I caused quite a family foul just days into my marriage. I told my newly minted mother-in-law that it was hard for me to call her mom. Only one special woman could be called “mom” by me in this world. I meant no malice to my mother in law. It was just honesty, too much honesty. 

My mother is compassionate and most loving mother who is literally willing to give her life away for her kids if needed. Some of the popular theories today have the data to prove that the environment of a child’s early life is critical in his/her development. People become problematic handling relationships later in life if they were abused or neglected as a child. Any mean, bitching, controlling, and abusive people probably could find some root cause in the history of unhappy child life. I always believe those troubled people may have more evil genes to begin with. Life did not treat my mother fair early in life. She still grew up as a strong, confident, and caring person.

My mother lived with her uncle’s family as an orphan. Her father passed away before she was born. The widow was forced by the dead husband’s family to remarry without her infant daughter. The underline reason for the cruelty was to allow the uncles to keep control of the fortune that the niece inherited. There was not much love around. The only warm memory she had was about an aunt who passed away in a childbirth incident when my mother just grew to childhood. The girl cousins were much older and married away quickly and mostly indifferent to her. The boy cousins were about her age but nasty. She was not allowed to attend school until she was over 10. The reason of the delayed start was that she became handy as a helper around the house. After the elementary school, the uncle wanted her to stop and stay at home to be married. She refused. As a compromise, she had to give most of the fortune under her name to the uncles and agreed to receive no more financial support from them if she pursued the school further.

Mother was driven and ambitious. She believed her future in education. She completed her college degree in one of the best universities 10 years after leaving her uncles house. I saw some of her pictures when she was at schools. She was slim, tall, and pretty with a pair of long narrow eyes going upwards. She looked determined but modest in most of the photos. She played basketball and was good at many other sports. She was very capable and top student in most of the classes she took. With her age being much older than the rest of the class and a caring heart, she was appointed as the head of the class in college. She was well known by her peers. The three years of difficult period in China left her hungry frequently particularly because she kindly gave away her food quote to the male classmates who were starving. It caused great damage to her health. She was young and did not feel the consequence at the time.

She was admired by many and married my father, her college classmates two years after they graduated at the beginning of culture revolution.  I do not know if that was her first love. She later said she married out of compassion. Father’s family was regarded as rich and bad. He was undesirable by the good half of the society . He was at the lowest point of his life when he was kicked out of graduate school despite the excellent school records and sent to a labor camp in south. Without any worldly belongs, my mother’s clean background suddenly became a strong asset. It was key for my father to get out of the labor camp. He started working in another city 2 hours away by train after they married. For over 10 years my mother lived as a single parent in a small 9 meter square room, seeing the husband for days every couple months.

She worked hard to bring up two kids with her modest income during the decade. She sent me away to a nursing mother in the countryside after my birth but took me back after a year. She was rather quick tempered and impatient in my memory.  She probably felt so much pressure and in need of help. Still she was too proud to seek help or let herself or her kids down. She worked hard as an engineer. Coming back from work, she cooked and fed me, then she washed me and sent me to bed. I never knew when she went to bed since there always seemed to be endless house work for her to do when I fall into sleep. Never saw her sit down reading or relaxing. She was always working on something. Our small room was very clean and organized. She made me many pretty clothes, all by hands. They were the envy of my kindergarten friends. Teachers and parents stopped me to take a close look of those clothes. She made me dolls as we did not have money to buy toys. She even got me ducklings as pet. I was also a kid who needed frequent visits to doctors. My mom pleaded to the doctors to save me one time when I was really sick. She got the answer that she could always have another kid. That must hurt. She started to do researches about what nutritious food she should cook to make me grow stronger.  I was forced to eat and drink certain “good” food. I become much stronger later on. The memory left me mental scars. For example, cooked pork liver is totally out my menu now as it was pushed down to my throat by mother every week when I was young.

The hardship left its mark on her. She was at her 30s but looked much older. Her health further declined after gave birth to my sister. In the month right after birth, my father was back for weeks but really sick from asthma. Instead of resting from the child birth, my mother had to take care of a sick husband, a needy 6 years old and a new born baby all by herself. She developed chronic GI symptoms and could no longer eat half of the normal food. She had malnutrition. Her weight went under 40kg with a height of 5’5”.  We all believe it became a turning point of her life. In two years, her liver functions started to decline as well. The doctor said she had cirrhosis and had less than 5 years to live. She was less than 40 at the time and the husband was still away and the two kids were still young. I remember waking up in the mid of the night,  I put my hand under her nose to see if she was still breathing. She caught me doing it one night and asked me what was going on. I told her that I was so afraid she would pass away in sleep. She promised me she would not. She would live for me. And she did for the next 30 years.

She knew the feeling of a child without love. She wanted to give her children the full love. To enable that, she had to keep herself alive. It is a miserable life to live when one always feels sick and no energy. She just pushed it day by day even though there was hardly a day that she did not feel some pain and discomfort inside her body. I admire my mother for the determination and discipline she exhibited during those years. It was totally exceptional. She started to seek help from traditional Chinese doctors and took the herb medicine even though they can make her more miserable. They may help the liver but cause heart or kidney problems. She took notes about her diet and ate to survive no matter how  tasteless they felt. She practiced QiGong everyday at a fixed hour to help her sleep and relax and would not miss the daily session year over year.

She also wanted to move the husband back. My father did not believe it could be done at the beginning. The city we lived was one of the largest cities, attractive for the rest of China. People were not allowed to move freely at the time. Changing jobs was rare. Again, my mother was determined to have him back to allow us a normal family life. She went to explore the policies and finally found another person who was willing to move from our city to the city my father was at. She pushed for the trade off. When she found out that another person and not my father was considered for the trade, she went to the person who handled the paperwork and the people who had the decision making power, cried, begged, threatened to leave me in their offices as it was too much for her to take care of two kids anymore. She was not proud at the time. She just wanted to have a chance to start a real family life. Finally, my father came back to the city where he was born and raised and where his family, his parents were all living in. The hardest time was behind us. My mother finally had a break.

to be continued