“Mother” is one of the most uttered words on the planet, yet to me has always appeared distant and alienating. During her pregnancy, my mother became so ill that doctors advised her to abort me due to concern that I might not develop healthily. As soon as I was born I was taken away from my mother because of the complications caused by giving birth to me. Soon after I was returned to her, an explosion at a nearby gas station forced my grandmother to take me home for shelter, separating me from my mother again. It seemed as if my strained relationship with my mother was plotted from the moment of my conception.
This plot was deepened further by multiple cinematic-style events which included my mother developing schizophrenic symptoms and my father having an affair (which my mother suspected and found out about). Just image all these things happening in the late 1980s and early 1990s in rural Red China. With all these problems happening at once, my whole family sat down to fix them. Unfathomably, distance was the only resolution, as it had been with my relationship with my mother. My parents separated and went to live in different households in the same city. For reasons beyond my understanding my dad felt this distance was not enough; he moved to another city under the guise of a promotion. The ever-lengthening distance between my parents resonated in my relationship with my mother. In time the separation so distressed her that her schizophrenia worsened to the point where she could no longer distinguish my dad from her two brothers. I was scared and confused as I sat through my mother’s addled confession, in which she detailed her dedication and love to me not as her son, but as her husband, lover, and trustee. The fear and bafflement I felt at that moment deepened the chasm between us, and I started avoiding her whenever possible. This feeling of dread did not disappear until my dad and I moved to Canada.
I don’t think I could have survived this period in my life without the support I received from my maternal grandparents. They took me in wholeheartedly, providing me with all the love, support, and guidance a child could ever need from the moment that damned gas station exploded to the moment I left them for Canada. I’m no longer scared to Facetime my mother, but I now find myself intentionally shying away from the photos of my grandparents hanging on the wall in front of my desk. This avoidance is caused neither by my being scared or by the scars of my past. Rather, it is derived from the guilt I feel at having left them.
When people ask me who my idols are in life, unequivocally and decisively I say that they are my maternal grandparents. If there is one thing I could repeat in my next life, it would be to live as their son, not their grandson. Now, I feel this answer is unjust to my mother. It has taken me almost 30 years and nearly a Ph.D. degree to realize this.
I have never considered my mom as fitting any traditional description of a mother. The most common adjectives when we describe mothers are “caring”, “protective”, “supportive”, “loving”, and so on. I have not felt any of this for my mother. She rarely and barely cared for me when I was little; she did not know what I like and what my interests were; she beat me when I couldn’t recite my multiplication tables before bed. I often asked myself growing up: why couldn’t I have had Joe’s mom, Al’s mom, Max’s mom, a freaking normal mom? I cried and raged over this question for a very long time.
My mother had a tough life. She had been really sick while carrying me. Bringing me into this world she suffered severe complications. Only one day after her difficult labor the cursed explosion at the gas station separated us. Hormonal changes, sickness, complications, and that perfect shock wave from the gas station; no wonder my mom had schizophrenic episodes. The divorce only exacerbated her symptoms. However, I remember that despite all these hardships she still took care of me on her good days. She intentionally left me with my grandparents so that I wouldn’t have to see her suffering and have this torment me. She cooked me dinners that were simple but delicious and which I now frequently make myself. She taught me math, literature, and science. She told me there were no monsters around so that I could be brave enough to sleep through the night. While she sat beside me, oblivion overtook me and transported me to dreamland. I’ve thought about where her mind was as she was doing these things for me. Battling with her pain, distraction, and anxiety. She would often sit quietly with no movement that I can recall. Her suffering that I once did not perceive now provides me with the gallantness to tackle the difficulties I face, to be independent but also not ashamed to ask for help, to simply try my best to live my life with no regrets.
We used to say that mothers and fathers each provide 50% of a child’s DNA. Not to disrespect dads (and I love mine), but scientifically speaking this has been proven untrue. The discovery of microbiota in our body and its genomes has shed light onto the symbiotic relationship between humans and the microbes within us. We are not a mere host-parasite duo; instead, we exist in a mutually-beneficial relationship. The importance of microbiota reaches every niche of our lives, ranging from food digestion to the normal development of immunity. We pick up many indispensable bugs from our surroundings, but it is our mothers who lay the foundation of our microbiota in the womb. In fact, mothers provide the first line of defense for the child as it passes through the birth canal by coating the child with her microbiota, providing more microbial DNA than both mom’s and dad’s DNA combined. Subsequently, the mother feeds her child with breast milk containing the fragile microbes in the child’s gut. In fact, the third most abundant component in a mother’s breast milk is a complicated sugar called HMO (human milk oligosacchrides) which cannot be used by the infant but rather exist solely to feed the fragile microbes in the infant’s gut, helping the baby build a healthy microbiota from the very beginning of its life.
She is still a petite woman easily buried in a crowd; however, she is the statue of liberty in my heart and mind that represents the entirety of who I am, why I am here, and what I do. I love her, but I have not told her yet in words. I miss her, but we are separated by the widest ocean in the world. I want to ask her if she loves me now.
We used to play card games in her bedroom, including one we improvised called “WHO AM I?”. I once wrote “Mama” on the card and taped onto her forehead. She spent the longest time trying to (unsuccessfully) guess what was written on it. She might have lost her sense of selfness with her sickness, but I know that she still loves me and a I love her. It is now my responsibility to let her know that she is still the person I’ve loved since I was little.
