salvageable?

my first language was cantonese. when i watch home videos of myself, i hardly recognize my own voice when i was younger. the fluency i had back then is ridiculous(ly good) to what i sound like today.

this break has been unique in that my grandma has been here with my family in san diego. i have never spent the holidays (consciously at least, i have when i was much younger) with my grandma. this holiday is extra special because for the first time i've baked with my grandma, handed her a present for christmas, listened to her story, and lived life with her.

she is an amazing individual...living in vietnam during the war, receiving minimal education though she desired much more, being treated as something "lower than" because she was the girl in the family, feeling restricted the majority of her life because of her controlling guardian, learning to live in the different cultures of venezuela and canada...the list can go on.

i stand amazed and yet saddened because only now, after so much life has already passed have my grandma and i gotten to really know each other. and what has kept that distance though my family visits her almost every year now is language. the weight of that sadness came especially today when we were having breakfast downstairs in the kitchen. for some reason my cantonese was extra choppy and i could not communicate myself fully to her. my problem is that i understand practically everything spoken but draw a blank when it comes to speaking myself. after mumbling something half understandable she told me a few things that i don't know how to take in yet.

"your family should have never spoken english between each other, that way you would have remembered," "your brother speaks better than you do," "this is how i feel like when i have a meal with your family, and i just sit there because i cannot speak english like you all do, neither do i understand everything your family is saying."

i didn't know how to respond (of course even if i did, it'd probably be miscommunicated anyway). i nodded and smiled instead showing her i understood and agreed to what she said.

guilt. shame. regret. all these can't be avoided in life. i feel that at least the initial impact of these things are far too natural to be avoided. but is guilt the end of the road? far from it! that is why i titled this post as it is. is my cantonese salvageable? yes. but now i have a choice, to wallow in my guilt, or do something about it. now more than before do i really desire not only to have my cantonese back, but also to know my history. to love my history, because though it still might be foreign to me, it is every part in shaping the environment and place i am today. and for my grandma, that we'd have a time one day when we'd joke, and chat, and to be more fully able to love each other through the words we say.