Working for a Better World. Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo

will I take my dry-cleaning? Where will I exercise? Should we drive back and forth or spend the money flying back and forth to South Bend? Who will cut my hair? Where will I take my clothes for alterations? I felt like Gulliver as each strand of his hair was pinned down by his tiny captors until he was immobilized.

      In the daylight, I recognized these concerns for what they were: about change, about giving up what is familiar, about meeting new challenges, and about leaving one’s community. I felt an attachment to the people behind those services. These individuals — like Karen who did my alterations, Laura who cut my hair, the Sisters of Holy Cross who welcome us every Sunday to worship with them, our faith-filled and gracious neighbors John and Jan Jenkins, my colleagues at the Mendoza College — are friends who care for each other. I did not want to let them go.

      Leaving would be hard, as I knew only too well from experience. For me, it would be akin to removing old contact paper from drawers. When the glue of the liner has bonded with the wood fiber of the drawer, the paper does not come off easily and jagged pieces remain.

      As I dealt with this, one word from Jesus was lodged in my head: “Go.” It seemed that every reading in scripture at that time echoed that invitation: Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jonah, the disciples, St. Paul, and so on. “Go” — a simple enough word; I got the message.

      Then there was another word — joy.

      Chapter Four

      Joy: A Journey

      Joy did not come through night visitors, nor did it seize me with exuberant song and dance. It came from a sense that God may be calling, that He had been leading me on a journey where the past revealed its purpose in a specific invitation for the future. I did not grow up in a particularly religious family and would not consider myself to have good prayer and spiritual habits. Yet in my earlier departures from Hong Kong and Purdue, I was moved by some force bigger than myself for reasons that logic cannot explain. And, in hindsight, I saw how every step in my journey led to where I stood that day and was enveloped by the grace and the blessings of these experiences.

       My Parents, Peter Woo (aka Ching Chi) and Hung U-Lan

      I was born on April 19, 1954, in Hong Kong, in the neighborhood known as “Happy Valley,” which got its name from the iconic horse race course built there in 1846. My Western name, “Carolyn,” was chosen by my father. My Chinese name is Woo Yau Yan (吳幼仁), with “吳” (Woo) as our family name. “幼” (Yau) is the character for “delicate,” which comes from my mother’s given name, and “仁” (Yan) is the character given to all the girls in my family. This character represents the Confucian teaching on how people should relate to one another.

      I was the fifth child of my parents, Peter Woo and Hung U-Lan. More importantly, I was the fourth daughter who arrived when my parents were hoping for their second son. My father wanted two sons for “an heir and a spare.” There was talk that if the fifth child were not a son, my father would consider taking a second wife — legal at the time. Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers had multiple wives. And that was a possibility as this fourth girl arrived, much to my father’s chagrin. Fortunately my mother conceived fairly quickly afterward, and my younger brother arrived twenty months later. In a twelve-year span, my parents had six children: Helen, Paul, Irene, Maureen, me, and William.

      My parents’ personalities and backgrounds could hardly have been more different. My father was born around 1916 in China. As an infant, he was purchased by the third wife of a man who would technically be my paternal grandfather. My father didn’t talk much about his family as he had very little memory of his early years, and I don’t think he ever felt like he belonged. As a boy, he was sent away to St. Joseph’s boarding school in Hong Kong. It was there he became Catholic. My father was sent for university studies in Germany but enjoyed himself too much to master German, so he transferred to schools in Scotland and received a degree from the Royal Technical College in Glasgow in architecture. The plan was for him to serve the family shipping business located in southern China.

      Peter Woo was smart, urbane, daring, and had little experience of family structure. He had always been on his own, made all his own decisions, and did things on his own terms. He loved dancing, bridge, drinking, and probably European dames, as he gave Irish names to all his daughters. In the midst of World War II, he returned to Hong Kong and started work as a naval architect: a profession in strong demand given that Hong Kong’s most distinctive asset is its harbor. My father apparently enjoyed his life as a bachelor in this British colony with his Western flair and full command of the English language. Two incidents, however, disrupted his life: one, he was introduced to my mother; and two, he was summoned by the Japanese, who by then were occupying Hong Kong, to serve its naval interests. For a Chinese man, that would be an act of treason.

      While my father grew up on his own, my mother was a hothouse flower protected from all the challenges of life. She was also from China, the only natural child of the first wife of my grandfather, who came from a wealthy family and was known for his generosity. His favorite child was my mother, who, for as long as she could remember, had her own maids and servant girls. The family sought temporary refuge in Hong Kong when China fell to the Japanese.

      My mother was named Hung U-Lan (delicate orchid). Tutors came to the home — she never had to go to a school, take an exam, cope with due dates, or face pressures from anything related to school. The learning regimen was constructed around her comfort level. My mother learned the proper manners befitting a young lady, developed an exquisite taste for fabrics, and was renowned for her tailoring abilities. The Chinese did not have access to Butterick or Simplicity patterns, so my mother learned to cut fabric without a pattern to make any clothing item we needed. It is a skill I never picked up.

      We always thought that my mother was four years younger than my father until, after her death, we learned the long-held secret: they were the same age. For her generation, my mother married late because, the story goes, my grandmother did not find any young man worthy until she met my father. Since Chinese marriages in those days were primarily engineered by parents, my grandmother’s approval was paramount. While my grandmother was brought up in the “old” Chinese way, when foot-binding was the practice, she preferred a more modern approach and did not put my mother through that torture. She liked my father’s Western ways and the possibility of a different type of marriage for my mother.

      We think our mother was smitten also. After a few dates, all chaperoned, the question of marriage came up. Like my father, my mother also faced a problem with the occupiers. The family had received an inquiry from a Japanese military officer for the hand of my mother. The only acceptable (though not truthful) answer they could give: she was already engaged.

      So Peter Woo and Hung U-Lan, who were as different as night and day and who hardly knew each other, married on September 21, 1943. They immediately fled to China, where some regions were under Japanese occupation and other areas were fighting to retain control. As for so many, the war years were very difficult. My father could not work. My parents had to stay a step ahead of the Japanese, sometimes literally fleeing late at night on foot. My older siblings Helen and Paul were born during this period. My mother was resourceful and strong in ways she never had to be before. To generate cash, she gave her jewelry to my father to sell on the street. She would recount the agreement among fellow travelers on the run from the Japanese that the safety of the group could not be compromised by crying babies.

      Years later, I got a glimpse of the trauma when I went to the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! with my mother. She sobbed from the beginning to the end: her whole life was upended by the invasion of the Japanese. The world she knew and grew up in disappeared in the war. Though we heard many stories of danger, escape, hardships, and bravery, I wish that we had heard and asked more about the bond that my parents developed as a newly married couple completely on their own in that chaotic, dangerous world. For example, I inherited a beautiful diamond and pearl gold bangle from my mother that my father bought from another peddler when he should have been selling, not buying, jewelry. I cherish this as part of the love story of my parents. I now know that we should ask, probe, dig deep to get our parents’ love story because this is a source of the magic of our lives.