Don't you know me by Now?

Mother and Daughter

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:38:34 +0200

Coming from Taiwan, my mother and I share a very close relationship like everyone else. But the cultural backgound enhances the peculiar - to western eyes at least - elements in the relationship between my mother and I.

In Taiwan, or indeed, in south east Asia, looks are all important. That is not to say that people don't treasure knowledge and academic prowess, far from it. The schools are getting less and less stressful and strict. But it wasn't long ago that we had to attend primary school from 7:30 am, through to 5:30 pm. In the mornings, every student in every class would be assigned a cleaning task. It was our job to clean our own classrooms, to wash the blackboard for the day, and the classroom closest to the toilet also had the joy of cleaning that too. Then there was cram school that parents sent their children to after school, to continue to study. Thankfully, my father believed it to be of no use for my future happiness, so I was never sent there. I was sent to art classes, music classes, ballet classes, piano lessons, cello lessons. It is very common in Taiwan for parents to do that for their children: to get them to learn all these other things.

Back to my mother and I. What I was trying to say is, though people work hard and study hard, looks are all important. It is the same here I guess. How many times have I heard that, if two girls with exactly the same CV, the prettier one would always get the job? But in Taiwan, and perhaps other parts of South East Asia (not being too familiar with other Asian countries, it is not my place to comment too much. But from what I heard from native people, it is not too far from what I experienced in Taiwan), how pretty a girl is, can make or break her life. I am to be slim, and it is okay and even encouraged, to be a bit underweight. For my mother, I am far more beautiful than anyone else, just like how all the mothers see their daughters. In Taiwan, it is the fashion to have snow white skin, to be as thin as a girl can humanly get, and to have big, big eyes. All in all, I think that what people seem to be aiming at, is to appear as western as possible. Hence, all the celebrities that we see on TV today in Taiwan, all have the uniform looks of big eyes, pale skin and all on the edge of being emaciated. With my naturally olive skin, my very small, Asian eyes, needless to say, I was not considered to be beautiful, ever, by conventional standards. But my mother sees it all differently. It is not until I was 16 and came to England to begin my life here, that I realised that naturally olive skin is quite an asset! A mother pushing a pram walked past me in Cambridge, she stopped me and complimented me on my complexion. I was so shocked that I didn't know how to react. She saw the funny side, and she expressed surprise at the fact that there was a whole country of people who didn't think so!
Then, there is the weight issue. Now, my mother is very beautiful. I am not just saying that because she is my mother. I am sayhing it because it is the universally known fact, that she, is, very, beautiful. She doesn't think so herself. She tells me off freely every time I complained that I didn't look like her or my handsome dad. She always says that she's given me the best of everything, and that I should be quiet. She has washboard stomache, a size 8 at most, and a 24 inch waist, while I won't disclose her age here, she is not exactly at an age when one would expect that. Yet my weight, is always a big thing.

I was very petite as a child, so it is a great big shock for my parents to see me growing past 5'5" and continuing. I am now taller than most Taiwanese girls, and am not made to be tall and lanky, or petite. When I was 16 years old, my weight ballooned. I was already at boarding school by then. So when my mother came to pick me up at the airport after the end of the first term (Michaelmas term as we called it at school), she was outraged. She couldn't believe that I would let myself go like that. At the time, she was concerned on so many levels. The health issue (I really was big), and of course, the looks issue. She could see that I was miserable. As a girl, I love fashion, and love to look nice in clothes. It goes without saying that my being unhappy didn't help with how the clothes "hang" on me. I believe that you don't have to be skinny to make the clothes look good. My opera singer friend, who is a happy, stunning and healthy size 14-16 proves that. No one looks better than her in her beautifully fitted ballgowns. No one looks more glamorous than her in her everyday clothes. Because she is confident, happy, with such a personality that it electrifies everyone who meets her. I was downcast, torturously self-conscious. My mother was desperate to buy me nice things to take back to England with me, but she could see that I didn't like the way I looked in most of the things that I tried on. She wants me to be beautiful, and she believes that I am. Yet...

I started running everyday, but the weight came off painfully slowly. Few years after that, I moved to London and found dancing. That took care of the last few pounds. She couldn't believe what I had become. She bought me everything I laid my eyes on and gave me anything and everything out of her wardrobe when I only said, "oh mum, that's nice." It never occurred to her that I might be saying "you must look beautiful in it." She can see that I am now healthy, much happier, and with that attitude, the clothes just look right.

"We never had money when you were little you know, " mum would say, when I get a bit anxious with the amount of stuffs that she gives me every time she sees me. "I have the most beautiful girl in the world for a daughter. Much more beautiful than all the other girls. Everywhere we go, adults always commented on how pretty you were. You remember Ms. Deng, your primary school teacher? She use to take you and her daughter out to play. She always said that she felt very proud having you with her. Because everyone always looked and said how pretty you were, and asked whether you were her daughter."

These stories all came out gradually. Mother talks more to me now. In Taiwan, mothers tend not to tell their daughters everything like they would to friends. Mothers and daughters simply don't have relationships that open. She would tell me, "and I want to dress you up all pretty, you know. With very nice clothes. Because you deserved it. You behaved yourself everywhere we went. Other children would be running around playing hide and seek in a nice restaurant, and knocking things over, making a racket. You never seemed to want to do that. You were always happy to just sit with me, or sometimes with my friends. And never making a mess or noise. But we didn't have the money. I could never afford to buy you those nice clothes for little girls that I saw in the shop windows. I could only afford those 3 for 1 deals in the markets next to vegetable stalls. Yet you, so much prettier than everyone else." She always says. Oh it's making me cry thinking about it now.

She also reminds me things that I forgot. "You never seem... quite the same like everyone else. At school, all your teachers told me that you seemed to live on another planet. When it was lunch time, everyone went for the big pieces of meat, or the vegetable that looked the nicest, you would take the worst one. The one with all bones and no meat on it, so that other children could have the bigger pieces. When you had some brand new stationary, and this other girl asked to swap you for her old one, you just did it without even arguing or questioning it. When other students wrote poems, they wrote about their school lives and their families. You, you wrote about snow and forest, trees and sunset. You had never even seen snow!" She would be driving me home after having coffee together in the VIP club in my city in Taiwan, and she would be telling me these. My virtues I guess. Stories long forgotten, or buried in the recess of the mind because... because I have never really seen it you see. Everything that I promised to achieve, everything that my parents hoped for me. Mothers... don't give up their hopes for their daughters, they never do that. It is moments like these, that make me realise that... that she sees me. She never seems to realise the power she has over me. One look, one word of approval. She called the other day after seeing some photographs, and asked me whether I'd put on weight since Christmas. I got upset but made sure that she didn't hear that on the phone. A bit later, she called back and apologised. She apologised like I had never heard her before. She worries that I wouldn't eat enough, she worries that I wouldn't eat right. She worries that I might tire myself out when she learns that I now got a proper job, and am working 4 days a week. She asked whether I might be too tired, I was like, but mother, most people work 5 days a week if not more!

But moments like that, memories like that, days of a life that I never forgot, but never really mentioned for fear that I would be crying like I am now. She sees me alright, clearer than anyone else because she is my mother. Reminders that... that I were a better person once, that I can be a better person again because it is in me. A good, generous, kind person like my mother and my father. The girl with strange dreams, dreams consisted of elements out of the realm in which she existed; of a bamboo forest covered in a sudden fall of snow, of a girl who sat quietly with her mother, who went everywhere with her mother. It never occurred to me that the clothes on me weren't as flashy and bright as that on other girls, they were new clothes from mum, and I loved every item; a girl who harboured the dreams of a big, brave new world; the girl isn't gone. She never leaves. Daily life now might grind me down at times, but... and I literally just now realised this as I write-my mother keeps all those dreams still alive for me. She reminds me who I was, and subsequently who I am. The world is still brave and new, just like Shakespeare imaged the "still vexed bermoothes" in Tempest, four centuries ago.

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