Just Mom, not Mommy (revised)

                Last week my door opened and my mom came into the room. It was the middle of the night and she had just finished looking at Facebook; my dad was asleep in their room and I was watching reruns of the show ‘Community’ on my back and on my bed. She lifted the blanket and sat down on one end of my bed; I could tell she wanted to talk. I absolutely did not. Every neuron in my body was protesting the interruption and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be until she would go to sleep so that I could resume watching my reruns. As it was, I said nothing. To voice any sort of complaint or protest against one’s parents is considered very rude and insolent in most Asian cultures, and to have grown up in a very conservative, very “Korean” household, those Confucian values of wanting to please were innately picked up and built in to who I am. So instead of glaring or giving any sort of indication that I wanted to be left alone, I paused the episode and sat up on my pillow with a face of placid calm, a disposition that I can’t maintain for very long stretches of time.

                She asked me how things were going with my boyfriend even though we had talked about it the day before. “Good,” I answered shortly. For as long as I can remember, my mom always had bad timing when it came to chatting with me. Understandably her schedule had always been erratic at work as a nurse and being very actively involved with church, so of course she would want to take advantage of any free moment she had to talk with her kids. Nonetheless it bothered me to no end when I noticed that she never brought things up during mutually involved times we had together, like dinner time, but seemed to go out of her way to interrupt me while I was in the middle of doing homework or trying to figure out activities for church.

Her interruptions only seemed to multiply in frequency when I began college. She would mosey on over to me from the kitchen into the living room, or walk into my room under the pretense of straightening up a little. Then she’ll launch into a flurry of news and updates about people we know, or speculate about a status update she’d seen on someone’s Facebook. During those moments it usually doesn’t register for me that what she’s trying to do is draw me into conversation. More likely, I’ll think of her as incorrigible and insensitive and after a while she’ll ask, “Why are you ignoring me?” to which I would respond, “Can’t you see that I’m busy?” It was a question that I was tempted to ask when she sat on my bed, but I kept quiet and waited.

My mom had always been an invulnerable woman. And I suppose one of the side effects of being invulnerable included being correct. All the time. As a child, I had no question that Mommy always knew best. At a family dinner once when I was a little girl, one of my cousins found a dead fly on his plate. Not only did Mom demand a new dish be prepared for my cousin, but she demanded that everyone at our table get their meals free of charge. The second demand didn’t go through completely, but at the very least my cousin’s meal was made complimentary. She smiled triumphantly and looked at me, saying Mommy knows what to do in these situations. I was in awe. It was only when she began to impose an unquestionable authority over me that I began to question whether or not her way was really best.

As a teenager when I asked to go to the mall with friends and then asked why I wasn’t allowed, things often got tense and awkward fast. My mom, who’d grown up under her father’s thumb, had expected the same respectful obedience from her own children. The question of “why” was often very unsettling to her. I wanted her to be Mother, that way I could just focus on being daughter. The question of “why” was often very unsettling to her. I wanted her to be Mommy, that way I could just focus on being daughter. Instead, I often found myself feeling as though I was playing Mommy when it came to understanding and clarifying.

“Why are you snapping at me?” she finally asked me. Her round face was turned to me and her time-worn eyes concentrated on my own, confused and trying to understand. Her back was rigid and straight; she’s been trying to maintain a good posture these days, Don’t become like me and your Grandma who only started worrying about posture too late in life. We were talking about my sister and somehow we ended up arguing. “I just think that you should be able to acknowledge that you have faults too. You weren’t the perfect parents.” I could see her back bend ever so slightly under the weight of my unkind words. I was surprised at the effect my words now had on her.

My mom is a first generation Korean American immigrant. At age 24 she’d come to the States alone, the first from her family to venture to another country entirely and spent 1 year working at a Kaiser Permanente in California. By day she was taking some courses on the English language and by night she worked the graveyard shift at the clinic, facing off insecurities and uncertainties by herself. My dad had not even come into the picture until that year had ended and, through a connection of mutual acquaintances and family friends, my mom was requested to fly back to Korea in order to meet him.

I would imagine how scared I’d have felt if I’d lived the way she’d chosen, to live alone, in an unfamiliar place and with an unfamiliar language. Whenever I see my mom bustling about in the kitchen in her nursing scrubs however, I’m can’t bring myself to picture her huddled, frightened and alone in a small apartment. The image just doesn’t compute. In my whole life I have never seen my mother cry. I’ve seen her brought to tears with frustration or exhaustion, but there has never been an instance in my memory in which I remember seeing her really in a weak place. I’ve heard her cry out loud once after a fight with my brother; she walked back to her room and shut the door. I could hear the sobs from my own room. When she emerged again hours later to prepare dinner, her eyes were dry.

She scooted away from me and more towards the edge of my bed, ready to leave soon. I was feeling everything but relief. I was writhing inside from the guilt I felt from inflicting real damage on her. “You’ll know when you have kids how hard it is.” I’ve always hated that phrase, and I still do. I had no idea how to respond to that statement every time she brought it up. But I refrained saying anything further. “I may not be at the level you want me to be at, but I’ve tried.” After saying this, she got up, left my room, and closed the door behind her.

The next day I got up and spent time shoveling the snow on our driveway with my dad. “Dad, what’s going on with Mom these days? Why is she so moody?” My dad smiled at me but his forehead was furrowed with concern. “Mommy seems to be a lot more sensitive these days. We should try to be gentle with her.” I threw another shovelful of snow onto the mountain growing on what was the front lawn.

I saw her later at the window, looking towards the driveway. She told me that dinner would be ready soon before breaking eye contact and staring back out the window at my dad. “I’m sorry. I was annoyed, I’m not really mad at you.” She looked at me and smiled a little, but looking wearier as though she’d cried a bit over the previous night. “It’s okay. I understand.”