With Both Hands Open

I saw The Joy Luck Club for the first time yesterday and it immediately jumped into my short list of favorite movies. I haven't cried that hard in a movie since Beth died in Little Women, and if I'd been watching it alone, I would have sobbed. As it was, I was watching it with a friend of mine, so I tried to maintain some semblance of self-control. He had told me about the movie earlier, when we were talking about how amazing it is what we take for granted in our day-to-day lives. His grandmother in China lived through such a terrible famine that everyone in her family died except her sister. The two of them somehow managed to survive by eating grass. And when his grandparents had children, they went hungry in order to feed their children. And his parents moved to America in order to provide a better life for their children. "That's how it is with us," he explained. "You live in order to be a step for the next generation, in order to move the family forward."

He loves The Joy Luck Club because it reminds him of his mother and his grandmother. There were several points in the movie where he pointed at the screen and said, "Yes, yes! It is just like that!" Like when the women friends brag about how incredible their children are, or when the mother of the chess champion walks down the street holding the magazine cover of her child like a banner on her chest and stops everyone she knows to show them.

Before we watched the movie, I told him how last year at this time, when I was still dreaming that everything in my life would return to what I had known before, I wrote my friend Isaac in Israel and told him that I was dreaming of coming back and that everything would work out. Here is his response:

"I'm biting my tongue, chewing my knuckles, and crossing my eyes in an effort not to give you personal advice about empowerment. I'm actually not sure what advice I'd give, other than: DO NOT COME BACK TO TEL AVIV BEFORE THE MONTH IS UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, read the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan."

I didn't understand why he recommended this book. I thought reading about immigrants was the last thing I needed. Now I understand he wanted me to hear what the mothers told their daughters: You are worth more than what you have come to expect. My favorite scenes were the one of the mother telling her daughter: Leave this lopsided house and do not come back until he offers you [tenderness and respect] with both hands open.

In my second favorite scene, the mother tells her daughter: I tell you the story because I was raised the Chinese way. I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, and to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way. Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl, and I was born to my mother and I was born a girl, all of us like stairs, one step after another, going up, going down, but always going the same way. No, this cannot be, this not knowing what you're worth, this not begin with you. My mother not know her worth until too late - too late for her, but not for me. Now we will see if not too late for you, hmm?

It's not too late for me.