by You Jin
Bringing him to see a movie was even worse. I wanted him to sit quietly until the movie was over, but he would wriggle in his seat, and bounce up and down, irritating viewers in front and back with his racket. In the end, I had to take him out early, ashamed at his behaviour.
Once, I went to the post office to mail a letter, and I told him to wait in the car for me. I thought it would just take me a couple of minutes but, to my surprise, it was crowded inside and I needed more time. When I went back to the car park, I saw my seven-yearold son outside the car, placing stones behind the wheels of my car. I said, “Hey, what are you doing?”
He answered seriously: “I wanted to see if this would puncture the tyres when they roll over the rocks.”
The most embarrassing experience happened during a dentist appointment the year he was in Primary 1. I picked him up from school, and we rushed to the dentist’s office. He asked if he could watch the dentist fill my cavity, promising over and over that he would sit still and observe. But right in the middle of the procedure, my son treated the little clinic like the school track and start running round and round the room. With my mouth forced wide open, I could not say anything to make him stop. My heart pounded and I broke out in a cold sweat, like I was being tortured. Finally, my cavity was filled.
When we got home, I made him stand in the corner for half an hour as punishment. After a few minutes, he looked at me with an agonised expression. Carrying the alarm clock over to me, he said, “Mama, the clock’s broken.”
I checked it and said irritably, “What’s wrong with it?”
He turned a somersault on the floor and said, “I think I’ve been standing there for an hour already. Why is the clock so slow?”
I did not know the characteristics of a hyperactive child, so I read his every move as mischievous and naughty. When there was any infraction, of course he would take the punishment. Later, when I discovered that he was hyperactive, I took a more proactive approach to help him utilise his excess energy. I signed him up for swimming and martial arts, and taught him to ride a bike. When he was wriggling like a fish in the water, swinging weapons in martial arts class, or speeding through the nearby garden on his bicycle, his seemingly endless supply of energy found a proper outlet, and I did not have to worry about him dismantling the house instead.
My second son, Fung Teck, was an adorable, docile little lamb. He was humble, and always willing to give way, so he was the peacekeeper in the family. But he often made me think of the hidden worry of my friend, Professor Jiang, in Guangzhou. Professor Jiang had one child, a daughter, and from the time she was small, the professor instilled in her the traditional moral values like a sense of propriety, justice, honesty and honour. When she grew up, she was gentle, respectful, submissive and kind. But when she entered the real world, she found that she was surrounded by ferocious mountain goats, their sharp horns gleaming with evil light. When she was backed against the wall by the mountain goats, she could only cover her face and cry helplessly as they injured her. If things were to go on this way, how long would someone so gentle be able to bear it? Professor Jiang asked me in despair, “Was I wrong to bring up my daughter to be as meek as a lamb?”
I thought she was wrong, and told her so. Such a child is like a strawberry, bright on the outside, but so soft on the inside that it bruises easily. If we bring our children up to be sheep, we need to also fix them with a pair of sharp horns, so that they can handle life’s trials.
I once heard another story that made quite an impression on me as a parent.
A young girl met with some unpleasant events out in the world. She went home crying, and complained to her mother. Without a word, her mother went into the kitchen and took out three pots, filling them all with water and then putting them on the fire to boil. She put three different things into each pot. In the first, she placed an egg; in the second, a carrot; and in the third, coffee beans. After a moment, she said to her daughter, “The boiling water in these pots is like the trials we face in life. The carrot starts out firm, but when it meets the boiling water, it becomes soft and mushy. The egg starts out fragile, with both the whites and yolk inside soft and runny, but when the egg is put in the water, it is becomes hardened and firm inside. Before the coffee beans are put in the water, their fragrance is vague, but as the water boils, the aroma becomes strong.” The mother looked at her daughter’s teary eyes and said, “Dear, life is one big pot of boiling water. It is your choice whether you will be carrot, egg or coffee beans. Whether you have a miserable life or a gorgeous life depends entirely on your attitude.”
I often used stories as a way to pass along my values and views of life to my children. In the stories, weaklings without their own judgement were often made the laughing stock. I hoped these stories would exert a subtle influence, especially on Fung Teck’s character.
As I was wracking my brain to think of ways to fix that metaphorical pair of sharp horns on Fung Teck, something happened that filled me with regret. It was also this event that first showed me another side to little Fung Teck’s personality.
When he was in Primary 1, all the kids loved colourful marbles, each one with a different design. With bright and varied colours, they really were quite pretty. The boys all liked to have battles with these marbles, lining them up in rows and shooting them with their forefingers, trying to hit the others’ marbles. Whoever managed to capture someone else’s marble got to keep it. Though it was a simple game, it brought great excitement to their lives at the time. Fung Teck bought some marbles with his own pocket money, then stored this treasure carefully in his favourite chocolate tin. As soon as he had any free time, he would take the marbles out to play. When he was in Primary 2, they were still his prized possessions. But by Primary 3, I did not see him playing with them any more, the box gathering dust in his cupboard.
One day the following year while I was doing my spring-cleaning, I came across the box and decided to get rid of them. They were just taking up space now that he no longer played with them, so I threw them into the rubbish bin outside the house. When Fung Teck and his brother came home from playing ball, he drank some water, then went upstairs. Before long, I heard his panicked voice: “Mama, where are my marbles?”
He clattered down the stairs and, face white, stood in front of me and repeated, “Mama, where are my marbles?”
I responded evasively, “You’re already ten years old. What do you want those marbles for?”
“I want my marbles, Mama. Where did you put them?”
Tired from cleaning, I answered snappily, “I threw them away.”
My son, always so obedient, let out a heartbreaking yell, then started crying. He wept uncontrollably and violently, which was completely unprecedented. It was like he was tearing apart his throat with his cries. I had never seen him like this before.
The memory of myself as a disconsolate, twelve-year-old little girl floated up, crying just like Fung Teck was now, completely heartbroken because my mother had thrown away my beloved doll. I could still hear my mother’s voice clearly, even after so many years, as she said, “You’re so big. Why do you still want to play with dolls?” Why had I done this to my own child, now that I was a mother?
I rushed out of the house and turned over the rubbish bin, then went through every bag looking for the chocolate tin. When I finally found it, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I went back into the house, cleaned the tin, and handed it to my weeping Fung Teck. I repeated over and over, “I’m so sorry, my dear son.” Thinking back on what had happened, I later realised that Fung Teck was not a defenceless, docile little lamb at all. Seeing that he was not just a cowardly weakling who would let others take advantage of him, I was very relieved.
Parents often inadvertently do things that hurt their children. The main reason is that we put ourselves above, looking at the situation from a position of authority. Then we force our own views on them, using our role as parents to get our way. It is because we do not have enough respect for our ch
ildren. This situation made me rethink things. From then on, I did not throw away their things unless I got consent first. I also never read their private letters or diaries. I gave them the respect they deserved.
My third child, Ke Jun, was a fiery one. She was spirited, clever, active, and creative. One year on Mother’s Day, after she was an adult, she sent me a card from London. As soon as I saw it, I laughed. She had written:
Mama,
Do you remember our mutual friend, Ms Frog? Today, I decided to study law. We should give her credit…
It all started when she was three, a period when she was very talkative. As I cooked dinner, Ke Jun would sit on a little stool, waiting to eat. What was odd was that every day at this time, a frog would hop to our door and sit quietly near the wall cabinet, contemplating the scene as if it were a philosopher lost in thought. Sometimes when I saw it, I would wonder aloud what prince had lost his way and, having been turned into a frog, ended up here. Just as I finished cooking and the sun went down, it would hop off, neither taking nor leaving a thing.
One day, I thought I would use this frog, so faithful in its visits, to train my daughter’s elocution. So I controlled my lips, and in a weird, nasal voice said, “Hey, I’m Ms Frog. How are you?”
My daughter was startled, but thrilled. She jumped from her stool and tugged at my clothing, saying excitedly, “Mama, the frog can talk!”
In my own voice, I said, “It must have read a lot of books, and that’s how it learned to talk.”
My daughter squatted happily in front of the frog and said, “Hey, Ms Frog, where is your home?”
The frog did not move, but the words tumbled out from its tightly closed mouth. It was an avid reader of Hans Christian Andersen’s books, and was familiar with the legends in the Arabian Nights. Every day, it sat facing little Ke Jun, telling her endless stories. Ke Jun listened, mesmerised, her eyes sparkling with joy. Sometimes, the frog even told her its own stories, which were always full of traditional values. It would also sometimes engage in a battle of wits with her, with neither giving way to the other. Occasionally the frog’s remarks would hurt her feelings, and she would pull at my leg, saying, “Mama, Ms Frog is bullying me!”
At those times, I would slip into another role. Turning to the “scapegoat”, I said, “Frog, you need to apologise now, or go back to your own home.”
The frog would obediently say, “Sorry, little girl!”
I used this to educate her, saying, “When you say or do something wrong, quickly apologise. You have to own up to your mistakes, okay?”
Ke Jun and the frog would both say, “Okay!”
Each day as the darkness thickened and the frog hopped away, innocent little Ke Jun would follow it, saying, “Ms Frog, come earlier tomorrow!”
The next day, she and I would sit in the fading light of evening waiting for Ms Frog to grace us with her presence. We played this game for more than a year. After that, our kitchen underwent major renovations, and the frog’s visits stopped.
As little Ke Jun grew up, her wit became sharper by the day. Though I often, perhaps a little vainly, think of myself as verbally astute, when I came up against her quick thinking, I was immediately defeated. Even when she was very young, her logic was strong and clever, and it was hard to refute her arguments.
One night when she was only six years old, I came home from an outing to see that her brothers had both gone upstairs to rest, leaving her alone on the sofa reading comics books, giggling every now and then. I went into the kitchen to put away the groceries I had bought, shouting, “It’s late! Hurry and get ready for bed.”
She ignored me. I called to her again, but she sat there, unmoving as a mountain. I rushed over, prepared to start scolding, but she lifted her big eyes and said, looking hurt, “Mama, you’re so busy, but my brothers just look after their own interests and went to bed. I am the only one who waited up for you. It’s really unfair of you to yell at me like that.”
She often did many things that left me not knowing whether to laugh or cry. I would be hopping mad inside, yet would not have a good reason to scold her.
I usually wrote a lot of letters, so I had a habit of buying many postage stamps and storing them in plastic boxes, separating them according to their different values. As a matter of convenience, I bought more than a hundred of each at one time, some worth five cents, some twenty cents, some forty cents, some sixty cents, and some one dollar.
Once during the school holidays, I had accepted an invitation to fly to China and participate in a literary event. A week later, I came home from my trip. As I was catching up on my correspondence, I opened the drawer, and could not help but scream. All my postage stamps were gone. The empty boxes were left open, like treacherous mouths gaping at me. There had been so many stamps—enough to last me two years at least. Why had they all disappeared? Where had they gone?
I went to James and asked him. “It wasn’t me. I haven’t touched a single one.”
I flew upstairs and opened the door to Ke Jun’s room. Before I could even open my mouth, the blood rushed to my head. My god, the stamps—every last one of them had been stuck to her bookcase, covering it from top to bottom. I heard myself screaming, “What are you doing playing with my stamps?!”
She was just seven years old then, colouring at her desk, her crayons spread out all over. Upon hearing my question, she looked up fearlessly and said calmly, “Didn’t you say I could decorate my room any way I wanted?”
It was true. That was exactly what I had said. In an effort to encourage my children to be creative, I had said that they could decorate their rooms any way they wanted. My sons had not taken advantage of the opportunity. Only my daughter had run with the suggestion, covering her walls with all sorts of doodles. Even her pink chair was scrawled over.
“You can draw on the cabinet, but why did you take my stamps? Stamps are for mailing letters, don’t you know that?”
“I didn’t know,” she said honestly. “I thought they were decals.”
“Decals!” I shouted. “If you didn’t know, you should have asked.”
“You were overseas. How could I ask?” Blinking her large eyes, she said, “I’m sorry, Mama.”
Everything she said made sense. And she had even apologised. What could I do? I gritted my teeth and swallowed my anger.
Before long, another similarly infuriating incident occurred. I bought a bottle of branded perfume for nearly two hundred dollars and kept it in my bedroom. One day, while I was sitting at the computer writing an article, a floral fragrance wafted to my nose. At first I thought nothing of it, but the smell grew stronger. Feeling a bit suspicious, I rushed to my bedroom. My adorable daughter had taken that expensive bottle of perfume and was spraying at a cockroach on the floor, which was twisting and turning in the aromatic onslaught. I shouted, “What are you doing?”
She turned to look at me, a huge smile on her face. “Mama, you’re afraid of cockroaches. I’m helping you kill them.”
Angry, I snatched the perfume bottle from her hand and said, “This is perfume. How would it kill a cockroach?”
She pointed at the bottle, aggrieved, and said, “It’s obviously poison.”
I looked at the bottle and my fuming anger transformed into helpless laughter. The gold print across the black bottle said in huge letters, Poison. The perfume’s name had sabotaged me! Watching me all angry in the face one minute and laughing out loud the next, my daughter must have thought, Wow, my mum’s crazy.
As my daughter grew up, she picked up a lot of words. By the time she was ten, she started to use notes to express her thoughts. Each note showed the changes her world was going through. You could hear both her laughter and her tears in what she wrote. What was most wonderful was that the notes often appeared in unexpected places, surprising and sometimes startling me.
One night when I came home, I found a note under my pillow. It read:
Mama, I waited for you until eleven. I’m tired and can’t stay up any
longer. I will go to bed, but you owe me a kiss. In future, remember not to come home so late when you go out.
After a friend’s visit, I found this note on my computer keyboard:
Just now you criticised me in front of your friend. You really shouldn’t do that. You carefully raised me to this age, yet carelessly hurt my pride, and it made me very sad. I don’t think you’re a good mother. You should examine yourself and think it over.
Another time, after she threw a fit, I found this under my alarm clock:
Mama, I know I was in the wrong, but I am your daughter—in fact, your only daughter. Can you really bear not to forgive me?
The cutest of all was one I found in the refrigerator:
Mama, I love you, I love you, I love you! I have so much love for you that, even if it were left in the freezer forever, it would not be frozen.
Finding these little notes all over the house filled my life with colour. Once when I came home, I found a note she had scrawled on the big bedroom mirror in toothpaste, saying, “Mama, I love you!” She wrote in huge letters, filling across the whole mirror, which must have wasted a few tubes of toothpaste—and I won’t even mention the troublesome work of cleaning the mirror.
Every year on Mother’s Day and my birthday, she would lock herself in her room and busily go about her construction, giving full play to her creativity. She came up with a different design twice every year, without ever repeating them. Once, she gave me a long fan folded tightly. When I gently opened it, it was like the words sprawled across the fan were cast in honey, sweetening my heart. Another time, it was an exquisite porcelain plate tied with a ribbon, the words written on the plate describing me as a “perfect mum”; even though the description was clearly exaggerated, I still accepted it with joy. Another time, she wrote words dipped in honey on card stock, the size of a palm, and strung them together with a cord, like a mini-sized novel.