8Asians is celebrating Mother’s Day all week (Pssst…Don’t forget, it’s May 8th!) by doing what we do best: writing about the women who raised us, nurtured us, taught us, spoiled us, protected us and occasionally for some, drove us up the wall. We love our moms and wanted to share personal stories as a tribute to their hard work.
One high school summer I was kicked out of a Buddha Camp for wearing too-short shorts. Most Asian tiger mothers would have buried their daughters alive for that, but my mother was livid…at the camp. She marched straight to the head monk guy and went at him like a rabid raccoon, in front of everybody, with other mothers watching. “My daughter does NOT wear short shorts. She has long legs. And just because you can’t keep from thinking un-Buddhist thoughts when you see her, you blame my daughter. Pathetic.”
Those weren’t her exact words; I’m paraphrasing here, but she absolutely said that line about not wearing short shorts and having long legs, and she absolutely went postal on a head monk guy in front of everyone at a Buddha Camp and accused him of being un-Buddhist.
My mother was not one of those cool moms, however. In every other way she embodied the crazy-fob high-pitched Asian lady who stuck out in white suburbia. She would make eggrolls for bake sales, because that is exactly what an Asian American kid wants to bring to school to fit in with the vanilla cupcakes and frosted sugar cookies. That said, her eggrolls always sold out fastest and we made a ton of money for prom because of them.
In true Asian mom form, when grades fell below A+ she transformed into a screaming banshee in 0 to 60, and since my grades often fell below A+, my mother was forever a disturbance to the neighbors. She also hauled me to piano and violin lessons every week. That 4-foot-tall 80-pound woman could drag a tantrum-throwing 10-year-old brat with only two of her steely claw-like fingers, and drag me she did from my bedroom where I clung on to a bedpost for dear life (“No, Mom, I don’t wanna go. I’m not going! I hate the violin!”) down a flight of stairs, through the parlor, dining room, kitchen, down another flight of stairs, through the garage and with just those two steely fingers toss me into the backseat and slam the car door on my bum. (“Yes. You’re going. You love the violin!”)
Her persistence taught me persistence. She taught me to not whine about the inequities and obstacles I faced, to break down barriers myself and never expect others to move them for me. The way she drilled hundreds of math problems a night when I came home with a flunking calculus test, the way she deconstructed difficult concertos down into measures and made me practice over and over and over the one measure that troubled me all went to teach me that it did not matter whether I was born dumb or smart, gifted or not, that the most important factor for determining achievement was work ethic.
Hard work alone isn’t enough, everyone knows. Entitlement helps. Gladwell’s now-way-too-famous Outliers and Alpha Asian’s reflection of the book point out the advantage that a sense of entitlement creates. My mother’s nurturing instilled in me that middle class sense of entitlement, which I owe everything to. Getting kicked out of Buddha Camp for dressing a certain way could have done serious damage to my sense of self, and I could have come out feeling like a second-class citizen. But my mother prevented that from happening. Instead she spun it into a positive experience and taught me to stand up for myself, it doesn’t matter against who. She pushed me to confront my schoolteachers when I didn’t get the higher grade I deserved. Once at one of those potluck buffet lines at church, she noticed that the ladies spooned out bigger portions to boys than girls. I got less of a particular favorite dish and half-jokingly lamented about it. Mom shoved me back in line and told me to demand that the woman give me a bigger portion, one at least equal to the portions that she gave the boys.
A few months ago I tried one of my first big cases and for many nights leading up to trial, kept dreaming about work. (Lawyers do that; our cases follow us everywhere, even beyond REM sleep.) The most lucid trial dream I had was one where trial was being held not at the county courthouse, but in my parents’ living room, all our lawn chairs and foldable picnic tables set up. I overslept in my old bedroom and Mom rolled me out of bed, yelling. “You’re going to be late for trial!” I stumbled down the stairs to where this fobby makeshift courtroom of lawn chairs and picnic tables had been set up and watched in horror as my mother handed out her homemade eggrolls to the jurors. The presiding judge, in full robe, was leaning against our baby grand, chomping on an eggroll.
I recounted the dream to my mother the next morning and she said, “You dream that because you know Mommy always with you and Mommy always there to support. Trial will go just fine because Mommy’s voice inside you telling you exactly the right thing to say.”
And she was right. The trial ended very well. None of my fears manifested themselves. Before, I thought I could only do transactional work, but after that trial, I learned I wasn’t shabby at litigation. I succeeded for three reasons: (1) I worked my ass off for that case; (2) I was confident and felt entitled to success; and (3) I know that no matter where I go or what I do, my mother will always be the strength inside of me. None of the present fruits of my labor would have been possible without my mother.
[Photo Courtesy of Riley Alexandra]
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