echo Ever since I was a little child, all that my eyes took in was my mother. My father was wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but he was working all day, so I was never as close to him. My mother, however, was always there for me. She was my primary caretaker, after all. She drove me to school, brought me to playgrounds, and cooked meals for me. To me, she was the sun, the moon and the stars. Everything I did was influenced by her, from doing arduous house chores diligently, to working hard on tasks I was assigned from school. We were always sung praises of looking alike by friends and family, and how lucky we were to share such physical similarities, as most daughters they knew looked more like their fathers. I always took in those comments with so much pride. Looking back at it, I hope my mother was just as jubilant and prideful.
“Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place
Where, as a child, I’d hide
And pray for the thunder and the rain to quietly pass me by”
From a plethora of childhood memories I could choose, the few of which stand out to me encompass my mother. When I was a little girl, I was known as the neighbourhood “scaredy-cat”, as I would always scream at the mere sight of creepy crawlies and tiny critters. What I feared the most, however, was the rain. I hated the monsoon season and how dreary everything looked, and my mother knew that. I also hated the thunder and lightning that accompanied heavy downpour, which my mother also knew. Whenever it rained, she would always embrace me tightly, the warmth of her hug shedding away the rainy chill stuck to my skin. I often buried my face in her thick, long hair, which smelt of a fragrant amalgamation of coffee, sunshine, and jasmine.
I remember how she explained the meaning behind my name the day I turned seven, when I had just started primary school. She sat me down at the dinner table, explaining why she named me “Angela”. She said with the gentlest smile on her face, “In this city full of great evil, you are the only angel that blinds them all. You are mummy’s light and hope. You are my little angel, my little gift from the heavens.”
Then I asked her, curious like a little kitten, “Mummy, why is your surname ‘Chen’ while mine is ‘Yap’? Why aren’t we the same?”
To which she replied, “It is tradition, Angela. We shouldn’t question tradition.”
Nothing perplexed little me more than that answer. I, like many other children, did not fully understand why we only follow our fathers’ names. Later that night while blowing my birthday candles, I wished that my surname would somehow be magically changed to my mother’s. I laugh every single time I think of it.
I remember how we always danced to rock music – especially to Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” – in our living room, screaming “sweet love of mine” at the top of our lungs whenever the part came. It was my mother’s favourite song back then, so naturally, it became my favourite song as well. She always told me that in her family before me, rock music was taboo in the household, and so were tattoos. As an act of defiance, she listened to rock music all the time, and even got herself a tattoo of angel wings at the back of her neck when she was a rebellious young adult. I always laughed at how absurd her stories were as a naive child, since she always talked about them in such a cheerful, jestful manner. Looking back at it, she was merely masking her pain to protect my innocence.
If it weren’t for tradition, she would’ve estranged herself entirely from her family. That being said, I was never familiar with the maternal side of my family. Every time it was Chinese New Year, I remember the dread I felt when I was forced to talk to unfamiliar relatives. My mother would always be quiet and passive whenever we were in her old home. My grandparents only acknowledged my existence and gave me red packets as per tradition, but we never bonded over anything else. I remember this one time when they asked my mother if she was ever planning to give me a little brother. I remember the heavy sigh she heaved and her reply, a sharp and stern, “Never.”
They then talked a little more privately in another room, away from prying eyes. The atmosphere turned dark and sullen so suddenly I nearly forgot it was supposed to be a day to celebrate joyous reunions and festivities.
I remember the ride back home that day vividly. I was clutching onto my red packets tightly while waiting for my father to start the car, anticipating our return home. My mother sat next to me in the backseat, which to little-me, was a little odd, considering how she would always sit in the front. She whispered to me in my left ear, her voice trembling but sweet, “Angela, remember that you are the only sweet love of mine, and that you will never have to worry about a brother taking mummy’s love away from you.”
We did not visit them for the next two Chinese New Year celebrations.
“She’s got eyes of the bluest skies
As if they thought of rain
I’d hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain”
It’s been many years since that happened, and many years since my grandmother’s passing. It was during the monsoon season, when the southeast asian downpour was at its worst of the year. The air was damp, and so were my mother’s eyes. In spite of that, she shed no tears, like her eyes were refusing to show those streams of sorrow, so they formed a glossy shield over her cornea. At that time, it was the first time seeing my mother down in the doldrums, donning such a sulky expression. I was a preteen at that time, and the concept of death was new to me. I just knew I should grieve for my grandmother, so I cried. I shed tears of emptiness and empathy just to show my mother that she was not alone in her grief. Looking back at it, my mother must’ve known how pretentious I was, yet she did not say a word.
The funeral went on for three days. Before they closed the casket on the third day, we were given the chance to give our grandmother one last look before she was cremated. I never thought my grandmother ever looked peaceful – in life, and in death. By the end of the mournful ceremony, none of my mother’s siblings, including herself, cried for their dead mother. My mother had a very public outburst after we placed my grandmother’s urn in the columbarium. She yelled at her three brothers, “After all our mother had done for all of you – her dearest sons – you all have the audacity to just stand there and look sad? No tears, no anguish, no nothing? Have you no feelings?”
I remember my aunt – her only sister – pulling her back and chiding her while her brothers refused to look at them. My uncles were all the first to leave. Only my mother and my aunt were the ones left of their family to send my bereaved and dumbfounded grandfather home.
Ever since that day, the crevices of my mother’s once cheerful nature began cracking. It was as if she became an entirely different person. Her once bright eyes turned dreary with gloom, her dark eyebags started carrying a burden I did not understand. Her warm, soft hands that once held mine turned rough and cold, her fingertips icy with numbness from the chill of Mother Death. Sure, she was still a wonderful mother who cared deeply for me, but how deeply must you care for one to make them feel loved? To this very moment, I do not understand what it feels like to be loved. Perhaps I knew it well as a child, and perhaps it gradually slipped out of my mind as time progressed.
The changes started slowly. She started shortening the length of her hair, which I so loved as a child. First her hair reached her back, then it reached her shoulders, and finally, it stayed at her jaw. I didn’t think much of it back then, but the concept of me burying my face in her long, soft hair like I did as a child became so foreign to me as an angsty teenager who got into the emo subculture in the mid to late noughties. I often blasted music in my bedroom, hoping my mother would come in and enjoy it with me like how we did when we danced to Guns N Roses. Conversely, every single time she barged into my room, instead of nodding her head in approval and acknowledging my music taste, she shot me a glare of disapproval and disappointment as she turned off my radio. On my fourteenth birthday, I tried playing “Sweet Child O’ Mine” once again in our living room, but the CD was scratched and refused to play. My mother decided it was time to throw the CD away, like how she discarded my childhood artworks.
It was during my late teenage years when I began noticing the details of the tattoo on the back of her neck, just under the ends of her short hair. The tattoo which she always told me about, but little me cared too little to admire. The tattoo of a pair of wings that belonged to angels stared back at me every time she turned her back against me. I liked looking at the details – how intricate each feather was, and how beautiful they all looked. However, the feathers started fading gradually as time passed. The details became blurred, and the linework fuzzy. It was as if the once beautiful angel wings were muddied by rainwater and ink. I began drawing the same tattoo under my arm everyday with gel pens, hoping to salvage what was left on the back of my mother’s neck. She knew what I was doing, and smiled whenever I did it, but always warned me sternly to never get a permanent tattoo, as “nothing stays permanently”. I remember coming back from my secondary school one rainy day, plopping my bag down onto the floor and trodding my way into our dining room, tired from my assignments. I sat down at the dinner table, watching my mother prepare dinner for us. It didn’t take me long to realise that she had her tattoo of that once beautiful pair of angel wings removed. She never told me why, and I was (and still am) afraid to ask.
“Oh, where do we go now?”
It became abundantly clear to me during my adulthood that my mother was too torn in between loving and loathing her immediate family before me, which hindered her beliefs in what should be done, and what should not. She was in a constant haze, a constant moral dilemma. I can see it clearly now, that she had tried so hard to protect me from the trauma she had faced, and while she did it well to protect my childhood innocence, she gradually recoiled during my teenage years when I reminded her too much of her young self. It became even more evident to me when I read through her journal while clearing out old things when we moved out from our old home. Some words were illegible and smudged, but I was able to read and understand what she truly felt about motherhood.
It was apparent that she started journaling when she was pregnant with me, writing out her worries and woes, promising herself that she will never become like her mother, that she will treat all her children – should she have many – equally. This sentiment changed when she found out I was a girl. She began writing obsessively about how much she wanted to protect me, how she wanted to dote on me, how she wanted to put all the attention on me. Only me, her little Angela, could be the sole sweet love of hers. She even dedicated an entire page to a hypothetical situation in which she gave birth to a son. She worried that she might treat him better than me, like how her own mother did. The final verdict she had on this entire “what if” was to just avoid blessing me with a sibling, lest it turn out to be a boy, which she was ultimately confident in loving more than me. Her apprehension of her worst fear coming true resulted in her avoidance.
In some pages, she expressed resentment towards her mother for her ill treatment. She never liked how her parents favoured sons over daughters just because they could pass down the family surname. She wrote that her brothers always received more food on their plates, more allowance, and more educational opportunities compared to her, while she – as a middle child and the only other girl in the family apart from her sister, who was the youngest, and therefore the second-most cherished despite being female – received little from her parents. Little food, little allowance, little opportunities and very little love. She, like me, failed to understand what “love” is. The men in the family were expected to be beacons of joy that will pass down their father’s legacy, while the women were expected to only care for the young and old. My mother hated that. And to her dismay, she was right, in the end. She and my aunt were the only ones left in their family to take care of my ailing grandfather, while my uncles were all absent and “busy”.
Strangely, her resentment towards her mother changed to regret once she passed away. She began writing apologetically in her journal, convincing herself that perhaps she was in the wrong, not her mother. In the name of “filial piety”, she decided that perhaps her mother was doing what was best for her family, and she was wrong to defy them. Yet at the same time, she expressed concerns on whether traditions and old ideologies should be followed or left in the dust. Grief destroyed my mother, made her confused and penitent. Mother Death came with a sheath that slayed my grandmother and left a deep cut in my mother’s heart. That cut in turn, bled into my eyes. Our blood was always contaminated, my mother was just able to suppress it better, until she couldn’t.
Since then, she started writing about not being able to love her daughter. Why? There are two main reasons, which she justified in her own way. One, all her life, she was not able to please her mother, whose final request was to bear my father a son. Yes, she was a rebellious daughter, but she always craved love from her parents, especially her mother. My grandmother’s death did not give her closure. Two, I began reminding her too much of herself, which she could not love – I was her mirror, and her reflection scared her. Love is a chain reaction. Pure, unadulterated love that is strong enough to pass through generations shall bless the fruits of the tree. Corrupted love affected by pesticides, toxins and acidic rainwater shall pass down generations, poisoning them one way or another; directly or indirectly.
I neither know nor understand what real love is. I only know the concept of maternal love, which my mother gave me, but was not enough for me to satiate my desperation for my mother’s authentic affection, which I now realise I will never receive. I just know for a fact that if it weren’t for generational trauma, my mother and I wouldn’t be at this point. We would’ve been blissful, our bond unshattered. She failed to protect me, and I was too ignorant to understand what was going on. I do not blame her, and I do not blame myself either. I do not know how to progress from this. The thought of becoming a mother myself, like my mother and the mother before her, haunted me. Since reading my mother’s journal, a barrage of questions swarmed my mind. What if my mother never loved me? What if I can’t love my future child enough? What if I favour one child over the other? What if I hate myself and inadvertently pass that hate onto my children?
I love my mother, don’t get me wrong. I just sometimes doubt my mother reciprocating these feelings. I feel that I am nothing without her. Sometimes I feel as though my entire existence revolves around my mother. I long to please, I long to obey; yet I long to be free, I long to stay away. I acknowledge the importance of my mothers and maternal love, but I am too scared of it. I believe the best solution to end this never ending loop of generational trauma is to stop having children altogether. Egregious, archaic traditions will continue somehow. Sons will always be favoured over daughters.
Therefore, I have reached my own conclusion, a solution to this convoluted predicament. What is it, you may ask? Well, my surname shall die with me. This nightmare shall die with me. No child should ever suffer the rippling effects of terrible customs. In my mind, the best way will be to avoid it altogether.
“In this world, there is only our mother who is best. (…) If we leave our mother’s embrace, where can we find bliss?” – Josephine Siong Fong Fong, “Shi Shang Zi You Ma Ma Hao”
(Translated from: 世上只有妈妈好 [。。。] 离开妈妈的怀抱, 幸福哪里找? – 萧芳芳,《世上只有妈妈好》)
Written By: Julia
