My mother was a tower of a Tiger mom (to me) who stood a mighty 5 feet even. I witnessed her paws vanquish stall owners in Hong Kong, international waiters and hotel managers, with my swallowed discomfiture.
My mother’s early admonishments were standard Chinese fare yet indelibly imprinted. ‘For every grain of rice you don’t eat, your wife will have a pockmark (from smallpox) on her face – you better eat each and every one!’ Fortunately for Teri, I was a very exacting eater and saved her skin. Perhaps a bit too fastidious, as I became overweight by age 10. ‘If you don’t study hard, you will become a garbageman (lop sop low [Cantonese])!” As 1stgrader, I had little awareness of various occupations but could tell from her disgust that that was to be avoided at all costs. She also told me in 4th grade, ‘it’s good enough to know something, you don’t have to raise your hand and show off.’ This turned out to be misguided advice in a system that values initiative, participation and discussion, even verbiage.
Yes, that is me
In 1st grade, we began daily summer school including math problems, reading, Chinese characters and eventually violin. I think the math rote-tine was the precursor ‘Kumom’ (ku being the character for bitter) with the fire-breathing scrutiny for errors. The neighborhood kids would stop by and ask ‘can B come out to play, we need another for …’ She would obstruct the doorway, ‘NO, he can’t come out, he has homework to do.’ I would peer forlornly from behind, my playmates equally downtrodden. I remember one memorable benefit. On the first day of 4th grade, when Mr. Wolfe asked if anyone knew division … my hand was the only that solved the blackboard problem to my classmates’ amazement.
The pivotal moment occurred when I was 11 and summer school was in session. Our one family activity was swimming where a season pass allowed my parents to swim laps and me to play with friends. They presciently enrolled me in continuous swim and lifesaving lessons. In fact, spoiler alert ‘lifesaving’ might be a clue. The bronzed Adonis swim coach Dave Linder was omnipresent and the BMOSP. One day, he asked me to swim the breaststroke as fast as I could. He yelled ‘Start’ and off I went, down and back. As I gasped for air and looked up, he exclaimed, ‘You just tied the city record! You have to join the swim team!’ I was thrilled because my good friends Joseph and Malcolm were on the team. But that was just the beginning …
I bubbled with anticipation as I told my mother about this unforeseen invitation, but my mother remained subdued and noncommittal. That night, Coach Linder called and I heard my mother’s response: ‘NO! He cannot join the swim team! It will interfere with his studies, his violin, his Chinese!’ I was devasted and could not comprehend it. I wanted to be on the team with my friends. Neither Coach nor my mother conceded and the impasse lasted several days over several phone calls. Finally, my mother brokered, ‘if you do all your work … AND you scrub the bathroom floor every Friday night on your knees after which I will inspect it and if there is any dirt … ’ What did I know about Faustian bargains, I yelped a resounding ‘YES’ (I’ll do anything you ask).
If I may say, I fulfilled my Coach’s prescience with mostly 1sts in the 50-yard breaststroke. Then, as a 13-14 year old, I set several Iowa and state records in the 100-yard and meter breaststroke. At the annual Dave Armbruster (creator of the butterfly stroke) Swim Meet in our home pool, we (my two buddies, Joseph and Malcolm) swept the top three places and our photo landed in the sports section! In an unanswerable ‘what if’, I could lower the record in same age group next summer, but my father’s year-long sabbatical in the Far East ... In Hong Kong, they go by height (5’6” was B Grade) not age, so I competed against even 20 year-old’s in the HK School Championships. I won the 100-meter breaststroke and another in the final freestyle relay would win the overall team competition. Starting out in 3rd place on my anchor leg, I passed the other two… and we won! In the school assembly I received my medals, the championship banner, and a handwritten note from the fearsome British headmaster who said it was the most exciting race he had ever seen.
As my mother didn’t drive, I two-wheeled across town at 7 am every summer morning to practice in the chilly air and cool water. The draft of wind gave me my first tactile sense of ‘freeDOM’, a feeling that embraces each ride today. I began to creep out from under my mom’s thumb and the water-based transformation was lifechanging. From overweight to 1 pack. From slow Chinese to fast food, sleepovers, TV (we didn’t have one) ... From Chinese solo to American team-based. From nerd to nerd-athlete with a bit of kool. From B to ‘flea’. From violin to electric guitar. From Chinese-American to all-American. Swimming became my lifeline to a more self-confident self that assuaged being the only Asian American kid in my class or anywhere … the looks, the comments, the bullying.
Back to my mother. I knew that she wanted me to be successful, but why so controlling, so hard on me? Why the recurring adult nightmares about an unjust incident at age 4. With her family stories and with my therapy and a tincture of time I began to appreciate the lifelong effects of her losing her mother at age 6. After her father remarried and started another family, she and her two siblings were shunted from aunt to grandparents without a ‘home’ during war-time China. Then at age 22, she is instantly transplanted to the US, a foreigner studying in English, cooking as a ‘maid’ for the first time ... migrant stress. In Stephanie Foo’s harrowing journey recounted in ‘What my bones know: A memoir of healing from complex trauma’, she discovers that both the effects family and immigrant stress are transmitted across generations through both behavioral (upbringing) and genetic means. I conjecture that my mother’s indelible early loss and superimposed immigrant stress led her to exert excessive control on the one little being she could. And unfortunately, I had neither mitigating siblings nor involved father to mitigate her all-powerful persona.
No doubt, my mother provided the underpinning for my professional success, through her constant admonitions about failure, forged discipline through her iron will, the daily deferred gratification, and my survivalist persistence throughout childhood. Unintended were her vocal timbre that would continue to raise my prickly nuchal hackles well into middle age, my lifelong paralysis in dealing with authoritarian figures, and of course, the years of therapy spent to comprehend our dysfunctional relationship. But water, so much a freeing aspect of my adolescence, fluidly opened the floodgates just enough to allow me to swim to an outside shore.
In simplified calculus of hindsight, was the harsh upbringing worth the professional success? Indeed, the accomplishments came with significant lifelong costs. With the help of therapy (exorcised the nightmare), much reading and many friends, at long last, I reached a post-humous peace with her. So, in the end, I remain deeply appreciative, a subdued survivor and … profoundly ambivalent.
My favorite picture of my mother.
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