The Confucian Matriarch: A Grandson Remembers
A life shaped by tradition, hardship, and surprising strength
By Nam-hyun Choi
She was born into a wealthy family of the literati-bureaucratic class in the late 19th century. She was raised in a strictly male-oriented Confucianist tradition when she was married to a landholding family of similar social status.
At the age of 25, she was widowed with a 3-year-old son. And she died in 1988. She was 92.
This is a rough sketch of a life lived by my grandmother, a diehard Confucianist woman, about whom I think a lot as I grow old.
I wonder what kind of life she had as a young widowed mother to a toddler and later as an aging grandmother to me and six other children.
Did she feel angry or helpless when she saw her father-in-law drinking all the time after his only son died at an early age, paying little attention to the rapidly dwindling family wealth? Did she feel grateful, humiliated, or both when she plummeted into poverty and received help, first from her wealthy father and later from her oldest brother?
What about her later life?
Did she feel rewarded when seeing her son pull the family out of poverty? What did she feel about him when she saw each of his four sons born only to die in infancy?
I regret that I cannot put much detail into the sketch, though she was the one to whom I felt closest in the family. As I remember, she rarely talked to me about herself or about her late husband, though she had been sharing a room with me for a long time — possibly from the time I was weaned until I left our rural home in the fifth grade for better education in the provincial capital.
All I remember about what she told me was that she had brought two maids of her own when she got married and later freed them of servant status. I don't know whether she let them leave out of poverty or for any other reason.
Once, I tagged along when she visited her oldest brother. We had an overnight stay at his large tile-roofed house. Did she make the trip to tell him that she had been grateful for his occasional support? Or that her son was now on his own as a contractor building small bridges and dams?
With the family wealth restored, my grandmother became a matriarch. She had the final say on all family matters. In addition, she often talked to women in the village who came to her to settle inter- or intra-family disputes.
My grandmother was a firm believer in a primogeniture-based familial lineage. She made sure that my father, the eighth in the lineage of first sons, would have a son when he had two daughters after losing four infant sons, one after another.
Under the circumstances, she decided to send my mother away for a while and bring in a woman during her absence so that she could give him a son. No one told me where she had come from, but she had to leave when I was born.
My wife is severely critical of what my grandmother did. I agree she did wrong to both the woman and my mother. But I withhold criticism as I try to see from her perspective.
To my grandmother, I was the dearest among her seven grandchildren rather than the first among equals.
While keeping me under her protective wings, she treated me the way she thought I deserved as a first son. When I threw tantrums and refused to eat at a family breakfast, for example, she would later set the table again, putting my favorite food out.
As a little boy, I learned to drink from my grandmother, who used to let me taste her homebrew before offering it on the altar of ancestor worship. Underage drinking was none of her concern. Instead, it was part of an untold privilege she was heaping on a kid who would become the master of ceremonies for family rituals.
It was my father who kept in check the spoiled little brat that I had become. He used to whip me on the back of the legs with a bamboo stick when he found I did something seriously wrong. My grandmother, who tolerated corporal punishment as a means of disciplining, intervened when she thought enough was enough.
I remained a problem child until after I was admitted to middle school. As corporal punishment continued, I moved away from my father. I wonder what my grandmother thought about her aggrieved grandson turning his back to her only son.
My father passed away shortly before I graduated from college. By the time he died of cirrhosis, all his children had left home for marriage or studies. My grandmother had lived with my mother in a house too large for the two of them.
Several years after my wife and I had a baby girl in the winter of 1981, my grandmother came to spend winter months with us in our urban apartment, saying she could not stand cold in a poorly heated village home.
That was a welcome change before she passed away in 1988, the year when my wife was pregnant with a son. My grandmother would have been proud had she seen the 10th first son born into the family.
Times have changed, and it is only natural that my wife and I are different from my grandmother.
We regard our daughter and son, seven years her junior, as equally dear to us. The baby born to our son and his wife last August is also dear to us, not because it's a boy but because he is our grandchild.
The baby being the 11th first son is none of our concern. Had the baby been a girl, we would have loved her all the same.
But it is not that I ignore the sacrifice and devotion my grandmother made to keep the familial lineage uninterrupted. Instead, I understand she did a great deal in her own way to keep the family as it is now.
As a septuagenarian, I hope my children will continue to have good families. I also wish the same for my grandchild.
This piece ends here, but we have a bonus for our paid subscribers: Our recent family picture!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Keep Practicing to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.