Growing up without a mother, and after she’d reconnected back with her mother, she still didn’t have one! Translated…
Back in the 90s, when the foreign spouses aren’t “in” yet, my dad was ahead of his times. My mother is Burmese, as she gave birth to me, she was, only eighteen.
Mom left her home country to come to Taiwan, lived in an extended family with her in-laws, her eldest and younger sisters-in-law, the conflicts, the frictions that existed from before I was born, already increased by the day, before I started mumbling out my very first word, my parents were, divorced. Thankfully, because I was the eldest granddaughter, I didn’t get loved any less.
Recalling that one day in elementary school, some kids in my class made fun of how I didn’t have a mom, I’d cried home and told it to my aunt, the very next day, my aunt started taking me to school herself, until I graduate4d. Shortly after I graduated from elementary, my aunt was marrying off. The night before she was wed, I’d stayed in her room, and carried on in casual conversations with her, my aunt told me, that she’d prepared something for me. It was an envelope, with my mother’s photo, and a small slip of paper—with my mother’s phone number on it.
The first time I’d called up my mother, it was in my first year of middle school, the first time I got to see her, I was, already in the first year of high school then. Then, afterwards, every time I’d asked her out to meet, she’d agreed. We’d not met up regularly, and, we’d not gotten very intimate with one another when we got together; the year I entered into college, Facebook was starting, I’d added my mother as “Friend”, and I’d learned, that she’s remarried, and has a cute daughter now.
Every time I saw my mother posting things on my half sister, I’d felt so sour inside, oh, how I’d hoped, I can be the character in her writings too.
One day, I’d worked up the courage, called my mother up, told her I missed her, and hoped that there would be more things she could post about me. But after my mother heard, she’d only told me, that she felt sorry and that she’d owed me, but hoped that I can not contact her again, for she’d found her stability in her new husband’s household now.
After that day, I’d never called my mother again. And now, I’m a mother, I swore to myself, I will use ALL the love I have, to love my own young, to give my child the love I’d, never gotten as a young child BACK to him in multiples.
This, is the will of love I have, as a mother.
And so, this, is on the abandonment of this woman’s younger years, her mother left her, and, although she had her loving aunts who’d loved her like she were their own, but, she’d still needed her mother, and, after she’d reconnected with her own mother, her mother told her that she’s remarried, and had a brand new family, and hoped that she wouldn’t call on her again, imagine that strong sense of betrayal this woman must’ve felt, but hey, at least, now that she’s a mother herself, she’s, giving ALL the love she’d lacked from her own mother, to her own son.