i am my mother's daughter

I am currently sitting at a cafe studying, surrounded by pairs of mothers and daughters. 

In the midst of walking over to the garbage can to throw away my croissant wrapper (Nino's salvaggio croissant, 7/10, would have been better if I'd toasted it), I tripped over a woman's computer wire. It sprang away from her laptop and landed like a rubber snake on the floor. Embarassing!!!! 

As I sheepishly handed the wire back ot the confused lady, her mom chided, "see, I knew this would happen if you plugged it in there!", while the daughter retorted, "you literally did this".  

I just walked back to my seat, after reassuring them that it was no big deal and apologizing for tripping. 💀

The whole situation was massively awkward, but to me, it was also quite heartwarming. Because as they once again took up their conversation, gossiping while I worked at the table beside them, I felt a sense of comfort. I guess a part of me saw my own mother and I in these two women. 

The most complicated family relationships are those between daughters and mothers. We are all too similar to our moms, in the things we experience, the traps we fall for, in our temperments and ticks. Yet we clash so often, over computer wires and over tears. And how are you meant to thank the woman who gave up everything, who crossed the ocean in the hopes that one day, someone like you would live a better life than someone like her? And how are you meant to feel when the one person who is supposed to understand you more than anyone else, doesn't seem to understand you at all?

Something I've found prevelant in Asian parents is that they simply don't know how to express their love. When reading Bui's memoir, the page on "I love you" getting stuck in the throat, and emerging as buying dresses and making fruit, resonated deeply with me. Because I, too, had a mother who loved buying me clothes, cutting me fruit every night, and remembering all my favorite dishes, so that she could make them whenever we argued. Recently I've noticed that my parents have started to say "I love you" to me. I have lots of difficulty saying it back. It's always awkward for me; these three words are too sappy, too unlike me. We are simply not an "I love you" family, and I am certainly not an "I love you" daughter. 

So I've taken up my mother's habits, drawing portraits of my parents, of my brother, trying to translate all my love onto the paper. When I think about it, it's really quite sad. Though this unspoken, shy sort of love is the one that I appreciate more than any words, our inability to communicate with each other is more of a language barrier than my shitty chinese, and her equally choppy english. 

I used to cry and cry to my mom, complaining about all my problems, about feeling inferior or left out. I wanted her to embrace me and say it would be okay. That she loved me, and so I was alright. At these times, words were all I wanted from her. Instead, she would scold me. She'd say I was too soft, that I cause my own problems, and that if I were too loud, I should just talk less. 

Why, mom?

I know now what she meant was, I needed to have a stronger heart to face the world, that I needed to learn how to pull myself out of the holes I'm in, that being the loudest person in the room would not help me to co-exist with others. That she loved me. It was just that she was not familiar with gentle comfort, only with harsh lessons and pragmatic advice. 

I'm no good at comforting my friends either. They tell me that they just want someone to listen to them, someone to take their side for a while as they figure it out. All I see are their problems, and all I give them are my harsh solutions.

I imagine they also want to ask me, "Why, Nicole? Why on God's green earth would you say that?" 

I don't know either, but I am trying to be softer, I am trying to be someone worth taking tears to. 

I have so many convoluted feelings about my mom that I still don't know how to put into words. Over the years, I've come to realize I am a pretty horrible daughter, always thinking about myself and nothing else. More than that, after my brother graduated and left the house, I've become all the more aware of how my time with my parents is running out. I don't know what to do with all this information. It scares and saddens me. If you've been reading my blogs, you'd know that lots of things scare me. I guess I just have to find a way to live anyway. 

I told my mom about the cafe, inviting her to go with me sometime. She swiftly asked me how much the drinks were, and upon hearing their price she turned me down 😢. I don't blame her. After all, we share in this sort of frugality. One day, though, I hope to drink coffee with her, at some fancy, overpriced cafe. I hope we can laugh about how silly I was as a teenager. I hope she doesn't hold it against me. I know I don't hold anything against her. 

My mom often asks me if she is beautiful. Of course, I always tell her that she is the most beautiful person ever, because what kind of daughter wouldn't say that? 

In truth, though I know she is very pretty ☺, I've never really looked at her face and seen a beautiful woman. I've always seen my mom. It's simply because she's my mom that I think she is beautiful. 

I wonder who she sees when she looks at me, at my picture on her lockscreen? Am I the splitting image of her? Does she see herself when I'm disobeying all of her advice? When I lock myself in my room again, upset over something trivial? Am I pretty, am I ugly, am I just her daughter? 

galaxies in her eyes