Two Good Things About My Mother

One good thing about my mother is her strong work ethic. She doesn’t mind working every day (work keeps her from talking to people). She is fifty-five and, nowadays, she gets up at 5:30 am and starts work at around 7 am. She comes home at around 6 pm (this often varies). She has been working at the same factory for more than three decades. From the little that I have ever heard (because my mother doesn’t communicate verbally nor in writing; she has even said that I should ‘guess’ what she does and I have never known how to do that because I have never gotten any hints as to what she does), she sits in her own corner and puts together electronics. She does this for hours and hours, giving herself only about fifteen minutes for lunch. She does the same thing again and again and again to keep her mind off something, I suspect (and I don’t know what exactly). My mother works extremely hard. My family is actually financially secure now so she doesn’t have to work hard but she does because she doesn’t know what else to do with herself. She doesn’t like to be near people. Work keeps her away from people. When she’s not working, she sits alone somewhere and doesn’t do anything, really. I think it’s great that she works hard. Because she’s worked hard, she has always had money to spend (another good thing about her is her habit of saving money [but a bit too much at times]).

The other good thing about my mother is she said she used to want to read and used to wonder about having a higher education but her mother used to tell her to put her books away and do farm work. My mother is the oldest of four children so it was natural for her to be the one to help her mother farm (her father worked in Hong Kong) and to help care for her younger siblings (her sister is the second oldest sibling and she is seven years younger than my mother). Work took precedence over education; my mother lived in a home without electricity, nor running water (she grew up relieving herself outside; she used a toilet for the first time when she came to Boston at the age of 24) and her diet consisted of mostly sweet potatoes and pork so she had to work.

I think it hurt my mother not to have more education. She’s always believed that her life would have been easier if she had had more education. She works and works and works just to ‘catch up’ to those individuals with college educations to make as much money as them. I think it’s great that she wants me to make a lot of money, particularly when she says that men are nothing but false promises (my parents corresponded via letter writing and my father misled her to think that he was rich; she thought that she wouldn’t have to work when she came to American but she was wrong and she’s never let my father forget).

She’s always preached that I had to make my own money so if I had a future partner, he wouldn’t look down on me. She believes that every housewife is certainly not one hundred percent respected by their husbands (“Come on,” she would say, “How could anyone possibly think that the man won’t think his big, mature, able-bodied wife is a burden at least a couple of times when she’s obviously not a child and has two hands and feet doing what?”).

She’s always said, “To get respect from your boyfriend at all, you must have a career. Hopefully, you could buy a house and tell your boyfriend, “This is MY house! I have worked hard for this house. You are stepping into MY property. Remember that!”

There are millions of women who don’t have high aspirations for their daughters. I’m at least glad my mother pushes me (even in that angry voice) to do more so my future partner won’t dare tear me down (however, there’s still no guarantee a man wouldn’t pull me down even if I weren’t poor).

My mother is obsessed with money a bit too much but she knows how important having a career and education is for me.