Vivian: My mother. The story of mistakes.

My mother is called Vivian. She is not very good at English and has no idea what the name means, but it caught her eyes in the first glimpse.

When I was a child, I was tortured by her. It's a little bit weird to mention it when this is a story about her. However, I think it's really important to bring it out because we are going to discuss it in the later paragraphs.

Is she a tiger mother? No. She never pushes me to study or learn some piano. When the grade cards were sent home, she just laughed at me, since my best friend was top of the class and her name was right next to me. She seldom disciplined us crazily. My brother and I could sleep at any time as long as we finished our homework. The only rule she gave us was to finish what should be done.

And she had been a totally different woman before the previous description.

Before I was about seven, she beat me for any misdeeds. Those included stealing, lying and disobeying her requests. It's normal for a Asian parent to discipline children in this way. I still remember that when she raised the stick, I would run to the corner and beg her to stop. She wouldn't. Instead, she got extremely angry and beat me harder.

Maybe it's cliche. My mother thought she had done it for love. She wanted me to behave well because the society wasn't forgiving to women's mistakes. And it still is.

Then, a great man came and talked to her. It's my father. I didn't like him much for always working, but I am grateful for what he did.

He told my mother that if she wanted me to love her as a daughter and tell her everything in my life when I grow up, she needed to stop immediately.

She thought for a long time. She didn't want to have the relationship of ours the same as hers with her mother. My grandmother also tortured her when she was a child, but she hadn't done it for love. She did it for the jealousy that my grandfather loved my mother more. It's another time's story.

Anyway, now, we are friends. We talk about everything. It all thanks to my mostly nonchalant father.

And now, we go back to the theme.

Why did she think that the society wasn't forgiving to women? 

During my mother's childhood, she was ignored by her mother. My grandmother always obeys the tradition. She thinks that the married women are like splashed water. I use the present tense because she still does. She loves my brother so much that I am not actually important in family reunion. As a result, my mother never had eggs in her porridge of rice. They were poor, and eggs were extremely expansive.

She scolded my mother whenever she wanted and her words were hurtful and disrespectful. My mother couldn't make a mistake, even the tiny one like not mopping the floor. She is still traumatized.

"She called me lazy all the time.", my mother said when she saw my bedroom where the floor was covered by books and papers. "I wonder what she would have said when she saw mine as dirty as yours."

Because of her mother being so mean, dear Vivian loved me twice harder than she did to my brother. Of course, the disciplines I need to obey are much more than his. I still have curfew while my brother can play all night out.


Why can't I? Because in my mother's mind, I might be called slut for this.

In Western culture, having many boyfriends is not a big deal. Girls need to browse a little for their future. However, we can't. The family of my future husband might come to search for my past, especially when Facebook is everyone's favorite and my mother in law can know whatever she wants to know anytime.

Thanks goodness that I am a nerd. I don't like night not.

On the other hand, she wants to make sure that I would never make the same mistakes as she did.

She married my father when she was twenty. It's not too young but not old enough to be a mother. Carrying a child before marriage is a scandal. She needed to marry as soon as possible. My grandfather's heart was broken because he always thought my mother could have had a better future rather than marrying another teenagers. She could be something more than a mother.

My mother has a brilliant mind. She studied better than I did, but she was misled to a path that she had never thought she would take. Her friend, let's call her Maria, kept luring her to be a bad girl while my grandmother kept pushing her out to another world. One day, Maria invited my mother to stay at her house and that's when my parents met.

For the record, I don't like my father, and I think my grandfather was right.

They became a couple and my mother lost her virginity to him. She got pregnant and things changed forever.

Thus, I never slept over. My mother is afraid that I might make the same mistakes.

"The society hates women when they make mistakes. Remember it, Charis. You must not sleep with a man before marriage. You see the living example. I got pregnant with you and I forced into a marriage. I have tried so hard for maintaining it and only earn my respect for this one and only cause. People think I have it all. They never saw the time your father cheated on me and brought some disgusting diseases to bed. They never saw the time when your father didn't send any money home and I needed to support this family with bare hands. They only see that we are married for twenty years. They only 'forgive' me when I stuck around with the man I married twenty years ago."

She can't leave because she doesn't want to disappoint her father again. She can't leave because my father is a crazy man and would kill her for this. She can't leave because she loves us so much that she doesn't want to lose us to some poor excuse of human being.

She made one mistake: marrying my father while she knew nothing better.

This mistake doesn't matter now, but it was a big deal in the countryside. And somehow, it matters now in some families. Women would be looked down by her families in laws for having the children of their husband before marriage.

That's why she is afraid of me making mistakes. How women are remembered in the society is so important that it could cost my future.

In Eastern culture, the society is harsh to women. Women need to marry before thirty or they have no value. Women need to take care of children after giving birth because that's their responsibility. Women need to be a loving wife to their husband and loving daughter to her parents in law.

But the hardest of all is not making mistakes while they are hardly thought as a mistake in Western culture.