Suzie Sherman
This is And The Next Thing You Know. It’s a podcast about how our lives go exactly not as we planned them. I’m Suzie Sherman. Nancy Au is an author and a writing teacher based in the Bay Area. Her full length book of fiction, Spider Love Song And Other Stories was published in September of 2019. And it’s longlisted for the 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Nancy’s storytelling is full of the kind of intricate detail that gets you right into the characters’ worlds, like Sophie Chu’s elephant costume, made of a duct-taped tube sock for a trunk and, quote, “wobbly grey paper ears stapled to a jogger’s sweatband,” unquote. Nancy maps intergenerational Chinese and Chinese American experience onto precise scenes around kitchen tables in San Francisco’s Richmond district, and in the pear orchards, where Chinese immigrants built the levees that created the fertile Central Valley. Nancy and I got together to talk about our shared experience living with dead parents. One of Nancy’s most formative And The Next Thing You Know stories about her own life is that her father and mother died within five years of each other, marking the beginning and the end of Nancy’s college years. Nancy is so engaging and delightful to talk to, and so thoughtful, and this was such a sweet, tender conversation we had about some of these shared experiences of loss. We also hear Nancy read from her story, How to Become Your Own Odyssey, Or The Land of Indigestion, and we talk about how our intimate losses contribute to the art we make. Quick correction. When Nancy and I begin the conversation, I refer to something she had told me earlier about her grandmother’s experience being on a train, and I said it was during the Cultural Revolution. But that experience of her grandmother’s was actually during the Japanese Occupation of China, which was much earlier, in the 30s and 40s, when Nancy’s grandmother was in her teens, about 15 years old. And then her grandmother later had the experience of fleeing China during the Cultural Revolution when she was in her 30s in the 1950s. So I apologize for that error right off the bat when we start our conversation. So here is my conversation with Nancy Au.

Suzie Sherman
So we were already talking about family trauma in the kitchen.

Nancy Au
Uh huh. Oh, haha!

Suzie Sherman
Is that a good place to start? Haha!

Nancy Au
Haha, yeah, sure.

Suzie Sherman
You were talking about your your grandmother in the midst of the Cultural Revolution on on a train, I think…

Nancy Au
…and and the Japanese occupation of China…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, um hm.

Nancy Au
and yeah, like, how they tell, how she tells stories versus how my my grandpa, my Gung Gung, tells stories. I forgot where exactly where we left off, though.

Suzie Sherman
We were, we don’t have to be exactly where we left off.

Nancy Au
Yeah,

Suzie Sherman
And I’m just, you know, it was a flippant, but also real way to just be like, let’s,

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
let’s just go in deep. Let’s just start…

Nancy Au
Sure. Sure.

Suzie Sherman
…with the deep stuff, but I think

Nancy Au
Sure.

Suzie Sherman
You were kind of talking about how your grandmother has a vibrant, positive way of just engaging in the now and the future.

Nancy Au
Yeah,

Suzie Sherman
Rather than embellishing on the tale of the suffering, in a sense.

Nancy Au
Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think I think in up until the last probably few years of her life or last couple of years of her life, she died when she was 96. And this was a few, just a…pretty, relatively recently, a couple years ago. But she she as she was always really. Yeah, just really positive, bubbly, had a really nerdy sense of humor like me. So we were like, giggle and laugh all the time. And I definitely I thought of her as one of my best friends, because she would tell me a lot of stuff and I would tell her a lot of stuff and, I don’t know, there was like, an openness between the two of us that I never expected would have happened, you know, because of the generational gap. Yeah, I think one of the things I keep feeling very thankful about is I think that because she lost her son, which was my dad, or my grandparents lost, lost their son. And then after five years after that, my mom passed away. And so and they were close with my mom. And it’s interesting because I think…

Suzie Sherman
Your father’s parents.

Nancy Au
My father’s parents, yeah, were close close with my mom. And although my mom and I had a somewhat tumultuous relationship, especially going through high school definitely probably started when I was 14, but all through high school. I think it allowed us to break some of the barriers, so that, some like what we talked about in the in the email a little bit like we were able to have an explosive fights, yell all the things, slam all the doors. Do all that kind of stuff. So that later, after my dad died, even though we were not close-close, in a way that I felt with my grandma, I feel like I was able to break some barriers, so that we could speak to each other as adults. And I could see her as a woman, in addition to being mom, and out separate from me in a way, likeshe’s she was dating after my dad died…

Suzie Sherman
So you could like, there’s a way in which you got it all out

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
you know, when when you were a teenager, and then when…

Nancy Au
Mostly…

Suzie Sherman
…your dad died, you were able to give your mother space to grieve, and move through it in a different way than you did, in a sense.

Nancy Au
Sort of…

Suzie Sherman
No!

Nancy Au
I wish I wish it was I wish it was smoother, when I right after my dad died, it was so tumultuous I had dropped out of school so I could be closer to home. And actually, so I moved home, I ended up going back after a term, but because it was so tumultuous, I think we were both grieving in our own way, and it was just too much it was like, you know, battling each other constantly, or battling our own grief. But then later, later it shifted and changed. But I always, I think I’ve always feel grateful for that. And so when after my mom died, my sense of wanting to connect very closely with my grandparents grew. And one way I thought about it through the years of their life until they passed away, was I thought, okay, Neither of my parents are alive. I’m in my 20s I want to experience caring for and caring, caring for an older grandparent generation. So imagining myself being my parents, and Pau Pau and Gung Gung being my parents.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And so I said, I’m not gonna take this for granted, this is going to be my chance to, in some way imagine them being that age, and living that age, you know? Yeah. And I feel like I got it. I got that. It was tough though, there were times where like, that came with difficult things, like witnessing my Pau Pau fall for the first time. You know, that her losing her mobility in different ways. My grandpa losing his mobility in different ways, because of age, and being close enough where I’m scared for them all the time. So I didn’t have that. When I imagine having of that generational barriers, like having the parent absorb that fear for their older parent, I felt it went straight through because mom and dad aren’t there anymore. So that that part was really difficult, but I was really thankful for it too. I don’t know if that’s, if that makes sense. Like it’s, I got to see my parents grow old through my grandparents, you know, even though they’re not here. So I, yeah, as difficult as things were, I felt really, really grateful that they were here for so long. My grandparents.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Let’s let’s go back just a little way so that the folks listening to us have a sense of what actually happened in terms of the timeline. Right. So you’re, you’re 19

Nancy Au
when my dad died, yeah, died.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. And it was a heart attack.

Nancy Au
It was a heart attack. It was very, very sudden. I feel so terribly for my youngest sister, who was having a sleepover at the time. And so she was there when the ambulances came, but I was…

Suzie Sherman
She and her friends?

Nancy Au
She and her friend, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Um. Um hm.

Nancy Au
And they witness my mom. When the ambulance people were saying, Oh, I’m so sorry. But he hadn’t officially been dec…you know, they brought him to the hospital. They did all the tubes (noise) and all that, sorry.

Suzie Sherman
It’s okay.

Nancy Au
They did all the tubes and stuff and and I remember her telling me the story, or maybe one of my siblings saying like, when they’re saying, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she’s like, “Don’t say that!” because it was like saying that he was he was gone already, when he was still probably being put into the ambulance, you know.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And then that was my first year of college. And then when I was 24, it took me five years to get through college because it was just a tough five years, it was one of the darkest periods of my life. But my, but Matt, who is my husband now was there for me through all of it and he knew both my parents and my grandparents, because I’ve known him since eighth grade. So…

Suzie Sherman
Oh, amazing!

Nancy Au
Haha! So like there, we were, we’ve been able to share that, and knowing it’s, it’s weird, it like it makes me feel grounded to know that there, in some way, is witness to like what happened. And the dark periods even though part of me wishes I could just like forget about it and say like, oh, it never happened. I’m, the witness of have–knowing that he saw, and it really did happen, makes the grief feel real, more grounded validated in some way. I don’t know if…

Suzie Sherman
It wasn’t just your experience…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…singularly.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Your partner was there, with you.

Nancy Au
And he lost them too, in a way, you know, you know, because he, he loved them as well. And then, when I was 24, 2004? Yeah, 2004, then my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And then she, she passed away after relatively pretty brief, brief illness, and I left school again. I was starting nursing, all, doing all the prereqs for nursing, and I remember talking to my, I think was my anatomy and physiology professor. And I was doing it at the, at the Peraltas, the community colleges, you know, like this, Berkeley City College, Merritt.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And I remember, I was not processing the fact that she was really sick, like my brain wouldn’t truly accept it. So I’m like, I’m going to keep going through school. And then he said, you know, school will always be here. Me and this class will always be here. You can come back.

Suzie Sherman
Matt said that? I’m sorry…

Nancy Au
No, the teacher–Oh, sorry. I’m sorry. The professor..

Suzie Sherman
I’m sorry, I missed it.

Nancy Au
Oh, that’s okay. The truck the professor did.

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Nancy Au
And he must have known, maybe he experienced it himself. And so I said, Okay, and I decided to withdraw. And then I came home, and it gave me that time to care for her over those months. And I’m so glad I did, I’m, but there I made a prom–after I did that, I did make a promise to myself, because my whole path was changed. I wanted to be a nurse for a really long time. I love nurses, straightforward, direct, really smart, like, there’s, this and you get your hands dirty, you know, and I respect that so, so, so much. And like that had been my dream for a really long time. And then, I think my mom was witnessing it being very difficult for me. And so she, at the time, I thought she was telling me to, in her words, it was like, promise me that you won’t do nursing. And I said, Why? You know, because I was cleaning up her hair, and her blood, all that kind of stuff. And then, and then, she said, you know, she’s like, I’m worried for you, but at the time, I took it as you don’t believe in me.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
But, no matter…

Suzie Sherman
She was, yeah, she was concerned that it may be too…

Nancy Au
She was worried.

Suzie Sherman
…too intense or too heavy for you or…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
And she, I think she didn’t want me to be surrounded by what she was going, what she herself was going through.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
So I held on to that feeling of like, anger for kind of a while because I said, Okay, I won’t do it. So I dropped out of all the prereqs. Well, I was out of it already, but I decided, Okay, I’m not gonna go back, so what the heck am I gonna do now? So I decided to try to learn how to sew.

Both
Haha!

Nancy Au
Tried to do a sewing program, a design program…realized I’m terrible at sewing, did that for like two years.

Suzie Sherman
How long did it take your mom to die from diagnosis to…

Nancy Au
just months

Suzie Sherman
…when she died

Nancy Au
just months.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm. And you’re 24.

Nancy Au
Yeah, when I was. Yeah. So in a lot of ways, it felt like my college time was bookended by the losses of both parents…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…which made me hate school in some ways. When I went back to school for grad school, like, you know, 10 years later, I was like, this is it. This is my undergrad. I’m gonna do this right. I’m going to enjoy it. I’m not going to take a moment of this for granted. Because I was just surviving, like as an undergrad, I’m like, I just gotta get through day to day, to day, to day. Like I gotta wake up. I gotta go to school, because it was dark. It was like, it was a dark time. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
You said it was surreal. And I imagine…

Nancy Au
Yeah,

Suzie Sherman
…that it was so.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
You’re 19,

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…your father dies suddenly

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
No, no,

Nancy Au
Uh-uh.

Suzie Sherman
…no illness before that. And yeah, you’re getting through day to day just like grappling with that reality.

Nancy Au
Right. Right.

Suzie Sherman
Not having a great relationship with your mom…

Nancy Au
Uh-uh. No. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
…just clawing your way through.

Nancy Au
Haha. Yeah, yeah. Wow. I’m surprised I graduated. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
And you know, when you said “it took me five years to get through undergrad”

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
and I and you know, our listeners don’t benefit from a visual here so but I saw you kind of cringe when you said that, and I’m like, it takes a lot of people five, and more, years to get through undergrad…

Nancy Au
I’m learning that now, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Right? So I hope that you can…

Nancy Au
Hahaha!

Suzie Sherman
…give yourself a little bit of a break…

Nancy Au
I think, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…about that, but…

Nancy Au
I mean, I hope so but I hope I the cringe will. The understanding will come, you know, I think I just felt like I was, yeah, the surreal part. I was there, but I wasn’t there. Like I was at school, but I really wasn’t at school. I was going through the motions. And then I think a part of me wishes that I didn’t because, I feel like I missed out. You know, like when I hear people talk about college stories and stuff, it was not like that. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So, you know, the, one, you know, when we met, and we were talking about both of our parents…

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…being dead, I mean that was just…

Nancy Au
Oh yeah…

Suzie Sherman
…the immediate prompt for me, right…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
for this conversation

Suzie Sherman
which I like I don’t meet a lot of people who are like our age who have lost both parents.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
It’s it’s a it’s a pretty unique thing.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
You also lost your parents sort of on on the net, you were you were orphaned, much younger than me too.

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
So you were, by the time you were 24, both your parents were dead.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
My father died when I was a baby.

Nancy Au
Oh, that’s right.

Suzie Sherman
So I didn’t have much of a consciously understood relationship with him because he was. I was two when he died. Also have a heart attack. And then, and then, I was 38 when my mom died, and also have complications of lung cancer.

Nancy Au
When you shared that, yeah…

Suzie Sherman
So, we had kind of an interesting symmetry there. Very different family constellations and circumstances. But my mom also, you know, was diagnosed way too late for us to do anything appreciable about, about it. So she was, she was diagnosed, you know, we found the spot, you know, a spot on her lung, which was the first indication. You know, in hindsight, in hindsight, there were probably other indications before that, but we found the spot on her lung in April of, yeah, at the very beginning of April of 2010. And she was dead by the middle of May.

Nancy Au
Oh, that’s so fast.

Suzie Sherman
It was six weeks from…

Nancy Au
Oh…

Suzie Sherman
…when we were sure that she had a cancer diagnosis to when she was dead. And yeah, like, you know, but being being 38 and being without parents has been You know, it’s a it’s a, it’s an experience. You know, it’s, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting and somewhat unusual experience, I think, for people to be moving through the world in their 20s, 30s.

Nancy Au
Um hm. Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
And just, I dunno, you, in a certain way you become your own anchor.

Nancy Au
Um hm. Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And we both have family as well in our lives, which is such a blessing…

Nancy Au
Right, right.

Suzie Sherman
…that, it’s not as if, and you have your partner who saw you through all of that. And I’ve had, you know, I definitely had a partner at the time I was with with me when my mom passed on.

Nancy Au
Aw.

Suzie Sherman
And, what do I even, what do I even want to say about this experience? It’s just, it’s, it’s interesting to me to like, know, people who you know, there’s plenty of people in my life who are in their 60s and still have their parents.

Nancy Au
Right, right.

Suzie Sherman
70s, and still have their very old parents.

Nancy Au
Right, right. Absolutely. Whatever. I have aunties and uncles whose whose parents, aunties, uncles and their 60s and 70s, and they’re speaking about, Oh, my, my mom or my dad is going through, we’re going to they’re moving to a facility. Or, or a resid… Like a, what’s it called? Where it’s like…

Suzie Sherman
Like a skilled nursing facility…

Nancy Au
Yeah…

Suzie Sherman
Or like a,

Nancy Au
Or like a retirement community

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, um hm.

Nancy Au
or, and, and they’re going through all the process of that, and every time, I don’t know if this was like, if if it’s like this with you as well. But like, whenever I hear that, there’s this it’s simultaneous. It’s like, there’s an envy I feel. And I also feel so old, because I’m like, I already did this. And I did it with my grandparents, like, my auntie in an uncle in Colorado. And my auntie and uncle that are based in San Francisco, we’re actually not related by blood, the ones in San Francisco, well my uncle is related by blood but not to my grandparents. They’re from my mom’s side…

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
…and like and the auntie and uncle in Colorado are from, are from my dad’s side so their daughter, they did all the tremendous like the logistics all that complicated stuff with like all the financial stuff, all the property, you know all that kind of stuff. But it’s like all the, I feel so old every time I, I’m like, yeah, I get it. Like I already get it and like I feel both grateful and I feel so old at the same time.

Suzie Sherman
What is feeling old in this way?

Nancy Au
Old as…

Suzie Sherman
…feel like, how does it register in your…

Nancy Au
In my mind.

Suzie Sherman
…body and your mind? Yeah. What What does it mean to feel old?

Nancy Au
Like, you know how it’s like a band-aid and so you’re, you’re like, slowly peeling it off. And that’s like life. Slow…because you’re like, Oh, I got because I, you know, like I have a lot of arm hair. So it’s like slowly peeling, and then you’re going through life. But this is like (makes ripping-off band-aid noise) and so I see this like, patch, you know, and I look at it and I’m like, I’ve already, I’ve done it. I’ve done it, and then maybe that I done it. I feel I sound salty because I think I feel envious, like, of, they had time, they had more time. And they got to see their parents like retire. Period. They got to see them maybe do what retired people do, period. Like all that kind of, they got to like, celebrate life. events with them. Period like. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I feel envy.

Nancy Au
Yeah?

Suzie Sherman
…as well…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…about other people having their parents still.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
For sure.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. I think, so, I don’t know if I’ve had a, I don’t know, it’s interesting. I don’t know if I’ve had a sense of feeling old. Exactly.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I do. I do often reflect about how there is a certain blessing in the fact that my mom went quickly.

Nancy Au
Mmm. Oh.

Suzie Sherman
I mean, she’d already suffered quite a bit and was having a lot of pain because that was unexplained until the cancer diagnosis, right?

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So she didn’t, she didn’t really know why she was having so much pain in her bones basically, right.

Nancy Au
Oh, god.

Suzie Sherman
It already metastasized into her bones, you know?

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And so, but so she, she had already had a lot of suffering but, but when she was diagnosed, and then was dead, several weeks later, it was shocking…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
and I regret that we didn’t have more time to sort of soak up the intimacy that you might soak up at end of life…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…in a sense maybe there’s a little bit of a fantasy there that that that didn’t happen but but I do also feel some relief right?

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
That my sisters and I didn’t have to care for her over a long term with a long term illness and which she was suffering and a lot, you know?

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So that’s so that’s something, but, yeah like when when there are people in my life who still still have their parents, and they’re still kind of kicking and and…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…cognitively really there…

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…with us still and it I feel I feel some envy.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I feel sorrow.

Nancy Au
Yep.

Suzie Sherman
I feel like, oh man, like, I have those moments where, like, yeah, I can’t believe that my mom didn’t

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
get to meet Emily,

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
my partner now and…

Nancy Au
Oh…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Yeah. I think, I think when I like with the feeling old, it’s like, closest thing I can equate it to, is when my grandparents would talk about all their friends who had passed away.

Suzie Sherman
Mmm. Um hm.

Nancy Au
And and they become, not used to it but they become, not jaded. But the shock that that someone they knew for decades and decades had passed away. They speak about it, or they spoke about it as like oh so and so passed away, and and I think has more people, this is how I pictured, this how I interpreted their tone and when they talked about it, you realize you can get through it. So like my grandparents…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…going through wars had seen people be killed, or afraid for their own lives. And and when you go when they go through it and then they and then in their old age going through and losing friend after friend after friend after friend, you realize you can survive in a way.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And so it’s kind of a mix. Maybe when I say like, I feel old, I feel old, as in, like I feel like I’m 90. And I’ve lost my parents. If I if I can handle that, I feel like I can handle it in the same way my very elderly grandparents were able to handle the loss of like a best friend that they’ve known since elementary school, and they passed away at age of 90, 95 or something like that, like…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
…that, I think that’s what it feels like, like, ah, I get, it’s weird when death feels familiar. I don’t want it to feel familiar. When I speak to somebody who’s 70, and they just lost their 95 year old parent. And I think, oh, I get it, and I’m like, and at the same time, the other half of my brain’s, like, I don’t want to get it. I don’t want to know what this is like. So then I look at this person who’s you know, 70 or in their 70s, and I’m thinking I feel like if I was looking through their eyeballs at me, I would be exactly 70s. Also like, so. Uhh, you know?

Suzie Sherman
Um hm. Let’s hold this hold this moment.

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
It’s weird when death feels familiar.

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so weird. I can’t Yeah…

Suzie Sherman
I relate to that.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I relate to that.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
There’s, I mean, because my dad died when I was so young…

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…my, my filter for life has always been, it really always has been…

Nancy Au
Oh my gosh.

Suzie Sherman
…infused with that grief.

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
And for me a really amorphous kind of grief that just colors my, my life.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
My sisters had a really different experience with my dad’s death, because they’re older than me and they were teenagers.

Suzie Sherman
Oh, man. Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
When died.

Nancy Au
Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And we all share that grief, but we wear it differently in our lives.

Nancy Au
Right, right, right.

Suzie Sherman
You know, they had more specific and developed relationships with him. I have this, this. Yeah, this shading of grief that I take, that I take with me, it’s a melancholy that I carry with me and this knowledge and this knowledge of death, right?

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
This knowledge of this inevitability that I think people who are young who haven’t had the loss of very close people really don’t carry in the same way.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Yeah. Wow.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Au
That’s fascinating. Imagining that you’re two years old without your dad, and then growing up, knowing…would be okay to ask like, did your mom, later on, like, date or remarry?

Suzie Sherman
Um hm, um hm.

Nancy Au
Yeah?

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. My mom had, let’s see. Am I thinking right about this? Haha. I was thinking about how many last names my mom had.

Both
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
‘Cause, when you know, it’s, it was funny. I remember when my brother-in-law Steve gave the eulogy, at my mom’s memorial. And, or, yeah, I guess I’ll call it a memorial instead of a funeral because she was cremated, and so we were gathering, she had already been cremated. And Steve was giving the eulogy. And he started by saying, you know, Roberta, gave her maid…her her maiden name, her given, you know, her given family name, and then listed her first married name, her second married name and her third married name, and it was just great. It was, you know, it was fun because it really illustrated like the life…

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah!

Suzie Sherman
…of a woman who, you know, she had a really full life. She was a really independent spirited woman who did what she wanted to do in the world. I think she had a lot of regrets about what she didn’t do, and what she didn’t have, and what she got, in a sense cheated out of when my father died, but she she definitely loved. She loved a number of men, I think, probably the man in her life, who was a lover for a long time, who she didn’t marry was probably the one she loved the most…

Nancy Au
(whispers) Oh, cool.

Suzie Sherman
…actually.

Nancy Au
Haha. Did, was he there, at your mom’s memorial?

Suzie Sherman
No, he had also just died.

Nancy Au
Oh…

Suzie Sherman
Before my mom died. Um hm.

Nancy Au
Wow. Wow.

Suzie Sherman
She was, she was only survived by one of her husbands, and he then died shortly after that as well.

Nancy Au
Whoa.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. And he was he was there, yeah.

Nancy Au
Wow. Were you close to any of any of the four, four men, like as growing up, you know, when you when you turn into a teenager, like, like as an adult, you know did you?

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
You know? Yeah, yes and no, yeah, like her second husband Don, I was close to when I was a kid. And you know, I was, I think, seven when they got married. They were only married for six months. But he was in our lives because they remained friends and we lived in his home…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and across the street from him…

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
for many years when I was growing up, so I was close with him.

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
I was close with him, and he was the one who survived my mom just, just barely. How about you?

Nancy Au
Um.

Suzie Sherman
So it sounds like, yeah, I mean, what happened? What happened with your mom’s personal life once your dad…

Nancy Au
Oh…

Suzie Sherman
…died? And this is just another six years that she was…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Five.

Nancy Au
Five, five

Suzie Sherman
…five years that she was around after he died.

Nancy Au
Yeah. I just I love imagining your mom, I feel like, I want to use the word, like she’s like, romantic. I don’t know, just something about living life, and like embracing that emotion, embracing that like, I don’t know. Embracing.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm. Don’t get me wrong, I think she was most passionate about bridge bridge and Mahjong, actually.

Nancy Au
Haha! Oh, she played Mahjong?

Suzie Sherman
Yes the Jewish lady version of Mahjong, right?

Nancy Au
That’s cool! That’s so cool!

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Oh, I love that sound of the tiles (makes tile sorting noise).

Suzie Sherman
Yes! Did you have Mahjong players in your family, I imagine.

Nancy Au
Oh, my gosh, my grandma’s sister. Like hardcore Mahjong, and my, I guess my Pau Pau might have been at a certain point. I have all, I have like three sets of Mahjong. But like I don’t, I don’t play it but I just love I don’t know, I love holding it. I love the feeling, the sound, the click click click…

Suzie Sherman
We’re so similar!

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
I never took to Mahjong, and now…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…my at least one sister plays regularly…

Suzie Sherman
…and my and my, and one of my nieces plays regularly, and now my grand niece sometimes is trying to learn and she’s nine.

Nancy Au
Wow!

Nancy Au
That’s so cool.

Suzie Sherman
So, there’s like a good tradition going with people taking up the mantle of Mahjong of my mom’s, but I never took to it but aesthetically, I love it. I love the sound of it.

Nancy Au
That’s amazing. Yeah, yeah. Oh, there’s something comforting, because you know that there’s these four friends sitting around a table. And for them it was like a card table, like a square one they put in their hallway, because that was like the space where they could put a square table. And the sense of like, knowing when you hear that sound, it’s like four friends together. You know, and although they’re competing against each other, it can go for like, I’ve heard, go for days!

Suzie Sherman
Haha!

Nancy Au
Days!

Suzie Sherman
The same game?

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Oh, my gosh.

Nancy Au
So competative, haha!

Suzie Sherman
Everyone hanging on to victory.

Nancy Au
Haha, “You leave it here!” Haha! Yeah, my mom, my mom definitely dated after, but it took a while, after after dad died. What I, what I loved seeing, and I didn’t know I would feel this way. I thought when she started dating that I would either feel like, how could she, how could she do that to Dad, you know, like his memory, or like something like that, but I realized she bloss…she blossomed, like she started making start dancing like ballroom dancing.

Suzie Sherman
Mmm.

Nancy Au
And she started making her own friends. Because they had a lot of shared friends that are like, there our aunties and uncles, you know, like…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
…they’re, maybe not by blood, but we’ve known them since, they’ve known us since we were babies, you know?

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And then after my dad died, she started having, in addition to the lifelong friends, making her own friends, and then when she started dating, and there was one who, they were very serious, and then he actually I think he moved, he moved in. And he was with her up until when she passed away. But I think I remember I, for her birthday one year, I got her and, and and her, the serious boyfriend, a train ticket, like a wine train. Have you, do you watch Bob’s Burgers? Yes. Oh, my god, remember wine train? the, where they were on the train, and the kids get the, want to get to the chocolate fountain?

Suzie Sherman
Yes.

Nancy Au
So it’s like one of those I think. And I bought it when I was like, well, I still don’t know about wine. But like I bought it before like I ever probably even like drank wine or whatever. And I bought it because I wanted them to do something romantic together. And I remember she came up to me and she was like, and this is still, our relationship was always like, it was, it, there was a richness to it later. But there were always, like, there wass a disconnect. We just weren’t meeting the way that it could be smooth. I don’t know. But she came up to me, and she was like, thank you for this. And she wasn’t thanking me for the, the wine train. She was thanking me for giving her something that included him.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And as a couple kind of thing. And I remember the relief in her voice like that sense of like, I don’t know. That made me happy.

Suzie Sherman
She felt seen by you in that way…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…that you could accept that she had another person in her life that wasn’t your dad.

Nancy Au
Yeah, I hope, I mean, I hope so. I hop,e I hope so. I don’t think we, I mean, we Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
What are you sitting with right now?

Nancy Au
I keep thinking like we were, we were on, on our own train. And we were growing up together. And I keep thinking, what if she was here now? Maybe we would be like, maybe that disconnect that I had always felt in my 20s with her and through teenage years, maybe it would finally have like, clicked, in a way. I don’t know.

Suzie Sherman
Maybe it wouldn’t have.

Nancy Au
Maybe I wouldn’t have.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
It’s, there’s some deep-rooted stuff like, yeah, so it’s true. I like to think that I would have because I feel like I’ve grown up a lot. But kind of, kind of not. Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Do your, you, how many siblings do you have?

Nancy Au
Three.

Suzie Sherman
All sisters? Is that right? No.

Nancy Au
One brother.

Suzie Sherman
Okay.

Nancy Au
Yeah, he’s older. He’s older by a year and a half. And there’s me, and then two younger sisters, all spaced approximately two years apart.

Suzie Sherman
Do they, did they have less conflict, conflicting relationships with your mom?

Nancy Au
As f..I would say so, I would say I was, I was a difficult teen. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I just wonder…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…just in the sense of…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…like when, when you, when you, when you hold your mom’s memory…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and have some longing for her to be here to, and some questions about whether you would have bonded more…

Nancy Au
Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…had a smoother relationship. I wonder if there are memories that your siblings share that feel more sort of harmonious about your mom that you that you might feel a little bit jealous of?

Nancy Au
Oh! Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Or a little bit, or or kind of helped to make up that fantasy for, for yourself about, maybe, maybe you would have had a closer relationship as you grew.

Nancy Au
Yeah. I think, I think because, my belief is this: I, I feel that my mom carried a lot of trauma from her own young adulthood with her, with her parents that she carried into her adulthood, and mother, motherhood and, and those are scars I think she carried always.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
And I think because my personality type is can be like, very sensitive haha, very sensitive, or very, like, we would grate. Like, it’s, you know what I mean? Like, um. So there were times definitely as a teenager where I think it was felt that when I wasn’t there things were smoother at home.

Suzie Sherman
Mmm.

Nancy Au
And one question I was asked a lot as a teenager was Why are you always so angry? Haha. And I honestly didn’t have an answer then. And I don’t know if I have an answer now, but I do remember a feeling of constantly needing to protect myself. Wanting to be as small as possible, but you know how it’s like where you squeeze in so small. Squeeze in so small, and then you can make sparks, and then it becomes

Suzie Sherman
A powder keg. Um hm.

Nancy Au
Yeah. And as a teenager with hormones and all that kind of stuff, and then just unspoken things, you know, but my brother, he’s, since he’s the oldest and he’s, he’s the boy, too. I think he also had some difficulties with my parents, with our parents. And so, one of the things I feel like we’ve connected on I mean, like, you know, with siblings, like the brother, and then the closest sibling sister to the brother, it could be like, “Oh, I have to drive her home from school?” Like, “I have to, you know, like, what? Come on!” or like, or the younger sibling “I have to wear the hand me downs?” You know, like that…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…that kind of stuff. But then like, grown up version, then high school version of that too, and then, but I feel like one of the things that we connected with is, because we were older, I think we did see a lot of the scars and the trauma, both within my mom But also the kind of volatile relationship between mom and dad together as well, because we’re older, because he would have been 20 to 21 when dad died, so he was, you know, and then 26, I guess when my mom died.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
So he was, you know, he was done with school. You know, he so he, I’m sure felt that burden, that weight of being like the oldest.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah,

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I answered the question.

Suzie Sherman
No, that’s okay.

Nancy Au
Do you have siblings as well?

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So they’re. Yeah. So, my, I have two sisters. They’re in their early 60s now. And I’m in my late 40s now. Yeah. And so they were my sister Cyndi was I think 16 when my dad died, my sister Jodi was 15 when my dad died, and you know, yeah, yeah, it it all registers differently, because we all have such unique relationships with…

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
our father

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and mother, our whole family, our grandparents, you know.

Nancy Au
It’s true.

Suzie Sherman
No, it was sort of just a speculative question anyway.

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
You know, what’s, what’s the stuff made of, the fantasy, You know, the fantasy…

Nancy Au
Oh…

Suzie Sherman
…of how you may have gotten along with your mom or, or not…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…you know?

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
My mom and I always had kind of a respectfully like, a respectfully close relationship…

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…in a sense,

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…like, not super…I wouldn’t say distant and I wouldn’t say super intimate either.

Nancy Au
Um hm. Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
Somewhere in between.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
She was really independent.

Nancy Au
That’s cool.

Suzie Sherman
She worked a lot.

Nancy Au
Wow.

Suzie Sherman
She went off and played bridge and Mahjong a lot and I watched a lot of TV, I mean, it, you know, that’s kind of when I, when I think of my childhood, there’s a lot of a lot of time that I was amusing myself and doing my own thing while my mom did her own thing.

Nancy Au
Wow.

Suzie Sherman
We we watched a couple of TV shows together. Mostly we liked different genre of TV. She was more into procedural dramas like Hill Street Blues, and you know, I don’t know CSI and stuff like that.

Nancy Au
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Murder, She Wrote. She really liked Murder, She Wrote.

Nancy Au
I love Murder, She Wrote!

Suzie Sherman
Yes! Haha!

Nancy Au
Oh my god, I go to Mendocino just to sing the song, to walk by that house.

Both
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Oh, there there’s a house in Mendocino that was supposed to be the house in Cabot Cover, or whatever? That’s awesome. I didn’t realize it was local.

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
But, but, and I liked sitcoms mostly. But the two shows that my mom weirdly that my mom and I watched together were MASH and Dynasty. Haha!

Nancy Au
Oh my God. I was just talking to someone about Dynasty. That means you got to stay up really late, because MASH always came on at like midnight, right?

Suzie Sherman
(Still laughing) Oh, no no no, when it was in first run.

Nancy Au
Oh, okay.

Suzie Sherman
So it was in primetime.

Nancy Au
Wow.

Suzie Sherman
In the early 80s, you know,

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Early to mid mid 80s. No, it ended in ’82, I think.

Nancy Au
Haha, two ends of the spectrum, MASH and Dynasty! That’s awesome!

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, she wasn’t into like, you know, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy.

Nancy Au
Oh yeah!

Suzie Sherman
She wasn’t into this. That was my stuff.

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
So let me, let’s let’s talk about the impact of this in our consciousness, right, because we’ve been talking a little bit about just sort of, you know, how it came to be that we both have sets of dead parents, right? 20 years for you and 30 years for me now, and you know, you’re a writer.

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
And when we last left, left off your career trajectory, you ditched nursing school…

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…first to care for your mom…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and then out of some respect for your mother saying that she didn’t want you to be a nurse.

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
So, even though you really wanted to be a nurse, and so you did some, you did some self-denial there by just acquiescing to what your mom wanted, it sounded like…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and then, you know, striking upon textiles, I think…

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
…was your next move.

Nancy Au
Haha, I was so bad at it, oh my god!

Suzie Sherman
But, were you…

Both
Haha!

Nancy Au
I couldn’t sew a straight line. I don’t know what I was thinking, oh, oh man. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
But, but you, but you are, and have become a writer…

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…a professional writer…

Nancy Au
Oh my gosh, haha!

Suzie Sherman
…a published writer. Your, your book of short stories Spider Love Song And Other Stories just was published this last year. We’re finally now in 2020.

Nancy Au
Wow! That’s so crazy.

Suzie Sherman
So it was published in 2019.

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
And, but I’m curious, were you, were your writer all along? Were you a journaler? How did you, how did writing start?

Nancy Au
I would say like in terms of journaling, especially through middle school and high school, those journals I don’t ever want to look at again, because those journals were from the perspective of someone there’s just no, not much self love there. And when I did look through it again, as an adult, it just made me so sad. So wri…hand, writing by hand, for a long time I associated with pain, with hurt, I don’t know, like with dis, mistrust or distrust, you know, of the world, of people. And but, oh, it’s so weird. Yeah. So I didn’t actually start writing until a couple years before I did my MFA programs. I graduated in 2017. I started in 2012. So about 2010 is when I just start writing, and it was because my husband had gotten a teaching position out of grad school. And we moved for a year. I’ve been a Bay Area kid like my whole life born and raised San Francisco and then Marin. And then East Bay for now, it’s been like from Berkeley and Oakland and Emeryville like 20 years or something, you know, or something like that. So it’s the first time I moved out of the Bay Area, out of home, for one year, and we moved to Turlock…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
Do you know where that is? And the day we moved, it was 115 degrees.

Suzie Sherman
Oh, my word.

Nancy Au
Haha! I had never had air conditioning before in my life. And it was just like, the association of the heat, being in a completely new place. Everything looks different, smells different, tastes different. sounds different. It’s there. You know? I went through this pretty dark first six months, like I didn’t know who I was, like I said, I wear, I feel like I weat the Bay Area as part of who I am, like…

Suzie Sherman
For sure, um hm.

Nancy Au
I wear the fog, you know, that’s, that’s most of my layers. And then I wear like, the crisp October days, that’s in my Birkenstocks pretty much…

Suzie Sherman
Haha, um hm.

Nancy Au
…you know, and I…

Suzie Sherman
Fog shows up a lot in your stories.

Nancy Au
Oh my god, Richmond District!

Suzie Sherman
The Richmond District shows up, um hm

Nancy Au
Outer Richmond. Yeah. And so I started writing probably about six months into that year living out there, because and that was started as a blog. Is that what you call it? Like you, making your own little website. And then like you write, like, here’s what I did, you know, and I’m trying to, here’s what I’ve seen, and this is all brand new.

Suzie Sherman
Was it on a blog service like…

Nancy Au
Um, no.

Suzie Sherman
Blogger or Blogspot

Nancy Au
No.

Suzie Sherman
or Diaryland

Nancy Au
Uh-uh.

Suzie Sherman
or Live Journal or anything like that? No.

Nancy Au
Uh-um, I don’t think I knew about it.

Suzie Sherman
You made a website from scratch!

Nancy Au
Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And you posted written…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…entries, just about…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
What was going on in your life?

Nancy Au
Yeah,

Suzie Sherman
Or your observations. Um hm.

Nancy Au
Actually, the website started when I was still sewing, so 2008.

Suzie Sherman
Okay.

Nancy Au
And I was still, like, trying to put my, like take pictures of my stuff. It was terrible, oh my god, haha!

Suzie Sherman
We have to make bad art in order to make good art.

Nancy Au
Oh my god, it was some bad art! And so that’s actually where the original website came, but I when I started writing 2010, I just used that website. That’s why I’m always “peas carrots” because I’ve been peas carrots since 2008. But I started posting it and then I would send the link to my family, like back here, aunties, uncles I’d say “Hey guys, I wrote something about what I’m what I’m going through,” and, and then it started converting into like stories. And, and then I just realized like, I just like, writing, I like this process of like, just write, and getting stuff out. And so then, after that year we moved back to the Bay Area. We actually lived in West Marin for a few years. And being a Marin, I connected with my first writing teacher mentor, Peg Alford Pursell, who runs Why There Are Words in Sausalito and she also had a private writing workshop group. And I met her though. I was like, I want to write, what do I do? How do I how do I do this? So I signed up for a flash fiction course at College of Marin. She was teaching that. And then after that class, I started doing her private workshops. And I wrote for about two years, and then I applied to grad school and then wrote for those five years. And then the book came out of it, all the stories from two years with Peg and five years at SF State.

Suzie Sherman
Mmm, um hm.

Nancy Au
And all the stories were generated for that, except for the big one. Except for the title story.

Suzie Sherman
So, do your parents show up in your writing?

Nancy Au
Oh, um…

Suzie Sherman
I know, you write fiction, or at least this collection…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…of stories is a collection of fiction.

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
We talked about that. But energetically, do your parents show up?

Nancy Au
Ooh, I love that. I’ve, that’s like the perfect way. That’s I love that. I’ve always said that, like my characters, the way I describe it is like, each character is an amalgamation of like many people, within my life. So like 10 people, or even just two people could be one character in a story, but I would say the spirit and the energy of my grandma, for sure. She is, she was feisty and hilarious. And she would stand up for things, and she would haggle for like good prices on Clement Street, and just that, that bright energy is there. I think with my, the stories that, that deal I think with more pain, I think a lot about my mom. I think just because growing up, I kept trying to understand why, where her anger came from…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…because she showed her anger, and why. Yeah, so a lot of the pain was channeling my mom. Sense of like, the world not working the way you want it to, is through my mom I think, as well.

Suzie Sherman
So,

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…like sourced from your relationship with her or, or…

Nancy Au
Hm. Maybe with…

Suzie Sherman
…a point, a point of view that she had about the world?

Nancy Au
I think I think definitely a big part of it was what I interpreted, how she saw the world and how she experienced it. A lot was taken from her as a, as a young adult, an adult by her, her parents who were more conservative Chinese. And seeing the aftermath of that, feeling like we were witnessing the aftermath of so much taken from her sense of witnessing sense of resentment, sense of fighting for empowerment or agency or voice. You know, she, her upbringing, she grew up at a time where with her parents who did not really believe she should go to school, Iike college and…

Suzie Sherman
By, by dint of being a girl?

Nancy Au
A girl.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
But yet, her brothers could…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…and were supported.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And she was expected to be the caretaker, to be what they needed her to be. So her, I feel like her whole adult life was forging her sense of identity, like force, forging herself her sense of independence, in a way, you know, and then she had four kids, haha. Each almost two years, just two years apart. And so, I can’t even imagine what that would have been like. Because her identity now is shared with us, you know, with her babies, and her kids and stuff.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
Yeah, definitely the longing, I think a sense of longing. A sense of fighting for agency, is I think, through my witness of her. You know? Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Is it, is it like you’re carrying her, her project for agency and independence? Like…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…you’re taking it a little further than…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…she could? Or trying to?

Nancy Au
Me, maybe in my own way, like, like, I feel like she, she did in so many cool, tangible, unique ways by, by raising us by all the things like where she made her own friends and where she learned to dance, like ballroom dance, and just everything like caring for her home ,and building her career, she, she did admin at a couple different different companies, but she used her organizational skills, so I feel like that was one of her major cool tools was her organiz–organizational skills, and for me, it became my art my writing.

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
And so, I think she would, oh. I think she would feel so happy that this book came out of our life together. I think this would make her very happy. And may–yeah. (Nancy pauses through some tears.)

Suzie Sherman
You’re feeling some…

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Sorry!

Suzie Sherman
No, don’t apologize. You’re feeling some…

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…connection to her missing her. Yeah.

Nancy Au
My dad too. I think he. (Pauses.) Sorry. I feel like my dad, one of the things that I’m learning just now, like 2019 feels like the year, where I want to embrace the good things that come. I think the feeling like the shoe’s gonna, other shoe will drop, came from the shock of, of Dad, and then Mom, knowing that everything can be taken away.

Suzie Sherman
Yes.

Nancy Au
And so, with things like the book, when I’m able to realize, Oh my god, stories are alive!

Suzie Sherman
Um hm!

Nancy Au
And they’re out in the world! I feel like that comes from, from him because he was fun fun loving. Yeah, fun loving he was a total hippie his whole entire life. I have memories of holding massive (Whispers: I don’t know if this should be in there but) massive bags of weed…

Both
Haha!

Nancy Au
…sitting on a beanbag, when I’m like, while he’s like “Hey, hold, hold onto this.”

Suzie Sherman
It’s legal now, so.

Nancy Au
Okay cool, haha. You know, and in, and like when, you know, smoking, like, he would smoke a joint or whatever, but we were never allowed to be in the vicinity. You know, but, you know. But I feel like he hi–what his contribution to this is like, celebrate the stories, and celebrate being out there in the world. You know? Because I wonder if I had listened just to Nancy Teenage Self, Nancy, 14 Year Old, would all this still just be in the dark? You know, would I just want to be a witness and not make something of what I’m witnessing? So I feel like that’s what my dad would would love about this. And I hope, I hope, and I’d like to imagine, my mom would feel, I hope she would feel, like, wow, you know, maybe she would recognize parts of herself in here, and feel like, you know, “I’m seen!” There’s one story, I don’t know if, it’s, it’s called “Little Harlot,” and it started as a flash fiction piece. And then in the revision for the collection, it turned into a longer short story and one of the lines or one of the, one of the lines is like, the main, one of the main character says, Everyone told me that, you know, I should drop out of school and, and raise my kid, and that, you know, and that, something about, like, loving themselves. And she’s like, but I was already doing that for myself. And I feel like, I don’t know, I kind of feel like that’s the strength my mom showed, even if she didn’t, maybe didn’t believe that she was doing that already. Like, she showed her tenacity and her strength to everything that she, she’s like, any problem you have hand it to her. “I’ll take care of it.” And her motto in life was like, if I could do it, I’ll do it if I can’t, I won’t do it.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm!

Nancy Au
Which, I like that. Because it’s like, you it’s a choice to like not do, to not do something, you know?

Suzie Sherman
Mm.

Nancy Au
I wonder how long, like when it hit her, like to be able to think that. I don’t know. Wait, so your mom…

Suzie Sherman
To be able

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
to be able to, to kind of engage in her capability of getting it done.

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah, was it out of necessity, because there are four kids and like, you got to do all the stuff for four kids. You know?

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
What were you gonna ask?

Nancy Au
Oh! With…I love I still love thinking about your mom’s spirit, like thinking about her independence as well. And do you feel like that also shaped you and impacted you, growing up in terms of like witnessing like, she’s totally independent. She’s gonna do what her heart tells her to do.

Suzie Sherman
I’ve become like my mom in so many ways.

Nancy Au
Ah! Haha! The moment! Haha!

Suzie Sherman
So many ways. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. My mom, I always remember my mom to be like an entrepreneur…

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Cool.

Suzie Sherman
…and really like, she had like a number of businesses…

Nancy Au
(Whispers) That’s so cool!

Suzie Sherman
…over the time that I was growing up, and, and, you know, and watching her do her life. She was, a, she managed a cafe in an office building, she co-owned an ice cream store with one of her friends. She started, she cleaned other people’s homes and then started her own home home care business. She became a real estate agent. But it’s funny because all of these, all of these projects returned very little in terms of financial security. She, you know, one of her biggest projects which threw her into bankruptcy was she became the owner of a crepe restaurant in downtown San Jose.

Nancy Au
No way!

Suzie Sherman
And I cooked for her there while I was in college, before I moved to Santa Cruz to continue school. And, so she was really like, she really, I’m so similar, like I start projects, and then abandon them. I start projects, and then can’t finance them. Like, we’ll see if this podcast lasts…

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
…you know, through the year. I don’t know. So there, I see a lot of myself in that way. Like I feel like there’s a way almost that I’m, I don’t even believe in karma.

Nancy Au
Hehe.

Suzie Sherman
But I feel karmically tied to some of my mom’s, both her spirit of independence and wanting to create something for herself. I feel that for myself, and I also feel bound to her limitations in a certain way as well. I often think about like, well, what are the questions that I would have for my mom, if she was still around? And I…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I think I would probably want to engage her about this question, too…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…of like, how do you balance ambition with resources?

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And not just financial…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…or logistical resources…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…but emotional resources.

Nancy Au
Oh yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right.

Suzie Sherman
Right? To do the thing. How does that even work? When you have a vision but you can’t bring it…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…to fruition?

Nancy Au
Yeah. It feels like just just learning about this and hearing about it, it feels, it makes me think of like, I’m so terrified of failure that I won’t even try.

Nancy Au
Mm hmm.

Nancy Au
And I feel like I’ve read, I’ve read articles and I witnessed this. And in Matt and I’m learning this about you to have like, willing to try something and my sister as well the swimmer witnessing the (??), I’m sorry, willing to try something, not knowing what the outcome will be. But knowing will be any outcome. It could be so many different things.

Suzie Sherman
You know, you don’t credit yourself with being able to do this, but you have done this too.

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
You have. I have a published book in my hand…

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
…right now. Where you were willing to put a lot of time and sweat into, years of sweat, into creating these stories, and seeing them published, and then putting them out into the world where they take on a life…

Nancy Au
Oh my gosh…

Suzie Sherman
…of their own that people, you know, interpret them…

Suzie Sherman
…and integrate them in the way that they do.

Nancy Au
Right.

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
You have no control over the outcome…

Nancy Au
No.

Suzie Sherman
…of how people read your work, or understand your work or enjoy it or don’t enjoy your work, but you’ve put it out there.

Nancy Au
Haha! Man.

Suzie Sherman
You’ve done that.

Nancy Au
Oh, man. definitely got a lot of rejection. I built up that that muscle for sure.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Oh my god. Oh, it makes me think of like, when I’m when I’m teaching. That’s one of the things, like when it’s when students are like, what, what is the value of workshop, like, what is the value of workshop being, or just having other people read your work peers, other artists, other writers, and it’s like, because you don’t have control over what happens once it’s released into the wild, and you get the perspective, it gives you a chance to have fresh eyeballs on it. So you can see like, that’s how it’s being interpreted? And if you’re in a workshop with like 10 or 12 people, you’ll get 10 or 12 totally different interpretations, but it helps you hone in on like how you want to, like, elevate a particular interpretation. Yeah…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm, um hm.

Nancy Au
Maybe all the rejection helped me with that. Haha. You know? Yeah, no, there’s no control over what, what happens.

Suzie Sherman
Is it scarier putting a story out there and thinking of no one reading it, versus someone reading it and not liking it.

Nancy Au
Oh, man, oh!

Both
Haha!

Nancy Au
Oh, I when this, even even for the book, I was like, okay, maybe, maybe no one will read it. And so it’ll be okay.

Suzie Sherman
That’s a little bit of a relief in a sense?

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
It’s like that internal, that voice in your head, that’s just like, just terrified of like, well how people will interpret it, and like what the, what the impact will be, but I reall… yeah, I love that question, because, like, I think it’s okay. I think I’d be okay with someone not liking…No, actually, I don’t even, god, 50/50. I think the years of workshop, I have like, it’s gotten like lizard, thick skin…

Nancy Au
…like alligator, rhino, you know, like, it’s just like, so them not liking it, I feel like I can just, in my head I think, okay, we just have a totally different aesthetic, a different perspective, on you know, on the form. And then the not reading it, there’s a part of me that’s relieved like Shoo! You know, like, okay, okay. I just, see, I made this thing and I put it out there, and it’s still mine and, and then you know, it’s okay.

Suzie Sherman
Right. Like the experience, the experience could be contained to: I’ve put time into this work.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I made this work.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
This work is its own whole piece.

Nancy Au
Right. Right.

Suzie Sherman
Regardless of whether people read it.

Nancy Au
Exact–Oh, this makes me think of in Leslie Jamison’s, The Empathy Exams, she writes about how oftentimes speaking about trauma can be so difficult for many, many, many, many different reasons. But what I took away, you know, from her essay, this one aspect, was that sometimes trauma is held inside, like our stories are held inside, because once you share it with the world, there’s maybe this little fear in your mind, it doesn’t belong to you anymore.

Suzie Sherman
Mm.

Nancy Au
You know, because we construct these narratives in our mind about all the people related to our trauma, related to things, and then, once you tell maybe your doctor you know, or best friend, like, do you own it anymore? Because it once it’s out of your mouth, once it’s out of your mouth, then it’s like, you know, it’s out there. So this, it feels that way. I think the written story feels similar in that way.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
It’s like, when it was just mine, it was mine. And then I don’t know. But I do love the idea that if someone was feeling the same pain, or longing that I witnessed in my mom, or the same feisty anger that I witnessed in my grandma, that if they could, if they recognize something, maybe of themselves in there, or someone they lost, then, I love knowing being a part of that too.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
You know?

Suzie Sherman
Nancy, can we read a couple of passages from one of your stories?

Nancy Au
Sure, sure!

Suzie Sherman
So, um, tell us a little bit about the setting that we’re in, in Edmund Wong’s family.

Nancy Au
Oh, sure.

Suzie Sherman
And this is from your story, this is from your story “How To Become Your Own Odyssey, or The Land of Indigestion.”

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
So just in your words, I mean, I could introduce the story as well. But I’m curious, like if you think about Edmund Wong’s family what’s going on…

Nancy Au
Oh…

Suzie Sherman
…right now, right now when we enter the story?

Nancy Au
Like the relationship between the, Edmund Wong, his father sleep walks and sleep eats. And Edmund is like, I think he’s like 12?

Suzie Sherman
He’s nine.

Nancy Au
Nine.

Suzie Sherman
At the…(??)

Nancy Au
My first draft, he was 12. Haha!

Suzie Sherman
Oh, interesting. Cool.

Nancy Au
First draft, haha!

Suzie Sherman
So, in the, yeah, in the current time in the story, he’s nine.

Nancy Au
He’s nine. And so he, his mother, reminds me a lot of my mom in different aspects, just in terms of her industriousness, in terms of her practicality, and the way that she views the world, and the fa–I don’t know anyone who sleep eats or sleep walks, I just thought it was fascinating. I think I had read like someone sleep, you can sleep eat? That’s so cra–that’s so cool. And so he walks downstairs, and then he sees his dad, and he had apparently been sleep eating and sleep walking.

Suzie Sherman
The encounter, at the beginning of the story…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…he encounters his dad sleeping, eyes open on the floor, um, one of his sleeves bathed in sesame oil on the floor.

Both
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
And the just the detritus of his of his midnight somnambulent meal…

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…all around him.

Nancy Au
Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
So the, actually the passage that I’m, that I’d love for you to read…

Suzie Sherman
…is, it’s page 49, the bottom, and this is Edmund trying to emulate his father. He really he’s really curious to hear about his father’s dream adventures…

Nancy Au
Sure…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and he wants to know every detail of his father’s sleepwalks and why he walks…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and where he walks and what he sees. And his father is an elaborate storyteller; he is, he seems to be most vivid and present in his dream world, and not in his world with Edmund and his mother, and, and and Edmund’s mom is pregnant during the story as well with a future sibling of Edmund. So, Edmund decides to emulate his father and to see what this is like to, in a in a half-waking state, go downstairs and make himself a banquet.

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
Can you read that when…

Nancy Au
Sure.

Suzie Sherman
…it starts? It starts “That night, as soon as Edmund’s parents went to bed.”

Nancy Au
And it’s, and I think Mr. Wong is also, he’s so resistant. He’s like, you could not possibly understand. I can’t teach you how to sleep walk and Edmund needs to know because it’s so fascinating and perplexing. Yeah, okay.

Nancy Au
(Reading from her book) “That night, as soon as Edmund’s parents went to bed, he snuck down to the kitchen. Unlike in the morning when the room glowed with his mother’s light, the space was inky black. Edmund’s footsteps were muffled by his thick socks and the hum of the refrigerator. The floor felt sticky. Edmund approached the pantry, pulled out boxes of waffle mix, week old brownies, a bag of sesame seeds, molasses, a jar of canola oil, a can of garbanzo beans, a bag of flour. He hunted through the fridge and grabbed celery, spinach dip, an enormous bunch of bok choy, milk. In his hushed hunger, he crunched into the celery and bok choy with his fangs. He inhaled handfuls of seeds, which he washed down with milk and garbanzo juice. He peeled the plastic lid off the tub of dip, spread the creamy paste on slices of bread, sprinkled beans on top, then stuffed it all into his mouth. He waded into the bag of flour like a dusty moth, grabbed fistfuls to mix with canola oil and dark brown molasses. He shoveled the mud down his throat.”

Both
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
I love the amazing mixture of ingredients…

Nancy Au
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
…that you decided to populate this, this banquet, with.

Nancy Au
It feels like every cupboard, you know, where it’s like, all the half finished things of everything, and all the random things. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Would you skip down, just to sort of the immediate aftermath of what this made Edmund feel like? And, before this, in the story, Edmund had reflected, at one point whe–that he had placed a mouse on top of an anthill…

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Oh, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and watched over the next several days, as the ants tore the mouse, or was it a rat? A rat or a mouse?

Nancy Au
It was a mouse.

Suzie Sherman
…tore the mouse apart, and consumed the mouse down, to down to its bones.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And so, what’s happening for Edmund in the immediate aftermath of this, this sort of forced somnambulant feast? He’s not actually sleepwalking. He’s trying to go through the motions of what his father does, right?

Nancy Au
Exactly.

Suzie Sherman
Can you just read from “His stomach pinched?”

Nancy Au
Mm. (Reading from her book) “His stomach pinched again, and he wished right then that he could die, that his parents would find him, carry his body down to the anthill. He wished for the small mound to turn into a great peak, for the ants the size of salamanders to peel his body apart, and march away with his meat, his arms and hips and thighs, devour him all the way down, clear to the bone. Edmund left his mess, crept back to his bed without washing up. He rubbed his stomach, and, as he fell asleep, thought about how he was no longer just his father’s fragile shadow, just residue biology. Edmund wanted to tell his father to not be scared of the new baby, to look at how he (Edmund) had become his own odyssey, journeyed to the land of indigestion without maps or charts. And the ground was vibrating just for him.

Suzie Sherman
Haha, thank you.

Nancy Au
Sure.

Suzie Sherman
One of the things that really resonated with me about this story was that reality that Edmund, as a boy, coming into his own sense of self, trying to figure out who he is and what his place is. He has a baby sibling on the way, he has a father who he, who he admires so much and wants to be like so much, but he’s starting to realize that his father really isn’t present for him and his mom.

Nancy Au
Mm. Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
He’s really starting to realize, I think, Edmund’s father is slipping off the pedestal at this time…

Nancy Au
Um hm, um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…in his life, and Edmund’s realizing that there, there’s a disillusionment and understanding that his father’s fantastical stories…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…of his dream life are just, are just that…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…fantastical stories, and, and don’t reflect a reality of really wanting to be present in his life and in his mom’s life.

Nancy Au
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I love how you describe that. It’s like the he was, he was, he was trying to follow in his his dad’s footsteps. Trying. It’s like, it’s like he’s at the age where you’re not quite sure maybe why the adults in your life are doing the things that they’re doing. But you go through the same motions just to see what will happen. It’s, were you–did you ever do this thing where like, like margarita mix that has no alcohol in it? But, like maybe you saw your parents, like, make a cocktail or something out of it a margarita? And they’re like, oh, like New Year’s, and they got like, you know, tipsy, or whatever. So you get the margarita mix. Oh, it’s like in Bob’s Burgers.

Suzie Sherman
Haha!

Nancy Au
They get the margarita mix, and they drink the margarita mix, but it has no alcohol in it. But they’re like, Oh, no, you know…

Suzie Sherman
Acting drunk.

Nancy Au
Yeah, totally.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
And, and it’s like, it’s like putting on your parent’s shoes, your whole foot fits in their shoe with your shoes still on. Or you know, you wear their jackets and those shoulder pads are out to here. Yeah, I think for this for this piece, there’s one of the amalgamations that made up the father, Mr. Wong, was definitely shaped by how I pictured what it was like to, with my grandparents starting to go through dementia, with my grandpa, my gung gung. And how like the glamorous memories like the memories of their past, of his past, are places where he wanted to be at times he was there, but he was not there.

Suzie Sherman
Mm. Edmund’s father in the story…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…is, is, lives between worlds.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And not really fully in either one of them. Right?

Nancy Au
Right. Yeah. Which I think definitely, with the dementia with my grandpa. It was my way of holding, trying to understand what it’s like to be in two places, I guess. Whoa. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I think the story touched me so much because there’s, oh, wow. Okay, so there’s like a portent in the story of Edmund’s father not being there anymore.

Nancy Au
Yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
It doesn’t happen in the story,

Suzie Sherman
right.

Suzie Sherman
I don’t know what the exegesis of the story is…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…like what might happen next…

Nancy Au
Right, right.

Suzie Sherman
…in the story, right? But the story culminates in an earthquake, where Edmund and his mother embrace each other and flee the house during a big earthquake, to find Edmund’s father is already out…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…and he’s sitting on a bench in the garden, and asleep, with his eyes open, and just kind of snoring, half snoring and breathing. And there’s a realization that Edmund makes that he really just is, he saved himself…

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…of the house. He’s already sleptwalked out of the house…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…without saving the family.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
He’s already gone.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And again, I think for me, as someone who’s lived without my father.

Nancy Au
Mm.

Suzie Sherman
There was something, there was something that touched me about that, about the story being sort of a foretelling of what might come which is that Edmund becomes a caretaker for his mom…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Edmund gets the batteries for the flashlight…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…Edmund, um and, and his mother acknowledges that he’s becoming a capable young man.

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
You know? It reminds me of, this is a, this is a very personal little anecdote. But this is this is what was evoked for me when I read…

Nancy Au
Mm.

Suzie Sherman
…that scene, about sort of this portent of Edmund’s father already been gone, right? There’s a photograph, a family photograph that I, that I have, that I know well, because I’ve viewed it hundreds of times, probably. It was a picture of me. I’m a baby and I’m in a stroller. And we have the family dog, Corners…

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
…next to me and the photo, a little terrier mutt, next to me in the photo. And next to me and my stroller there is a chair. The chair says “Jack Sherman,” which was my dad’s name.

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
It was his chair, it was like a director’s style chair. He wasn’t a film director, but it was like, you know, like that…

Nancy Au
Cool.

Suzie Sherman
…cloth-back, back chair…

Nancy Au
Awesome.

Suzie Sherman
…and it said his name. But he’s, he’s taking the photo. So my dad is not in the photo. He’s taking the photo.

Nancy Au
Whoa.

Suzie Sherman
There is a chair, an empty chair with his name on it in photo, and I, baby Suzie, is reaching for him. He’s taking a photo of me, I’m reaching for him.

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
And he’s absent from the photo, but very much a felt presence in the photo, even though he’s not in the photo.

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
It reminds me…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…that, that story reminds me of that feeling, right…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…of like, my dad is here, but he’s not here.

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
And soon he won’t be here at all. You know?

Nancy Au
Right, right. That is so beautiful. Truly, truly. Oh. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
There’s one person’s reaction to one of your stories.

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
This is what we do with stories, right? We integrate them in ourselves.

Nancy Au
Wow. No, I love that. I love that. I love the idea that it’s a chair as well. I think oftentimes like about how people how this when someone passes away, and the idea of that, that feeling that they’re there, but not there. The energy, the spirit and sometimes I feel like that’s where you would be comfortable. A spirit would be sitting there to ,to watch, to witness, you know how, how everyone’s doing. And I feel like they would want to, want to be comfortable, and sit in a director’s chair, and watch their family and their dogs and their, you know?

Suzie Sherman
Haha, exactly, in a director’s chair, yeah, um hm!

Nancy Au
Yeah, totally.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm. Do you have a felt experience of your parents and your grandparents, being in the spirit world, being with you being present with you, however you kind of do, I don’t know if you do metaphysical or not.

Nancy Au
Haha.

Suzie Sherman
But do you have a sense of their, of their presence in that, in that way?

Nancy Au
I think at different times. I do. I mean, I believe in sitting ghosts. You know, you’re laying in bed and all the sudden you can’t move anything.

Suzie Sherman
Mm.

Nancy Au
But you’re awake, and you can barely breathe. The ghost is sitting on you.

Suzie Sherman
Mm! Um hm.

Nancy Au
There’s this big part of me that’s afraid that if ghosts really exist, and if their ghost does exist, they’ve seen all the bad things that I have done, haha. But it’s weird. There are certain spirits, I think are still here. And I can’t explain why. Like, it’s almost like, they’ve always been here, forever. My husband’s grandparents, for instance, they passed away, like years ago, several years ago. But in my mind, they’re still here, I was I was very close with them as well, with my grandparents. It’s strange, I think because my grandparents, one was 90, and one was 96. The sense of, of where they needed to go, and their journey, I feel like they’ve gone, they’re going and they’ve gone where they need to go.

Suzie Sherman
Mm.

Nancy Au
And I think with my parents, 52 and 57, I don’t know if they’re on a journey that they want to be on, or if, you know?

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
And so I feel like I can’t, I can’t even place them. I can’t physically place them. I could place my Pau Pau with her sister playing Mahjong. Like that, there’s…

Suzie Sherman
In the other world.

Nancy Au
I could see this journey. Oh yeah, they’re traveling…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, um hm.

Nancy Au
…and they’re, you know, they’re they’re eating all the best foods, you know? But with my parents, like I can’t quite see something that tangible, because they were so young, you know? And…

Suzie Sherman
Like there’s a sense, maybe, that in the spirit, they may be lost in the spirit realm, or they might, they might, they might be here expecting to have more life…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Connect–connected to their human-ness right?

Suzie Sherman
Connected to their live selves.

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Man.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve ever…I think my mom’s life was satisfied…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…in a certain way, right, like she was 73 when she died, still probably a full decade…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…before I wanted…

Suzie Sherman
…her to die, or expected her to die. But, but I do actually think she was ready. She knew that it was time, she knew that she didn’t want to do any extraordinary measures to keep herself alive. She didn’t want to do chemo. She just, she knew that it was, it was, it was time. You know? My dad I, you know, he was 43 when he died.

Nancy Au
Oh, so young.

Suzie Sherman
And, um, and, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really thought about that, that question of did he feel unsatisfied, that that was the end?

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
Was he not finished…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…with what he wanted to do?

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
It’s hard to imagine that he could have conceptualized that his life was going to end.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
He did have known…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…he did have known heart disease, and he had had a valve, a heart valve, replaced about a year, or a year and a half before he died. So there was I think, I think he had some notion of the existential threat to his life. You know…

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
I don’t know how he integrated it, or whether he made peace with it or not, I really don’t know. But I’ve never quite, I’ve always felt his presence, not really in a metaphysical sense…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…but just in a sense of like, the, the way, his presence has just been always very close to me and my life, right, but not really in a spirit sense…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…necessarily. I don’t know if I’ve really contemplated it in quite that way.

Nancy Au
Yeah. Yeah. I’m so curious. Your the memories of your father that might have been shaped by your two older sisters and your mom…

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh.

Nancy Au
…and the stories they tell. Do you feel, do you feel like he’s sort of like, he’s a patchwork of the three closest people that knew him before, you know?

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, and family friends too.

Nancy Au
And, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
For sure, because I do have people in my life like that, that you described, that are not like blood aunties and uncles, but I have people like that, too.

Nancy Au
But they’re aunties and uncles, but they’re like, they’re not, but they are.

Suzie Sherman
Um hum. Yeah, I always love hearing stories about him, yeah.

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
Other people’s memories are fundamentally the only quote-unquote, “memories” that I have of him.

Nancy Au
Right…right.

Suzie Sherman
I actually don’t have any conscious memories of him.

Nancy Au
Right, right, right.

Suzie Sherman
My mom told me that I had a conscious memory of him at least until about age three that I held, because there were things that reminded me of, of Daddy…

Suzie Sherman
…that I would point to, and stuff like that, but, but I don’t have any lingering conscious memory…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…of him myself. So my memory of him is a shared familial and and, and, and family friend memory of him.

Nancy Au
Right.

Nancy Au
Wow. I love that. Have you seen The Farewell?

Nancy Au
No.

Nancy Au
It’s, um, all all Asian cast, I think it just came out.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
It’s on I think you can watch it on Netflix right now. Spons! Hashtag spons!

Both
Haha!

Suzie Sherman
If only I, if only I could dip into the Netflix money.

Nancy Au
Haha, but it’s it’s it’s really there’s this one line in there that that talks about how, how the family extended blood and not, you know, all of our family friends, like can carry that, share that, they use the word “burden” because it dealt with illness, the movie dealt with illness, but maybe in a sense, it’s like sharing the memory of someone that’s that’s loss, and in a way that is sharing a burden of loss too…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm!

Nancy Au
…and I love that idea of thinking like maybe with the familial love, and the fam–friend love that, that happens over people’s lifetimes, that like it feels like a thing. I don’t know, that we do. You know, like we, by sharing the memory I feel like whenever whenever aunties and uncles share memory, I always feel the sense of relief that they’re not forgotten. And maybe it has to do with me thinking like when I die, I hope people will remember, like my nieces and nephews you know, will they remember me or if I die before my siblings, will they tell stories to their, you know…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…to their kids and stuff, and, but I feel like the memories help validate their life, validate that they lived, you know? Oh, I think that’s the same, it’s a very similar feeling to having shared the loss with…Matt, as well, since he knew both parents and grandparents, him being there as witness. So validating in so many ways. Oh, did…

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. It’s

Nancy Au
Oh, go ahead.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. It’s a way of grounding, yeah, grounding the memory and honoring…

Nancy Au
Um hm.

Suzie Sherman
…your person, your people who have passed, right…

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…of sharing experiences with…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…with them…

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…having first hand knowledge…

Nancy Au
Totally…

Suzie Sherman
…of them.

Nancy Au
Wow. You’re making me think of so many things.

Suzie Sherman
Haha. Yeah, how do you hold yourself, you know, as someone who’s had these deep very close deaths in your life?

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Who has it made you?

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
How is it–what’s it given you?

Nancy Au
Man, I love how you know your perspective helps to reframe so much of like how I oftentimes look at either myself or the world, or, or what ,what I bring to the world. I when you were speaking, one of the words or the words that I was sketching were: art equals, or loss and empathy equals art, equals artist. And then equal shape, form intangible, and so I think definitely empathy, for one, because scars so deep, I feel like, we’ll feel them in different ways forever. They’ll have their own topography, you know…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…in our, in our selves. I feel really grateful that I’m able to create something, the tangible, out of those feelings. I wonder what artist, what type of artist I would be had I not experiences the loss. I was so desperate to hang on to my Mom after Dad died. That, that longing, in combination with her longing, I think it, I think it created this art form, for one, for writing. And I keep saying my grandma was my, one of my best friends. And I wonder if that would have happened, you know…

Suzie Sherman
Mm.

Nancy Au
…because I think the loss helped me to understand her and to be closer with her. Wow. Something about loss, when things get ripped apart, you hang on to other things, and you start to see the things that you want to keep as part of your life.

Suzie Sherman
Mm.

Nancy Au
You start to hold that tighter, and build those bonds and keep, you know, weaving together all the things you can to strengthen it, because you want it there, around you with you, you know, and, yeah, I don’t think, I think I don’t take things for granted. Half because of losing my parents, I realized how things can be taken away.

Suzie Sherman
There’s, yeah, there’s one aspect of that is a like a defensive strategy, right?

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Like a clinging to the people who are there…

Nancy Au
Right…right.

Suzie Sherman
…and the things that we want to imbue energy into, and and and part of it is an appreciation…

Suzie Sherman
…and, and a, yeah, a not taking for granted, like a recognition that we do need to be present with with our people, right?

Nancy Au
Right.

Nancy Au
(Whispers) You’re a genius.

Suzie Sherman
No.

Nancy Au
That’s…I love that.

Suzie Sherman
No, I’m just thinking about the way that you illustrated this sense of weaving a network together that is, that is holding you and supporting you…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…out of, out of desperation and need for that support…

Nancy Au
Right, right.

Suzie Sherman
…but also out of a recognition, and a gratefulness that those people are there, right?

Nancy Au
Oh, absolutely. When the fear part was was definitely closer rooted to the moment of loss, but the growing part, once the death, like the cling–that clinging feeling, it definitely shifts to something different, and I was able tr–transfer that when I went to school again, like when I went back to school and was doing my art, I want to be connected to other artists. I want to learn to be connected with my peers, and like to uplift at the same time! Having the feeling of hanging on shifting to a sense of being, feeling agency, so I can lift others, as well. You know what I mean? (Whispers) I don’t know if that’s useful. Haha.

Suzie Sherman
Um hm! Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. I definitely feel like I’m still working on that…

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
…piece, right?

Nancy Au
Oh, heck, heck yeah!

Suzie Sherman
…that piece, which is like…

Nancy Au
Same.

Suzie Sherman
…the clinging on for my own survival.

Nancy Au
Right, right.

Suzie Sherman
That can translate, then, to a gratefulness of what I have and then that can translate to..

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…an ability to be more present

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
for people in my life. That’s, that’s a struggle. I mean…

Suzie Sherman
I do think that in some ways, in some ways, I think my modus operandi has always been, you know, sort of a young developmental set, which is like, survival and making sure that my close people are close, and a little bit more of a greedy mode than a than a than a mode of, of generosity.

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Nancy Au
Mm.

Suzie Sherman
I think I want to, I think I’m working on that.

Nancy Au
(Whispers) Oh, I’m so…

Suzie Sherman
You know? Yeah.

Nancy Au
Same.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. Yeah,

Nancy Au
Haha, same, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Like, I need to keep resources for myself, rather than…

Nancy Au
Right.

Suzie Sherman
…sharing.

Nancy Au
Right. Right. Right.

Suzie Sherman
…in a certain way.

Nancy Au
Oh, I feel ya.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah, it’s definite–

Nancy Au
Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
…definitely a tender spot for me.

Nancy Au
Yeah. Completely. No, I feel the same, haha! I feel the same. I feel, I feel the same way. No, yeah, totally.

Suzie Sherman
We said something about your book and your work and your, you know, your art earlier. That sense of like, on one level, this book that you’ve written can be this complete work, in and of itself, you know, satisfying, in that you did it. And then on another level, it’s an act of generosity, where you’ve given it to all of us.

Nancy Au
Aw.

Suzie Sherman
Right?

Nancy Au
Thank you. I feel so thankful that it’s out there. I really, thank you so much for that. I feel, it feels like a gift to me to know that others are touching the work, in a way, like the work is engaging and other, with other people in their lives, in a certain way. And it feels like a gift, because I feel like I have a voice, which is definitely something, which is definitely what motivates me to write every single moment that I write is, I feel like I have a voice. As you can tell, I get nervous and like when I talk, I lose my words all the time. But when I write, how, I can create the words, I can reshape them, I can rework them, I can figure out what I need to say, and how I need to say it. And then I can hold it, and it feels like a gift to me. Thinking about the generosity of of you, and anyone who’s held my work, or held space for any artists to share their work. I feel it’s a gift. As an artist, it feels like a gift to me that everyone has been so generous with holding Spider Love Song. It feels so similar to when family members and family friends share memories of, of my parents or my grandparents. That sense of, that receiving a gift. That’s what it feels like, because they’re giving you the gift of their memory. And it’s, it’s, it’s I don’t know, I just feel so thankful that there’s space in the world for these stories, for my stories and my voice in the same way it feels, I feel so thankful when when loved ones share stories about the loved ones who have gone, you know? Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I love that.

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
By putting your work into the world, your words, into the world you’re igniting, you know, these, like, yeah, you’re, you know, you’re lighting up thousands of thousands of fires around, you know, like generative fires inside the people who read your work. What a cool…

Nancy Au
Oh.

Suzie Sherman
…what a cool thing to do. Thank you for doing it.

Nancy Au
Thank you.

Suzie Sherman
Yeah. Yeah.

Nancy Au
Thank you.

Suzie Sherman
Do you have, do you have another book in you right now, gestating, being formed?

Nancy Au
Haha. There’s, I’m definitely collecting stories for a second collection. And this one, I think will be more flash focused. And then, I’m also working on a novel, and, which is so out of my wheelhouse. I cheer so loudly when I get over like 12 pages. I could throw a parade, it was like, Oh my god, I did it! Actually over four pages. The first time I did that, I was like, Oh! But I’m working on a novel, and it’s centered in the Central Valley in the San Joaquin Delta. And they’re…

Suzie Sherman
Somewhere near Turlock?

Nancy Au
Uh huh!

Suzie Sherman
Right.

Nancy Au
Uh huh. And it’s, it’s it deals with the, I’ve been learning about, and doing research about the Chinese communities, deep history in the San Joaquin Delta area, and about the Chinese men and women who built the levees…

Suzie Sherman
Um hm.

Nancy Au
…which hold, hold the water that created this agricultural, you know, land. Yeah. So I’m working on that. And I love it. And I think that’s actually what’s fueling writing is because I’m learning a new form. And it’s really difficult and fascinating. And I feel like I’m, it helped me. It’s, ah! It’s like when I first start writing stories, I feel that same energy back. Just trying a whole new form…

Suzie Sherman
Uh huh, a long form, you mean?

Nancy Au
yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Like a long fiction form, um hm.

Nancy Au
Yeah, but it’s still like, I’m like, it’s so hard. Getting over it. Like, everything feels like oh, that’d be great as a flash piece, maybe just leave it as a flash. No! We’re going to try this as a novel. We’re going to keep pushing, but I love it. You sit with characters longer. You get to know their history, you get to not run away from the character, if it’s like…

Suzie Sherman
Mm!

Nancy Au
…freaking you out. I dig deeper into, both their histories, but also their emotional, like relationships with other characters, which in flash, it can be pretty tough to, to build those webs, you know. And I love that part. I love getting to know these fictional characters in ways I don’t think I’ve been able to in the short short form. Yeah.

Suzie Sherman
I’m really looking forward to reading it.

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
No pressure.

Nancy Au
No pressure, haha!

Suzie Sherman
I hope thatm yeah, I just wish you a lot of enjoyment and richness in the process of creating…

Nancy Au
Oh!

Suzie Sherman
…this world that you’re writing about!

Nancy Au
Thank you. Thank you. And you as well with your incredible podcast! Yalk about fires everywhere, reaching worlds everywhere. Heck, yeah.

Suzie Sherman
Thanks for listening to my conversation with Nancy Au. Isn’t she incredibly lovely? Please go and buy a copy of Spider Love Song and Other Stories. It’s just such a beautiful, vivid, lovingly rendered collection of writing. It’s available by the publisher Acre Books, and the link is in the show notes, or buy it at your local indepent book seller, and if they don’t have it, ask them to order it for you. Nancy’s website is peascarrots.com.

Suzie Sherman
We are And The Next Thing You Know. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or in your podcast app of choice. You can also listen right on the website for the show, which is nextthingpodcast.com. And that’s where you’ll find complete transcripts of the show as well. We’re a small show on a small budget. So if you dig it, please tell your friends about it on your social media with the hashtag #nextthingpod. You can also rate or review us at iTunes, or become a patron of the show at patreon.com/next thingpod. Join the conversation at nextthingpod on Facebook, and find me at soozenextthing that’s s o o z e nextthing on Instagram and Twitter. If you have a #nextthingpod story, and I know you do, send it to us. Tell me about the weird coincidence that led you to meet your life partner. Or tell me about the career path switcheroo that you didn’t see coming. Tell me something that you’re not proud of that you did, and how that experience changed you. We learn from these experiences, we’re enriched by them, and the community of people is out there, waiting to hear your story. If you’d like to share your story, record a short voice memo on your phone and send it to nextthingpod@gmail.com. We might feature it on a future episode. You can also just email me there to say hi, and tell me your thoughts about the show. The banana peel is by Max Ronnersjö, music is by Jon Schwartz. Thanks everybody. We’ll talk soon, unless I’m passed out on the kitchen floor, my face stuffed with a paste of waffle mix and molasses.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai; edited by me.