Thoughts, translated…
My younger brother was three years younger, he’d hated studying since he was younger, my mother saved up all her pay to send him to cram school, but it was, useless. Later on, my mother died of illness, and that was the year my younger brother was in the fifth grade, without my mother’s paying attention to him, making him study, he’d not at all, picked up any books. As I got into high school, he’d not scored high enough in his middle school entrance exams, and my father’s worries and anger had, replaced the joys of helping me celebrate getting into high school.
In order for my younger brother to have a viable skill, my father took him to apprentice to five, to six shops, but, he’d lacked the interests, not long after he’d gotten started, he’d, run away again, in the end, he’d even, lost contact with all of us; three years later, he’d returned home on his own, my father was furious, ordered him to find a job to live off of himself, ever since, my younger brother had, vanished. A decade later when we met again, it was, when my father fell ill, although they missed one another so, but, the moment they saw one another, they got at it again, and, my younger brother disappeared again, and, until after my father had died, he’d still not shown up. Six years later, he, who’d taken up the habit of drinking had finally, gotten into contact with me again, told me that he hated our father, for ruining his life, and so, even as our father died, he’d not wished to show his final respects toward him.
I recalled, that when he was growing up, my younger brother was very loved, with a pair of big, smiling eyes, with lips of sugar too, and everybody we knew loved him so, my mother loved him especially. He loved art, and, the comics that were wide read back then, he’d made up the storylines for, but, back then, the adults all focused on the academics, and, all of his skills, his hobbies were taken away from him, because of him, not making a high enough grade on his college entrance exams.
Recalling my younger brother’s past, other than feeling that he’d wasted his youth away, I’d also, felt that heartache for him. Back then, that cute little boy, had he not been born into a home, where the focus of making good grades is emphasized, maybe, there may have been, a very different result? If my father didn’t use the high-pressure, the physical and verbal punishments on him, or how my mother never spoiled him rotten, so long as one of them had the patience, to guide him toward a path that lined up with his interests, then maybe, my younger brother would’ve turned out, completely, different?
As I became a mother, I’d finally understood, the anxieties of my father for losing his wife in midlife, taking care of his family all alone on his own, along with how he’d hated himself, for my younger brother not doing better in life. thinking about how when my daughters were still young, I’d also gotten angered by how they failed to perform up to my expectations, and gotten angered, to the point of losing control completely, it’s just, that I’d immediately connected to how my father treated my younger brother, and immediately, change my own attitude, and, it’d made me understand the hardships of being a parent.
The past, gone like smokes, after I’d walked through the first half of my life, passed through the trials of my life, I’d finally come to understand, how precious the time spend with one’s young is, and, as parents, in the process of watching our young grow up, how much patience, how much tolerance is putting it to, raising our young.
So, this, is on the black sheep of the family, and, this woman learned, by watching the interactions of her younger brother with her mother and father, and realized what they’d done wrong, and she is making a conscious decision, NOT to repeat the same mistakes that her parents had made with her younger brother with her own young.