“Auntie Mei felt doubtful, but her questioning silence did not stop him from admiring his own invention. Nothing, he said, is too difficult for a thinking man. When he put away his tools he lingered on, and she could see that there was no reason for him to hurry home. He had grown up in Vietnam, he told Auntie Mei, and had come to America thirty-seven years ago. He was widowed, with three grown children, and none of them had given him a grandchild, or the hope of one. His two sisters, both living in New York and both younger, had beaten him at becoming grandparents.”
I think that this passage simultaneously draws a parallel and a contrast between Auntie Mei and Paul–they are both isolated immigrants to America, both widowed. Our narrator articulates another similarity, though not one specific to Paul and Auntie Mei: “The same old story: they all had to come from somewhere, and they all accumulated people along the way.” Paul though, shows a vulnerability and desire that Auntie Mei stuffs. Paul then becomes a catalyst for an exploration of self Auntie Mei has long avoided.
Paul has a desire to caretake, to share intimacy with children, that we see in this passage. Though it is not stated directly, there seems to be a grief in his lack of grandchildren. The language of being “beaten” by his younger sisters at the task of becoming a grandparent indicates a desire to have what they have. Auntie Mei plays into Paul’s desire, upon his leaving narrating for baby, “‘Say bye-bye to Grandpa Paul.’” In this way Auntie Mei gives Paul something he desires, something that she herself avoids. Auntie Mei would never give herself the honorary grandparent title for an infant she was looking after–“Auntie Mei…called every mother Baby’s Ma, and every infant Baby. It was simple that way, one set of clients easily replaced by the next.” Though it is not explicitly one of Auntie Mei’s rules, one can imagine that if Auntie Mei holds a rule for herself not to cultivate a personal relationship with any one infant, then to refer to Paul as Grandpa, thus calling in a personal relationship, even if only a joke, would constitute a broken rule for her. After breaking this rule, she starts to break more. She moves the baby’s crib into her room, and takes on the responsibility of grocery shopping, which she notably enlists Paul to help with. Once again, Paul becomes a vessel for Auntie Mei’s breaking of her own rules.
The grocery shopping becomes another space in which Paul projects his desire onto the baby, asking Auntie Mei, “‘Do you suppose people will think we’re the grandparents of this baby?”’ This is not just a question, but a wish–Paul does not just want to be a grandfather, he wants to be seen as a grandfather. We see this again when Paul asks Auntie Mei to bring the baby to the park with them, articulating why he wants to be seen with them in front of his long-time enemy: “‘I want him to think I’ve done better than him.’” Paul’s claimed “knowing” of this person provokes a kind of vulnerability in Auntie Mei’s narration. Though clouded with a proposed indifference, what I think we actually see is an exploration of a fear of abandonment, a fear of knowing someone enough to care: “Being known, then, must not be far from being imprisoned by someone else’s thought. In that sense, her grandmother and her mother had been fortunate: no one could claim to have known them, not even Auntie Mei. When she was younger, she had seen no point in understanding them, as she had been told they were beyond apprehension. After their deaths, they had become abstract. Not knowing them, Auntie Mei, too, had the good fortune of not wanting to know anyone who came after: her husband; her coworkers at various Chinese restaurants during her yearlong migration from New York to San Francisco; the babies and the mothers she took care of, who had become only recorded names in her notebook.” The ending of this story follows this fear of knowing enough to care, but it is not just the fear of knowing other people: “She was getting older, more forgetful, yet she was also closer to comprehending the danger of being herself. She had, unlike her mother and her grandmother, talked herself into being a woman with an ordinary fate. When she moved on to the next place, she would leave no mystery or damage behind; no one in this world would be disturbed by having known her.” Auntie Mei externalizes her fear of knowing or being herself onto other people, as if she is preventing other people harm by avoiding herself, but it is clear that she is the one most scared of herself.
Coming to Age 