Why I’m Afraid of Water, the Color Green, Flowers, and the American Dream

The word “sacrifice” often positions itself as a recurring theme when it comes to conversations and lessons to be learned from my mother. The apartment in our suburb we live in, the food on our table, the school I attend, the opportunities I can take advantage of, the friends I have made — all of them are tangential to this concept of “sacrifice.” This idea of my parents coming to the U.S. all the way from South Korea, building a home in an unfamiliar place in pursuit of their dreams, and raising their children in this foreign, Western environment is not unique to me. Moreover, the disconnect between mothers and their children over a conflict in aspirations is another common trope in most immigrant, Asian-American families. However, it would be crude to write this off as just another social, familial dynamic — there are too many emotions and grievances left unaddressed to simply send off into a shallow stereotype. Furthermore, this piece isn’t so much a general statement about family dynamics as it is a personal, maybe somewhat relatable confrontation of my mother-child relationship that has been fragmented by “sacrifice” and the alterations made to it by Western notions.

The largest item on the paper is the water. First, a fun fact about me is that I don’t know how to swim; I am also deathly afraid of large bodies of water thanks to a 2020 Tumblr post that compiled a comprehensive list of some of the most fatal, watery death traps. These are relevant facts, though, because this element offers a setting rooted in my fear of drowning at sea. Although a tad morbid, the water is able to offer a vastness in distance that I wanted to portray between the two central figures of the piece. Both blank and white, the larger woman is positioned lying face up closer to the surface of the water, while a small girl kneels with her hands out at the bottom of the ocean. The floating woman is a mother and the child is her daughter. They are linked by a blood-red rope to symbolize their familial bonds. However, with the child being positioned at the bottom of the sea, it almost seems as though it is tying the mother down to the depths, like an anchor. In contrast, the mother seems as though she is trying to pull herself up on a braided rope of three colors: red, white and blue. Meanwhile, the green background hosts a variety of flowers that include pink carnations, hollyhocks, yellow irises and pink lilies.

There are negative connotations associated with the child, and this is largely due to my own perceptions of self and insecurities in my relationship with my mother. The braided rope that my mother so desperately clings onto is a loose translation of the American Dream. My mother sees herself as someone self-made, and rightfully so — even as an immigrant, she slowly built a family, a home and a livelihood during uncertain times and established a space for herself. Her pride is also embedded in other factors, such as her beauty, ambitions, passion, femininity, and motherhood. However, all of these are dependent on extrinsic factors, such as perceived appearance, career aspirations, gender constructs, Western and Eastern notions of childrearing, etc. Thus, the flowers that represent such notions remain out of touch with the water. Hoisted onto the background, they are encompassed in a shroud of green envy, paying homage to the elusive “green light” so often mentioned in The Great Gatsby — they will always be chased after, but like the fantasy of Daisy, like the grandeur of wealth, like the American Dream, the flowers will always remain out of reach for the mother trapped beneath the surface of the waters of her psyche and consciousness.

Upon this realization, there is a certain crushing guilt that befalls the child, the anchor. As sons and daughters, but especially daughters, we begin to question the extent of our fault in the problems in our mothers’ lives. I say “especially daughters” because there are moments when we cannot help but envision ourselves in our mothers’ positions some 20 years from now, feeling the same sense of regret and longing that our mothers feel now. This guilt and empathy places us even further below where our mothers are, because we grow up watching this constant yearning and condition ourselves into thinking that this is a natural state of being. Feeling indebted to our mothers is natural, and wanting to become the same things they wanted but were unable to due to the hardships of motherhood and cultural adaptation are both impressed upon us. We are never explicitly asked, but the pressure is palpable. It becomes a vicious cycle of discontentment and disappointment, and it makes one question where that will place future generations in the abyss of this ocean.

I asked some of my peers that also shared similar experiences and concerns as daughters of Asian American immigrant parents a few questions relating to the theme of my work. The first question I asked was a simple icebreaker: if you became quite financially wealthy, what would you do with the money you’ve acquired? The answers were all different but also similar — helping their parents find desirable housing, buying everything their mother had in her shopping cart, taking their parents out to a nice diner. All of these answers ranged from modest to extravagant with lighthearted tones, but what they all shared was this idea of repayment. When I showed them my painting and asked them how they related to the subject, there was a quiet consideration. They slowly gathered the tie between the child and the mother in the image, and slowly traced their eyes up to the braided rope in American colors. Then, all of them would slowly, but reluctantly agree that they have all, to some extent, felt like the burden on their parents, especially their mother, that would sometimes hinder their potential to achieve more of their ambitions in life. Their obligation to compensate their parents, especially their mother, was in due part to the guilt we carry seeing the sacrifices they make and the losses they gain. Yet, the cynicism and pessimism did not last long. The hesitation in their voices was quickly replaced by a bouncing enthusiasm in what we, as their children, could do to free ourselves from these generational shackles of trauma.

Although the painting shows the blood-red thread attached to the child, it is largely up to the child how they’d like to wield their relationship with their mothers. There are cases where some choose to let go entirely of the thread and leave behind their family in pursuit of their own American Dream, flowers and green background and all. On the other hand, there are individuals that choose to stay sedentary and live on with that guilt their whole lives. There is no right answer on how we are supposed to beat the odds and come to terms with the paths that our parents chose to live or the paths that we, as their children, are treading on now. In the same way that our parents cannot and should not try to live through us, we also cannot try to live through our parents. However, we can still experiment and try to find what works best, rather than suffocating under the weight of “sacrifice” and remaining paralyzed in its insurmountable debts and regrets.

I’m still a bit afraid of the water — the murky depths and the vastness haunt me even to this day. Even so, I have to start somewhere, and I hope to learn to float first, skimming the surface of the water ever so slightly, face lifted toward the flowers and the green and the American Dream, maybe even reaching my arm out above the surface at times. But I will not cling. Watching from below exposes how transient the material temptations and promises of success of the surface are, passing through the sky like clouds slowly but surely in motion. I know my mother is not one to linger on her failures. Although these conflicts about indebtedness and guilt will continue to arise in our conversations, I also know they will eventually subside. All that is left to do is to keep trying until the day I’m finally swimming, one stroke after the next, and looking to my side to see my mother doing the same, free from the stray threads tying her down.