Woman Who Could Not Forget by Richard Rhodes Read Free Book Online

other since I’d left home for the U.S. ten years earlier, he said “You came to America to learn Western modern technologies. You should know that China has a five-thousand-year-old history. As for philosophy and ethics, the West needs to learn from us!”
    My father was a very proud man. He was loyal to his old country and a fervent admirer of Chinese culture. He always reminded me of the beauty of Chinese literature and philosophy. He wanted me not to forget our Chinese roots, no matter where we went. He told me, emphatically, “You should be very proud to be Chinese!”

    In the spring of 1972, Shau-Jin was awarded a Sloan Fellowship. This gave him the opportunity to relinquish his teaching duties. He decided to visit the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton again in the fall of 1972 for one academic year. His plan was that after the end of the Institute visit, he would go to Europe to visit CERN, a center for European nuclear research based in Geneva. So when we came back from the Brookhaven National Lab at the end of the summer of 1972, we sublet our Champaign house for one year and left for Princeton.
    As for me, I still waged a constant struggle in my mind between career and family, as so many women have done and continue to today. I wanted both to have a successful career and to raise a happy family.
    After Michael was born, I had stayed at home raising children without working for a year, but I just could not help feeling bored and frustrated even though I loved Michael and Iris with all my heart. So I had gone back to work, but then felt frustrated for different reasons. The baby-sitter was not as competent as I had hoped, and when I got home millions of house chores were waiting for me. I was physically exhausted. The break I was about to take in 1972 at Princeton would give me a chance to think and reflect and ask myself what was really the most important thing in my life.
    When we moved to Princeton, I got a chance to be a full-time mom again. Maybe due to the beautiful scenery in this attractive small town in New Jersey, things would improve. I was very happy to be back in Princeton.
    Iris was almost five years old; her birthday was coming. I always envied the full-time housewives who could take time to make good meals for the entire family and bake some cookies or a nice cake. I thought I should do something for Iris’s birthday party. I happened to see a picture of a beautiful gingerbread house in one of the home or women’s magazines. This is it, I told myself.
    I told Iris I was going to make a gingerbread house for her fifth birthday and would invite her little friends to come over and enjoy it. Iris was very excited. The day before her birthday, she watched me in the kitchen. She also served as a self-appointed guard to prevent Michael from taking the M&M candies that we were going to use for the decoration of the gingerbread house. Since I was not working, and I was no longer rushed or nagging at them, both Iris and Michael seemed very happy and behaved amiably. There was a peaceful atmosphere in the house, the kind of peace that had not been in our home for a long time.
    We first baked a full sheet of gingerbread and then cut it into the size of the walls and the roof according to the recipe. We used powdered sugar mixed with a little water to serve as glue to put the house together. Also, we baked several gingerbread men hand in hand, and put them standing in front of the house to serve as a fence. Using red-and-white candy canes, chocolate chip cookies, and colorful M & Ms, we decorated the front door, the roof, and the chimney. Finally, a beautiful gingerbread house appeared. Iris was very excited, overwhelmed by the beauty, and suggested that we should not eat it, or at least let it stand there for a while after the party.
    When the party finally came, all the little girls and boys adored the gingerbread house. They surrounded it and pointed to the décor and exclaimed how beautiful it was.