some essence of the physical nature of the answers and truths from others vantage points. It might fit like tracings against the world we are elaborating, or against the world about us.
I began my first essay with one question. I wanted to understand under what circumstances my Po Po, our matriarch, was committed to Napa State Hospital in her early thirties. I didn’t realize the journey I was to undertake. I would make connections by reaching across two Tom-Tang families and those who responded willingly shared in their experiences and gathered their minds-eye portraits of ancestral stories and artifacts.
Here was the parent of new questions arising. What I have come to find is that when I try to pick out anything by itself exclusively I find it tethered to “everything else.” It is a unified whole and what affects one end is transmuted through this elegant-electric string pulled through each and everyone of our lives. This “Colusa Tom” wave form reverberates unseen and often unheard, yet always, most determined to be felt profoundly. This is the unconscious felt sense. Stops you in your tracks. Its subtle embrace has one looking up and around to wonder. It is wordless and action-less and yet it has the power to transform in one heart beat if our hearts and minds offer allowance for it.
The loving stories and the sad and tragic prose of our lives comes fully through in a prismatic form and can separate in its most elemental textured wave of a rainbow touching finally that pot of gold. This unspoken understanding through the infinite speed of Light, that the illusion of an end is just the beginning. It is pure and never absent. When uncloaked we can avail ourselves to the nature of stories and lost memories brought back to life in yet a faded mysterious tapestry long shorn, lost and worn well away, to be resurrected and re-told and held not for the content but of love’s perseverance to re-member from where we came from:
Our “Roots-route” to our Origin story.
The stories are just that.
They may never be fully understood without sitting side by side another in their telling. Though the want to preserve our Tom legacy captured me the more I researched and began to put pieces together. I am readily aware that not all may agree nor feel as excited by the words here, though it is worth mentioning that this story is made up, in other words, it cannot be an accurate depiction because of the many arms length away I am from the source. As we all are. And here we are in a story of our making from artifacts of the past.
This one of “everything else” would fall into the realm of a woman only known by name for the vast majority of our family. There was interest of my other cousins to know more. And, so here is what I have found in scratching the life surface-d story of another woman who would bridge two Tom clans in Colusa, California,
Little was known of Florence when her name would come up at our Tom reunions. When the Book “Portraits of Chinese in America” by Ruthanne Lum McCunn was passed around at one gathering the photos of our great grandfather with a round Chinese woman next to his side along with a young and classy lady and 4 children in a car cast eyebrows lifted and gasps of wonderment filled the living room. Who was this woman? My Auntie MJ remarked that she was my grandfathers favorite daughter. Favorite daughter? I recall Auntie Evelyn remarking that she was adopted into the family and that grandfather spent his time devoted to her and his second wife, the concubine. It would come clear that in our auntie and uncle’s memoirs which were read aloud at our reunions that the reasons became evident why there was no love loss for Hom Gim, their grandfather. This was covered in a previous posting.
Not an ill word was spoken of Florence by her nephews and nieces only that the relationship which had soured between father and son, daughter in-law and father in- law was emblazoned in their minds. A question arose: If I knew more about Florence and her life would I be able to understand the circumstances for my Po Po’s life long commitment?
The lead photo represents the two Tom families. The time is in and around 1924. The women from l to r: Tom Yoke Ying (Florences biological mother), Florence Ruth Tom, Tom Yook Kim ( adoptive mother-2nd wife seated), Soo Hoo Shee ( Po Po). The children from l to r: Blossom, Charmaine in arms, Grace, George, Evelyn
RuthAnne’s Books are important in their historical telling of vignettes of Chinese in her other wonderfully written books. I highly recommend capturing a few if the interest to know more is there. She has been a rich repository of Chinese and Chinese American life. http://mccunn.com/
“Root” as a vessel for nourishment, Route as creation of a path in this pathless land on one’s journey