Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Story That Didn't Make It Here

I was going to tell you a story of a battle with my mom where I had fought hard, ultimately won, and constantly regretted.

But instead, I'm going to squirrel that story away and stay up late this Christmas weekend so I can spend hours figuring out how to do justice to some hazy adolescent memory. And that will definitely be one for the private blog or future boyfriend.

One thing I will tell you is this: I think I found it tonight when I was gingerly dipping my toes (with Santa red polish) into the bath. For some reason, it finally hit me - why I had always tried to do everything Sisi-possible to try to make my parents proud (and still felt lacking) even when I had known all along that they were already proud of me simply because I was their daughter.

Too bad that there is already a Jung Chang, an Amy Tan, and now an Amy Chua*. I can definitely write volumes on Chinese American mother-daughter dynamics and spin stories so that readers will believe that I am simply 'principled' and not stubborn.

Well I guess that's what blogs are for.

* Chinese American authors who wrote about their relationships with their mothers and left children like me obsessed with how much my childhood resembled 20% of character X, 35% of Y, and 45% of Z.

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