My mother was a STEM major who’d been hired by one of the world’s leading conglomerates after graduating college. She did not tolerate wishy-washy answers.
“Meaning that nothing interesting or out of the ordinary happened that would warrant additional discussion,” I said.
As I watched my mother slowly nibble away at her food, I tried to imagine what her reaction would be upon learning I was dead. Would she even cry? Probably, I guessed. She’d think back on the good times, like when I was still in diapers, or maybe when I was in preschool or what have you and be overcome by a profound sense of loss. For all of the things I held against her, I did still harbor some amount of love for her as the woman who’d raised and nurtured me. And part of me did feel terrible for wanting to take the life she’d given me and leave her here without any family whatsoever.
After we finished eating, we discussed my higher education plan. She brought out her work laptop and pulled up a spreadsheet with all of my grades and test scores.
“You made a careless mistake on a single math problem that prevented you from getting a perfect score,” she said. “That’s unacceptable. Do better.”
We went down the list, and she grilled me for the umpteenth time on each and every tiny mistake I made that could appear on my record. My mother never praised me, not even when I got all As. She considered that a form of coddling—and that if she told me I was performing well, I’d let it go to my head and get careless thereafter. All I could do was continue to play my role as her good little honor student, doing as best I could. Not to please her, but rather to ensure I never upset her. It hadn’t always been this way, though. Back when I was in elementary school, I used to stand up for myself quite a bit more often.
However, every time I fought back, she’d respond in the same exact way. “I’m only telling this for your own good,” she’d say. “I’m thinking about your future here. Because I want you to be happy.”
Those were some of the only times she ever let glimpses of motherly concern peek through from beneath her clad-iron veneer, and that alone was enough to make me feel bad for trying to stand up for myself. In the end, I’d always give in and do as she said due to some vague feeling of indebtedness or obligation as her son.
“I’ve picked out a few colleges that seem viable given your academics,” she went on. “I’ve also got brochures for each of them, which you can look through later.”
My mother had already sent away for various documentation from all of the potential colleges she selected, which were stacked in a big pile on the table. I might even have been glad to have her do so much of the work in planning out my future and choosing a college for me…were I a mindless puppet with no will of my own.
“Okay. I’ll take a look and try to settle on a few,” I said, picking up the pile of brochures. This response seemed to satisfy my mother, thankfully, and I let out an internal sigh of relief. Living with her was like something of a mental game that always kept me on my toes—but so long as I never picked the incorrect dialogue options during these interactions, I’d be able to go to sleep that night without drawing her ire or having to sit through another lecture.
I didn’t loathe my mother, not by any means. I knew just how hard she worked, often late into the night at this very table, just to support our family and make ends meet. Sometimes, I’d even find her passed out asleep on the table with her laptop still open, and I’d go grab a cardigan to drape over her shoulders so she wouldn’t catch a cold. I knew that her hypercritical nature when it came to me was just her own (admittedly backward) way of showing her love for me, and I did genuinely appreciate her concern. But a lot of the time, it was far more suffocating than it was helpful.
In her mind, she probably felt she was doing me a kindness by throwing away all of my beloved art supplies from junior high, thinking that if I kept pouring so much time into my hobbies, I’d be wasting valuable studying time and thus sabotaging my own future. My mother genuinely believed that if I failed my entrance exams, I’d be resigned to being a societal outcast for the rest of my life, only able to eke out a meager existence with low-paying grunt work. By her logic, there was simply no other option than to get rid of these distractions, once and for all.
My mother and I traded off after-dinner cleanup duties every other day. It was her turn to wash dishes today, so I went and took the first bath. The two of us generally spent the last hours of the night before bed doing our own separate things—only on very rare occasions did we sit on the couch and watch TV together.
When it came time to retire for the evening and I lay in bed waiting for sleep to take hold, my thoughts wandered back to my father once again. He was a very tall man—a gentle giant, as it were—whom I never saw lose his temper, not even once. Granted, it was entirely possible this impression of him had been colored, to a large degree, by just how ruthless my mother was in comparison during their many disagreements. He had a very good grasp of English and worked as a translator for a living. He apparently spent several years in America during his childhood, which I assumed had a lot to do with his high level of fluency. His parents had also had him baptized during this period of his life, and he had been a practicing Catholic ever since.
Not to imply that he was a particularly devout believer—I never even saw him say grace before a meal. He would go to mass on Sundays and make the occasional small offering to his church, but that was about it. I had no idea how important his faith was to him in reality, but I did assume that it came in handy (at least indirectly) for his translation work. Since nearly 75 percent of U.S. citizens identified as Christians, having a deep understanding of the Christian mindset and their beliefs no doubt gave him better insight into aspects of American culture that would otherwise seem quite inscrutable to an outside observer.