The life my mom could have had
My SO, Luke, asked me recently, “Did your mom have to sacrifice a lot to come to America?”
The strictly-accurate answer is “yes”, but the holistic answer is “N/A”, because sacrifice isn’t the right framing at all. The question I want to answer is, “How did coming to the States change the way her life would have played out, and how does she feel about it now?”
My dad initially came to the States to study. My mom initially came along because he did. They both stayed because the more time they spent here, the more potential and hope they saw in our future.
I don’t marvel at how they came. I mostly marvel at how, every step of the way, they kept deciding to stay.
Not long after they got married, my dad committed to emigrating from Taiwan for a phD program in Illinois, and my mom started a small business in Taiwan— the sign in front of the building said “Kid Castle” — tutoring children after school (in, ironically, English, among other things).
He was just in for a degree that would help him make a better living in Taiwan. She was already making a living in Taiwan. Even after I was born, a year or so later, where we would live our lives was indeterminate. My mother, with me attached, put most of her effort into raising what was really her “first child,” Kid Castle, while occasionally flying out with me to see my dad. He, freezing his bum off in Illinois, flew back home every once in a while to see us.
Besides the short intervals of seeing my dad, my mom never stopped working in those years. My dad had no intention of committing to this country where there’s freezing snow, exorbitantly expensive groceries, and no healthy, affordable food for busy people. (If you’ve never visited, Taipei, Taiwan has been called the Gluttony capital of Asia due to the variety of its convenient, cheap food.)
Living in Illinois sucked for a Taiwanese vegetarian whose verbal grasp of English was laughable.
But when he graduated from his phD program, he got to make a choice. Find a job, somewhere in the States, or go back to Taiwan and pursue a career in teaching. Thankfully, he got a job offer in California, and he took it. He packed up his negligible possessions and made another big move.
Sunnyvale, California was so beautiful after Evanston, Illinois.
After the freezing hell he endured for 6 years, flowers blooming in the winter blew his mind, and he happily started working. He had purpose. A green card to earn, money to make and save, and a wife and child he increasingly wanted to bring here to stay. And not just for the American chocolate.
Due to my mom’s traveling, I went to pre-school in both countries at various points. After dabbling in putting me in schools on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, my parents observed that American education was very different from what they knew. For whatever bizarre reasons, American teachers’ highest priority in pre-schools was for children to have a great time and play.
I came home from pre-school one day with a piece of white toast. On it, I’d scribbled a mess of patterns in food coloring. My mom, seeing it, wrinkled her brow, concerned about the chemicals in food-coloring, and asked, “What was the point?” and I said we were playing. It was a group activity, in which everyone colored toast, however they liked, and we ate some and brought ones we really liked home to show our parents. I had a great time. I loved colors and crafts. My mom puzzled over how she felt about it and concluded: More play and less work would make for a happier, more creative child. Cool with her.
I don’t mean to throw too much weight on a 4-year-old, coloring and eating toast, but I think incidences no more phenomenal than that gradually won my parents over. They’re both rather contrarian, as a general rule, and had often found Taiwanese society stifling and annoying. They grew up with traditions, rules, and expectations that they didn’t always agree with, but were trained to meet, to the best of their ability.
They may have grown up in the framework of society they were born into, but at this point, they were grown-ass adults who could decide what society their kid was going to be subject to.
They decided that an American education that valued creativity and freedom, supplemented by their own set of values, would be better than what I’d get in Taiwan. I’ll never really know, of course, but I like to think they were right.
Now, to the meat of the issue. How did my mom’s life change, when I was starting kindergarten, and they decided to give America a real shot?
She gave up a career, and she got me.
She told me that, at first, not working wasn’t such a big deal. Her favorite parts of work were teaching children and making money. As a shareholder, she still got to make some money (minus hourly wage), and as for kids, now she had me to keep her busy.
She briefly entertained going back to school and getting some computer skills, but met with overwhelming disapproval from both my dad and her mom. (I had to ask her to elaborate on computer skills, and she waved her hand vaguely and said “Internet, calculations, whatever tasks used to be on paper and now are handled on computers by ladies younger than I am.” I asked “like, spreadsheets and word processing?” She said, “Probably.” I said, “Oh, no wonder daddy figured he could just do it for you.”)
The adaptable, agile person she was, my mom took to life here pretty naturally. She got serious about cooking, making it a life-priority to have me and my vegetarian dad eat well. She made friends with the parents of my classmates, several of whom were also Taiwanese/Chinese. The two of us spent a lot of time in libraries, and we read a lot (obviously reading very different things). She and my dad both volunteered with some Buddhist communities. It wasn’t work, but there was plenty to do.
As the two of us went back, every summer vacation, to check up on Kid Castle and make the rounds, meeting the new teachers, staff, and generations of children, she did start to feel like she was being left behind.
Even though she stopped working rather abruptly, my mom felt the loss of her career slowly, over the years, as she realized she was less and less able to just go back and resume working.
A choice she made, every year, with me in tow, when we visited, was to look at the life she could have — picking up her business suits, earrings, and make-up to blaze her own path — and say, “Wow, that looks really compelling, but you know what? It’s okay that I don’t have that anymore. I’m doing something else, with my child and husband who are happier and better with me always present to love and care for them. This is the life I want.”
Now, some 15 years after her life got redirected, I get to look at how she lives now, and imagine how she might have been, had she not left.
- She would have probably made more money. Yay!
- She may have felt more independent. Kicking ass at work certainly builds self-esteem and pride.
- She might be closer to her family. Honestly, because she’s female, she’s supposed to have been “married off” anyways, so it doesn’t really matter. She’s probably as close with them now as she would have been, if she were geographically closer.
- She would have had to deal with so much more troublesome work. Running a tutoring center, is, in practice, mostly wrestling with parents, staff, and logistics, none of which make her happy.
- She wouldn’t have been as close to me as she is. I got to hang out with her, literally, every day after school. That’s why our values ended up so aligned. It was also great for me. I wish I still got to take naps after a day of not-working and expect to be fed and listened to.
- She wouldn’t have been as close to my dad as she was. I can’t even begin to describe how important that ended up being, when he really needed her, in the months before he died.
- She would have less freedom to be just herself. There would have been so many roles for her to fill if she stayed. She would have felt constant pressure to be a teacher, a manager, a daughter, a sister, in addition to the less-negotiable mom and wife. That leaves completely no time for just. Her.
She’s got a pretty chill life now. She’s done being a wife. Her responsibilities as a mother have tapered off a lot. She’s just here on this Earth for herself (who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t really have selfish desires), her friends, and me.
She reads, works sometimes, listens to music, watches movies, and is surrounded, every weekend, and some weekdays, by friends, including me, who love and understand her.
I venture to say that this life, if she could choose again, is what she would choose every time.
