A Grandmother Who Lived By The Rules — Her Own 

87-year-old Kay Wang doesn't pull any punches as she tells her granddaughter, Chen, and her son, Cheng, about her childhood. Just weeks after their conversation at StoryCorps, Kay Wang died of cancer. In a separate interview, her son, Cheng, and granddaughter, Chen fondly remember their vibrant and strong-willed grandmother.

StoryCorps is made possible through funding from State Farm, the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and most importantly through the support of participants and listeners like you nationwide.

Welcome to the StoryCorps Podcast. In this episode, we hear from three generations of the Wang family.

Kay Wang was interviewed by her son, Cheng, and her granddaughter, Chen, in New York City. But in a second, you'll hear why getting her to talk about anything was a challenge. The 87-year-old grandmother had a reputation for being strong-willed, something that began when she was a child.

"I wasn't very nice. If I make a mistake, my mother, she made me apologize. In our custom, when you apologize to your mother, you have to bring a cup of tea and say I am sorry. But I purposely dropped a hot cup of tea on my mother's lap. And I wasn't a good student. I always lied to get out of school, because a lot of boyfriends after me. At that time I was still young, I was not bad looking then. So what else, hurry, hurry, I wanna go home. "

"How did you meet grandpa? "

"I was a training nurse in a hospital. He was there for hemorrhoids operation. So when your grandpa see me, your grandpa keep on asking me to get married and I say, " I don't like you. You have a bald head. " I didn't like him, because he's ugly. But one thing about your grandpa, he is very smart. That's it. No more questions? "

Just a couple of more questions.
short one.
short ones.

"Tell we about working at Bloomingdale's, what did you do? "

"You know what I do. Well I am not ganna to tell you. "

"No, You have to talk about it. "

"All right. . . yeah, my detective, hah. I got a very famous designer. I'd better not mention her name. She stole a dress 3000 some dollar, so I walked out of the store, I said, "Would you like to pay me that dress? " She said, " Do you know who I am? " I said, " Yeah, you are a thief! " So, that's my life. "

"Do you have any regrets? "

"No, why should I regret ? No, I think I am all enough to do what I would like. And, that's it. "

That was Kay Wang with her son, Cheng, and granddaughter, Chen, in New York City.

Just before recording this interview, Kay was diagnosed with cancer. And she only lived for a few more weeks after this conversation took place.

Recently, Cheng and Chen recorded a second interview to remember her.

"She was pretty independent. You couldn't tell her what to do, because she always had to do it her way. I mean there are a lot of things we tried to ask her to do, and she wouldn't. "

"Like getting a hearing aid. She just hated the idea of having to use it, and, I mean aside from just losing it all the time. "

"You know there's a line between independent and stubborn, and my mom crossed that a lot. "

"She liked to complain about things, but she didn't really mind. And she took care of grandpa. And she did a lot of that on her own. You knew because she complained about it, but she would do it, even though she complained. "

"Yeah. . . I don't know how willing she would've been to do StoryCorps, if she actually didn't know she had so little time left. It was kind of like one of her last gifts to us. My mother was cremated and the original plan was to put her in the same cremorial as my father (voice lead-in: next to grandpa), but she said, you know, keep me in your place for a while. So, right now, we have the ashes at home, and I talk to my mom every now and then. I tell her "good night" or " I miss you ". something like that. So I'm kind of happy she is with me.

Cheng Wang with his daughter, Chen, remembering Kay Wang.

Major support for StoryCorps is provided by State Farm and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Our podcasts are supported by the Fetzer Institute as part of its campaign for love and forgiveness. Learn more at loveandforgive.org. All StoryCorps interviews are housed at the American Folk Life Center at the Library of Congress. And you can hear StoryCorps on the radio Fridays on NPR's morning edition. For the StoryCorps podcast, I'm Katie Simon. Thanks for listening.