The Tightrope of My Life

When you have an Asian mother, your life is meticulously and constantly judged, and for me at least, I seemed to fluctuate between being an utter disappointment or making her immensely proud. It's a weird ability, to be able to walk on the tightrope of motherly approval, and despite my balance throwing me off completely, catapulting me into self doubt, elevating my insecurities, and making me feel small and worthless, I keep going back, a true masochist, always seeking my mom's approval.

And yet, now, as an adult looking back, if I had to attribute my confidence and self worth to one person, it would be my mom.  My mom, the one who always reminded me I was a diamond in the rough, and that I was beautiful on the inside and out, even in the midst of reminding me to watch my weight, to take my skincare seriously, and to dress a certain way, as if appearance was the only thing that mattered.  My mom, the one who always told me I am smart enough, I am good enough, I can try harder, I can do better, and who pushed me into after school programs, extracurriculars, and always pushed me to give back and be kind, but who was also the one who told me my crafts looked cheap and ugly, my clothes were unflattering, my make-up was ill done, and my home cooked meal was just okay.  Never enough. And yet, when anything big happened, anything traumatic like a car accident or a boy dumping me, my mom was the first person to support me, to lift me up, to tell me it would get better, and to be on my side.  She never undermined my huge emotions and was always there to support me.  And that's what I remind myself now when I feel criticized because she's telling me I'm not feeding my kids well enough, not making enough homemade soups or preparing fresh cut fruit for them, or teaching them Chinese at home.  I know she's just pushing me to be better, but I have to get off the phone and take a break, even if for a moment.

As a mother now, my son often yells back at me, "you just want me to be perfect!  There's no such thing as perfect!"  I politely disagree with him, and then go on to explain that I want him to try to be better, but that doesn't mean he has to be perfect.  And in that moment, I realize maybe I am becoming more like my mom than I ever envisioned.  I began to understand that her hope for me to be better was guised under the premise of an overly critical Asian mother.  Because love from my own mother was never expressed in the form of direct praise until I had a specific accomplishment measured by an accolade or title, I never understood the love she did have for me because it got lost in translation.

The other day at my children's swim class, I heard another mother praise her young daughter, telling her, "you did so great!  I am SO SO proud of you!" And I scoffed quietly from the side, wondering what her daughter actually did to make her proud.  And in that moment, I realized, I am becoming my mom.  But maybe that isn't so bad.  Maybe it's okay for my kids to want to work hard and do well because of themselves, and not because I'm on the side cheering them on every single moment of their entire life.  I plan to be there to hug them and be physically able to communicate my love to them unlike my own mom, but I also plan to mirror my own mom by pushing them to continue to work hard despite failure again and again. 

Maybe part of growing up is realizing the bad you once thought tormented you about your own mother wasn't really so bad, and then you start to think about the qualities you definitely want to embody in your own motherhood journey, even if those are similar to your own mother who you once swore you'd never be like.  It turns out it's the same, in a different way. 

Obligatory Grocery Store Trips

A good Asian daughter goes to the grocery store with her mother a lot.  And is happy about it.  Helpful even.  I know, because I was that good Asian daughter.  I was never taught what any of the stuff was we were buying, I can recognize it all now by smell or touch, packaging if it hasn't changed yet (which most asian stuff hasn't, even after all these years), but beyond that, I'm as clueless as a white person.  I was merely a shadow of a presence there in case my mother ran into anyone she knew, in which case I'd transform into a trophy of honor, an indication that my mother had done something right.  Also, I was a helpful hands there to shuttle the groceries from cart to home, including all the movements in between.

I remember my mother telling me about the other dishonorable and rebellious children who refused to go on grocery trips with their moms.  We'd hear about them from the other moms we ran into at the store who were without child.  She never said it outloud, only offered simple condolences of empathy, but I knew the truth.  It was shameful.  I was evidence that my mother had done something right.  Like when a child says thank you without being prompted, my mere presence in the grocery store was exactly that.  My willingness to accompany my dear mother to the store.  To promptly request double bagging (because it was the late 90s after all, and we didn't seem to care about our environment as much, just our ease of moving big bulky grocery bags). I never minded it.  Any of it.  I rather enjoyed my moment in the sun whenever we ran into someone we knew.  I was actually a little bit disappointed when we didn't run into anyone.  My good deed had gone unnoticed, and I wanted the confirmation that I was indeed a good Asian daughter.  As I grew older, I started to ask questions.  My thirst for knowledge of my own culture and traditions went unanswered.  She seemed annoyed I was asking all these questions.  Why didn't I know?  Like when I asked for a recipe and she's just respond with, "some of this, some of that," giving no precise measurement.  I think my mom grew increasingly more annoyed, and stopped asking me to accompany her to the store.  She rather preferred my younger brother six years younger, more innocent, big eyed and silently representing her status as a good mother once more.

When I went off to college and returned to visit on the weekends, the first thing my mom would ask me was to go to the grocery store with her again, as if she forgot of my constant badgering about this or that.  Now she welcomed it.  And now, as an adult, when I call her to ask about certain ingredients, I've never witnessed such patience, even follow up calls to make sure I purchased the right thing.  I think she recognizes that her culture is slowly slipping away from her grandchildren, and that the bridge is her own daughter, so she better help out or forget about any preservation of her posterity's culture.  As an adult now, I often wonder how much value she got just from spending time with me in the grocery.  Sure it's easier to go alone, but with your daughter stuck there, it's an opportunity to talk, to spend time together, to just be.  And maybe I didn't annoy her as much as I believed, maybe that was just my interpretation of it, because of a bad day or a long day.  Maybe I was an annoying teenager.  Maybe I was rolling my eyes too much, or checking my pager too often.  I often wonder how the reel plays in her memory versus mine.

History has a funny way of rewriting itself though.  As I take my kids to the grocery store with me, I see how quickly I am happy when they are well behaved, as if I've just been rewarded mother of the year, and then one tantrum, one misstep, and I feel like an ultimate failure of a mother who is snarky and annoyed.  And yet, I keep going back with them, because I have to, and because I can.  Is that how it was for my own mom too?   

What Mom Says, Daughter Do

The first time I was pregnant, I carefully abided by the rules laid out by my mother.  I avoided scissors.  Stuff that was too cold.  Hammering nails into the wall.  Moving furniture.  All superstitions that she gravely informed me of, of the consequential dread and doom that would become of me if I didn't listen.  On the outside, I laughed about it with my more American half husband.  But on the inside, I carefully avoided scissors, put the nails away, let the furniture sit until my husband came home, and meticulously planned what I ate.  

The Chinese daughter tries hard to escape the constant reminders of a concerned and persistent Chinese mother.  I think back to when I was younger, a sophomore in high school when I had hurt my ankle after spraining it while leaping into the air to grab the phone, but landed over a contraption that moved my mom's ankles and was supposed to help her lose weight.  I'm not sure if I was more mad at the idiotic Chinese contraptions my mom purchased because all the Asian ladies were doing it, and swore it made a difference, because if you can't exercise, a machine that moves you is just like exercising, or if I was more mad at myself for leaping into the air with excitement that I hadn't yet used all three of my daily phone call allotment and was about to go pick up the phone and talk to a friend.  

But when the pain came back in college as I was ballroom dancing in heels, my mom did what any asian mom would do.  She took me to the Asian doctor, not because she didn't trust the white Western doctors, but because the Asian doctor would have a quicker and more natural remedy.  And I'm not even sure we had an American doctor after we stopped getting shots and going to the American pediatrician, who was surely dead by the time I was in high school.  Dr. Green was quite old when we went to him, and shortly after, we switched to an Asian doctor, who glossed over my lack of period and said whatever would make my mother happy.  I wonder why I have a weird relationship with doctors and why I still do not have a regular doctor for myself.... I digress.

The doctor we went to for my ankle used wet cabbage and weird oils and stinky aromatic herbs and I smelled once more, like an Asian science food project.  I wondered when I could take the cabbage off of my foot which didn't seem to be improving.  It didn't help that my skepticism at the doctor's abilities were reduced by my then Asian college boyfriend who quickly told me he had also done the same to his injuries in high school when his Mom took him to an Asian doctor.  "It's weird, but it works," he had told me.  If it worked, it wasn't permanent.  The pain came back.  The swelling came back.  But I smiled and agreed, like a good Chinese daughter and girlfriend would, that it was definitely improving, wondering if I could one day be an actress with these manipulative good lying and smiling skills I was inadvertently gaining.  

Memories of earlier visits to the Asian doctor who would remedy my random periods which came four times a year flooded into my mind.  The bitter aroma of medicine I would swallow down immediately, every day, with fresh hopes of seeing blood once a month in my underwear as a result of the disgusting medicine, but make me normal like all the other girls struggling with pads and wings and tampons, festered in my mind.  My mom eventually gave up and let me have random periods or no periods throughout my high school life, simultaneously treating me to every single acne face wash and medicine over the counter, and starting me on the extraction part of monthly facials beginning at 16.  I would not receive the spa portion, aka the actual relaxing portion of the facial until I was 18, but by then, I had secretly gone to the college medical doctor and obtained a prescription for birth control, which would not only rectify my lack of periods, but help regulate my hormones, which shockingly, were the reason for my acne.  Mother would never know of these things.  She would swear my monthly facials were the cure, and continue to pay for me to get a monthly facial until I was married and with my first child.  I would gladly oblige and figure out this way the way to a successful relationship with my Asian mother.  

To this day, she believes that birth control is the reason all my friends are struggling to get pregnant, not because they are trying in their mid to late 30s.  I do wonder if she ever wondered what that patchy thing on my skin was, if she thought I was smoking, or if she knew birth control had evolved into a sticker. She never saw me with pills, so she must not have realized it. Though if memory serves itself right, I remember a flicker of her finding some pills she thought were birth control but was actually gum, and in that instant, I knew I would alway stick with the non pill forms of birth control forever, if not to escape the ridicule and scrutiny and judgment of my Asian mother.