Jacqueline

Our first blog post comes from Ting-Yi Oei, a regular Mosaic Project participant. His beautiful story weaves memories of his Dutch mother, Jacqueline—life and resistance during wartime, cooking, and family relationships.

Ting-Yi’s family, 1948: Mom (Jacqueline), Dad (Bian), older brother (Ting Pau), and Ting-Yi.

She was a beautiful woman. I mean striking - other people would often comment on that, especially seeing photos of her. You don’t tend to see that in your own mother much as you’re growing up. A photo taken on her 40th birthday in Rome captures that. Light brown hair, done up in a very 60s way with her hair high on top, her eyes gazing into the distance. I could easily see what my father saw in her.

Her stories about her life in the Dutch Resistance during the Nazi occupation, her time spent in prison after someone betrayed her, and her love for my father stand out to me. I remember that she mourned my father deeply when he died at age 46 from colon cancer. For years after she would talk about him in ways that made me think, “it’s time to move on.” Once, I even said that and immediately came to regret it, and years later learned just how wrong it is to question someone’s grief in that way.

Cooking: she cooked very traditional Dutch meals for us. Didn’t do Chinese food for two reasons. One she didn’t know how and didn’t particularly care for it, and second, my father wasn’t too keen on it either. Or, I should say, didn’t push it, and from time to time, he would cook and try Chinese, but nobody appreciated it. She became an excellent gourmet cook after my father passed. She moved with my two younger sisters back to Holland a few years after my father died and after I’d graduated from college and gone into the Peace Corps. She took a French cooking class, like Julia Child had done, and became quite the cook!

Back in Holland, she reunited with her own mother - my Oma, my grandmother. Oma and Opa, my grandfather, were divorced when my mother was 13. It led my mother to be very independent. She was very disappointed and angry in her father and mother both. I think she came to understand only much later, in her own adulthood, what it had all been about: her mother’s drinking; that she’d been to a “health spa” twice in Switzerland. But in the end, my grandfather had had enough. She loved her sherry more than she loved him. Not to be able to have either your mother or father fully in your life must have been hard for my mother, but it must also have given her strength. One of the questions I wish I’d asked my mother was, “How did you feel growing up in those teenage years trying to manage home and school?”

About the author: Ting-Yi Oei is a 1st generation American, born of a Chinese father and Dutch mother. His parents came to N.Y. in 1947 with his older brother and two of his father’s teenage sisters. It fell to Ting-Yi’s father to take care of them after his parents both died in World War II.

Ting-Yi is a lifelong educator. He is the Curriculum & Education Director for 1882 Foundation and a curriculum consultant with particular interest in improving the quality teaching of Asian Pacific American history.