Woman Who Could Not Forget

by Richard Rhodes

  Iris’s school teacher wanted her class to learn different cultures in the world. Iris had the chance, and was proud to “show and tell” the Chinese New Year traditions to her class. Once she brought her Chinese notebook, so she could show her classmates the Chinese characters she wrote neatly, column after column, from top to bottom and from right to left.

  Shau-Jin not only brought back Chinese children’s books from Taiwan; he also brought back a sheet covered with hundreds of silkworm eggs, each egg the size of a sesame seed. Raising silkworms was a common hobby for almost all Chinese kids in China when we were young. Shau-Jin especially cherished this practice and had fond memories of raising silkworms as a boy. He was very happy he had gotten the eggs from a friend in Taiwan, so he could show Iris and Michael how to raise them.

  When the spring finally came in 1977, Shau-Jin saw that the mulberry trees along the Boneyard Creek near the U of I Physics Department were covered with tender leaves. He carefully took the eggs from the refrigerator, where they were stored and hibernating, and put them in the warm kitchen air. Over the course of a couple of weeks, the tiny eggs hatched and the black larvae came out of the shells, and the whole family was busy raising the baby silkworms. Every evening when Shau-Jin came home from work, he would bring a branch of mulberry leaves for the baby worms to eat. Iris and Michael would hover over the box and watch the baby silkworms chew on the leaves. They ate day and night. The old dried-up mulberry leaves from the previous day were replaced by fresh mulberry leaves each evening. We had to clean up the tiny black excrement left behind in the box. The baby silkworms grew very fast and gradually became white caterpillars, with a horn at the end of their backs.

  Iris and Michael were very excited each day to check the worms after school. They also shared their excitement with their friends by inviting them to come to our house to see the silkworms. The worms molted four times and finally reached about two or three inches long, and they consumed more and more mulberry leaves each day. A week after the last molt, the worms became semi-transparent, their bodies full of silk fibers, and started looking for a place to make a cocoon.

  Both Iris and Michael were fascinated watching the worms make their cocoons; the worm’s mouth spit out the thread of silk fibers while its head moved back and forth and left and right. Day and night, it spun the silk thread around itself until its body was enclosed inside and out of our sight. The cocoon was made of a single continuous thread of silk at least a thousand feet long, according to the silkworm experts.

  The first year we got close to fifty cocoons, mostly white. We also got some yellow, gold, and even pink cocoons. Raising silkworms in our family became a tradition that lasted several years.

  One night, Shau-Jin excitedly called us from the family room and asked us to come quickly. Iris, Michael, and I went immediately, and Shau-Jin showed us that several moths were squeezing out of a small opening in a cocoon. Some of the male moths were mating with the females. After mating, the eggs were released from the female moth. Iris and Michael witnessed and learned the complete life cycle of the silkworms. Because of this experience, Iris mentioned silkworms in the poems she would write a few years later. It’s interesting—and perhaps not a complete coincidence—that Iris’s first book’s title, many years later, was Thread of the Silkworm. The Silkworm in this instance was the name of a Chinese missile developed by rocket scientist Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen, the father of the Chinese missile program and the primary subject of the book.

  One day in the spring of 1977, Iris’s third-grade teacher, Mrs. Hemp, sent the parents of her class a note asking the parents to come to the class for a class unit called “American Hero.” Iris was a diligent student, so, a couple of weeks before, she went to the public library to find a book for the unit. Finally, she chose Clara Barton’s The Angel of the Battlefield for her book report. I learned alongside Iris that Clara Barton was a dedicated woman caring for wounded soldiers in the American Civil War and later became the founder of American Red Cross. On the day the parents were invited to the class, I saw that Iris was wearing a white early American colonial hat, apparently provided by her teacher to portray a nurse. The long medieval-looking dress I bought for her to wear with that hat made her really look like a woman from the nineteenth-century Civil War era. Iris told me she had chosen Barton because of “her courage” and because “she cares.”

  In the summer of 1977, Shau-Jin visited Aspen, Colorado for a summer physics conference. We brought Iris and Michael along to hike on the many beautiful trails nearby. At the end of the conference, we drove to Arches National Park in Utah, and to the Grand Canyon and then the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona on our way home. This part of America had the most beautiful landscapes we had ever seen. The magnificent sandstone arches were so grand and impressive that they took our breath away. The color of the red sandstone under the sun was more bright and beautiful than any photos we had ever seen. I felt that Iris, in particular, was the one who was really inspired by these wonders of nature, as she was always curious about the world around her, and here were landscapes beyond people’s wildest dreams.

  It was when Iris was almost ten years old, in the fourth grade, that she began to derive a real joy from writing. Iris not only read books like a bookworm, but she enjoyed writing so much that she compiled her own stories and poems into a self-made “book” and proclaimed that she was the author. Her fourth-grade teacher taught the class to make a so-called “Poetry Book.” Iris showed me with passion what she wrote in her book. On the front of the book, bound by brownish wooden-patterned wallpaper, the title “Poetry Book, by Iris Chang” was displayed. On the first page, there was a Foreword wherein she introduced herself as a fourth-grade student and said she liked to write poems. On every page, she wrote with a pencil in the best neat cursive she could muster. Each poem or story had a title and date.

  On March 21, 1978, titled “I used to . . . A poem,” she wrote:

  I used to have tadpoles,

  But now I have baby frogs, . . .

  I used to write stories,

  But now I write poems. . . .

  The next was her prose on “The Wonderful World of Cat.” Then “A Haiku Poem” and a “Limerick,” which I believe her teacher taught the class how to write.

  There was also a description of “Loneliness,” which she wrote in several short sentences:

  Loneliness is a silent chirp of a cricket across a lake

  Where the leaves on the trees rustle at sunset.

  It smells like a violet patch.

  It sounds like wind blowing through the tall prairie grass.

  . . . .

  Reading her words, I could imagine that she was reflecting on what she saw in her surroundings and in her mind. In the summer of 1978, we had just moved to the big brand-new house at 309 Sherwin Drive in the Yankee Ridge Subdivision, which was more secluded; it was surrounded by woods, prairie grass, and cornfields. From the wide front windows of her second-floor bedroom, Iris could see the beautiful oak and maple trees lining the stream and the acres of cornfield. Indeed, the landscape could inspire feelings of loneliness, especially when we were separated from her accustomed surroundings. At the time, her loneliness was also compounded because a girl in her Chinese class had tried to ostracize her, and despite the fact that she had many other friends, this petty cruelty still hurt her. Fortunately, I completely understood how she felt, and she could pour her misery on me. We had endless talks, which I believed soothed her lonely sensitive feelings and gave her strength.

  It’s interesting to note that all the little things that happened during that time, Iris wrote into her stories and poems. For example, there was a little pond in the Yankee Ridge Subdivision that was not far from our house, hidden in the woods. During the spring it contained swarms of tadpoles. Iris and Michael were fascinated by the tadpoles. We helped them catch a bottle of tadpoles and brought them home. We put them in our fish tank, and the tadpoles eventually became tiny frogs—so small, like the siz
e of a lima bean. The transformation of tadpoles to frogs amazed them.

  Iris loved cats, starting from when she was very little. When we moved into the new house in the Yankee Ridge, there was a tabby that always came to play with Iris and Michael. At first, we did not know why this cat was so friendly to them. We learned later that both of them saved the meat from the dishes I cooked to give to the cat. No wonder the cat just sat outside of our back sliding door and waited patiently in the evening. Iris begged us to adopt the cat and finally I gave in, but with the condition that the cat should live outside, not in the house. She named the cat Cat, short for Catherine, but she later renamed her Tash, although the cat always remained Cat to me.

  In many of the stories and poems that Iris wrote, she mentioned cats. It was Cat who was her best companion after school. She took many pictures of Cat. When she did her homework or read a book, Cat was always beside her, even though I told her that Cat should not be in the house. She managed to smuggle Cat into her room behind my back. She was no longer allergic to cats at age ten; at least not this Cat. One day, when I opened Iris’s bedroom door, I found Cat sleeping on her bed! This cat became one of our family members and lived until 1999, twenty-two or twenty-three years.

  Our interest in reading Iris’s writings had given her a sense of achievement and encouraged her even more onto the path of literary writing. The impact of parents’ attitudes on their children is unbelievably significant, which we sometimes did not realize.

  Iris’s love of writing was even more apparent in a note she wrote in class in 1979: “Writing is one of my favorite pastimes. It improves my English. It makes me think, and I understand more about things. I never think of it as work. I always think of writing as something enjoyable, because it is something that I really like to do.”

  From 1978 to 1979, she wrote many poems and recorded them in several booklets that she made. When Iris was in fifth grade, Yankee Ridge School held their first Young Author writing competition. Since I had read many of Iris’s poems and other writings, I encouraged her to enter the competition. I also volunteered to type her work for her. Iris submitted a collection of her poems and a short story titled “The Mouse Family.” The poems were selected from her writings and titled “Where the Lilies Bloom” (which was the title of one of the poems in the collection).

  Both submissions won the Yankee Ridge School competition. Then her two pieces represented Yankee Ridge School to compete in the Urbana School District. Again, her collection of poems and the short story won and were chosen to participate in the Central Illinois Regional Young Author Conference in Bloomington.

  “The Mouse Family” described a mouse family of seven; Father Mouse, Mother Mouse, and five children mice. The most elaborate part of the story was a newspaper published in Mouseville called The Mouseville Gazette, in which Iris was able, on one page of the “newspaper,” to give readers the news that “Mr. Mouse wins a house-building contest,” “Mouseville Bank robbed,” and, of course, Letters to the Editor and the Dear Anne Gerbil Column.

  In the fall of 1978, when we had just moved to our new house in the Yankee Ridge Subdivision, Iris had developed a strong interest in newspapers. She not only read the local newspaper of Champaign-Urbana, The News-Gazette, but also “published” her own homemade newspaper. She and her good friend Elaine, who shared her fascination, often spent hours after school working on their newspaper. They used the back of Shau-Jin’s discarded physics computer printouts to make a sophisticated “newspaper” layout. The newspaper “The Mouseville Gazette” in Iris’s story “The Mouse Family” must have derived from these homemade newspapers. It’s particularly interesting to see that Iris had such passion for solving others’ problems, which were shown in the Dear Anne Gerbil Column’s question-and-answer section. These must have been inspired by the “Dear Abby” column of The News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana.

  In the spring of 1979, a man came to Iris’s school and talked about his idea to publish a newspaper for children called That Newspaper, and tried to collect writings from the students. Iris immediately submitted her writings to the newspaper. Her two poems and one advertisement, as well as Elaine’s, were accepted and published in the first sample issue of That Newspaper. She got excited, and she and Elaine went so far as to peddle that issue of the newspaper on the University of Illinois campus. Iris and Elaine asked students to buy the issue and support the continuous publication of That Newspaper. Their presence on the campus caught the eye of the reporter Karen Brandon of The Daily Illini, the UI student newspaper. Brandon wrote an article in The Daily Illini on April 19, 1979. She described that “Iris Chang, a fifth-grader at Yankee Ridge Elementary School, ‘hoped’ that the paper will continue to be printed and had further suggestions for it to include comics, more poems, and horoscopes. Chang not only writes for That Newspaper, but also co-writes with a friend a ‘very private newspaper’ she refused to comment on.” In the article, Brandon continued, “Who knows? That Newspaper may be fostering future Erma Bombecks, budding Art Buchwalds, or even prospective publishers of underground newspapers at the grade school level.” Indeed, who could have predicted that eight or nine years later, Iris herself would become a major contributor to The Daily Illini and later a best-selling author? Perhaps it all really did begin with Mr. Mouse!

  On Sunday, April 26, 1980, we drove Iris to Bloomington to participate in the Central Illinois Regional Young Authors Conference. It was a very big and exciting event for Iris. When we arrived, there were many young authors about Iris’s age. The conference gave every representative from each school district a certificate. Iris was one of the representatives from the Urbana School District and went to the stage to accept the certificate congratulating her for her achievement. The conference also invited a best-selling author to give a speech and later to have a book signing. Iris’s eyes were sparkling throughout the conference. From that moment, I think the fact that being an author was glamorous was planted in Iris’s mind.

  When Iris’s poems and story were selected by the Yankee Ridge School for the Young Author competition, one of Iris’s friends told her that her mother did not believe that Iris had written the poems. “Iris’s mom wrote them,” the girl told Iris her mother had said. Iris was upset and told me the story. I laughed and told Iris that she should not be bothered by those comments, but should consider it a compliment. “Alas!” I said, “I wish I could have written them!”

  From 1978 till 1983, Iris made all greeting cards by herself for Christmas, my birthday, Shau-Jin’s birthday, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. She wrote the words and added hand-drawn pictures. I was always moved to tears when I read the words she wrote on her self-made cards, such as these lines in the card she gave me on my birthday in June 1980:

  I hope that this card will make you happy and glad,

  For I mean to tell you that you are the best mommy I ever had! . . .

  Iris was very interested in making greeting cards for any occasion and wished to make a career out of it. She wrote to Hallmark to ask whether they needed a freelance greeting-card writer. To her dismay, the company replied that they had too many already.

  Nineteen seventy-nine was a time of transition for both Iris and me. Iris found her interest in writing, and she was like a flower in bloom. As for me, I was surer of what I wanted in life: to be not only a mother to my children and a wife to my husband, but also a useful researcher in the science I loved.

  On February 27, 1979, I got an unexpected call from my mother in New York. She informed me that she had just discovered a lump in her left breast. I flew to New York immediately. On March 26, my sisters and brothers and I were gathered and accompanied our mother to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital for the biopsy procedure. After several hours, the doctor finally came out and informed us that the biopsy showed that the lump was cancerous, so he had immediately performed the necessary surgery and removed the lump. My mother was sixty-five years old.

  My mother’s illness put my life in perspect
ive. Upon returning home, I continued to ponder the question: what should I do with the short life a person had? I was not happy with my research on SV40 in the Department of Biochemistry. After almost four years in Dr. Hager’s lab, it seemed like I hadn’t gotten anywhere. I became determined to go back to the biochemical research on bacterial membrane lipids, on which my earlier thesis research had been based. At that time, I found a professor, Dr. John Cronan, who came to the Department of Microbiology at UI from Yale University, whose research was on bacterial membrane lipids. In April, I went to see him. To my surprise, he told me that he knew my PhD thesis work with Dr. Eugene P. Kennedy at the Harvard Medical School, whom he admired. He said he had a grant with which to hire me. In September 1979, I joined his lab and started a long research journey with him. Happily, we published a number of very good research papers together, and my time collaborating with him lasted twenty-one years, until I retired in 2000.

  Although we encouraged Iris’s love of books, she almost loved them too much: her eyes became nearsighted and she started wearing glasses when she was in the fifth grade. Her reading speed was very fast, and she was reading all kinds of books. When we drove both our children to the public library every weekend, she would borrow at least ten books at a time. She was a real “bookworm.” This made me think of the silkworms, which consumed mulberry leaves day and night during their growing period. Their only goal at that period was eating. Like silkworms, the books Iris read or consumed over the years were transformed internally and later became her own words in her own writing.