"Please Look After Mom" made me uncomfortable for reasons which, I admit, I wasn't entirely thrilled about confronting. Even now as I write this, I haven't fully explored why the book hit home in such an itch-inducing, squirm-producing sort of way. That's what I'd say the writing process is for.
To put it simply, I'd say I see some similarities between myself and the daughter from whose point of view the story starts off with. Chi-Hon is a writer who finds herself growing more and more distant from her mother as she grows older and becomes consumed with her life and her work. To say she is still holding on to some bitterness from her childhood- a childhood in which her eldest brother was the favorite, in accordance with Korean tradition- would be putting it mildly. Without ever coming right and out and saying it, Chi-Hon seems resentful towards her mother, jealous of her attentions, desperate for her approval, aching for tender words and a mother's touch that never seem forthcoming. At the same time, she has graduated from these childish desires and become an important woman in a big world. Her mother's world is one so very far removed from Chi-Hon's, and so in some sense, it seems that Chi-Hon has abandoned her mother, forgotten about her; that her mother has become obsolete and outdated.
It's frightening because as we get older, it's easy to "forget" about our parents. Each time we come home for school breaks or short visits, our childhood home seems more foreign to us, we feel an intruder in our old bed, our fathers' hugs grow more desperate, our mothers' pleas for phone calls more urgent. We are slipping away from each other and to us, the burgeoning adult, it feels natural, feels necessary really. But it scares our parents and they try even harder to hold on to whatever ties to us they have left.
Or maybe this is just the case with me? My father and I have always had an easy bond; we share a lot of the same personality traits, we like the same music, we seem to understand each other. My mother is, of course, dear to me in a way no child can explain. In moments of fear or sickness, she's always the one I long for the most. But, as I've grown up- I've seen something that saddens me. I've grappled with it, this disconnect I sometimes feel between my mother and myself. The confusion I see in her eyes at a lot of the things that I do and say; more than that, the hurt and sometimes disgust that seem to overwhelm her at some of the decisions I make. She talks to me oftentimes like she doesn't know who I am. She asks me questions, while staring fondly at childhood photos of me pasted on Christmas ornaments, "How could that sweet little girl grow up to want to mar her body with tattoos and piercings?" Sometimes I want to scream, You made me Mom, this is me Mom, why don't you get that? And because she doesn't seem to understand the person I am or the fundamental things that I feel are so inherent to who I am, I subconsciously dismiss her in my mind. I declare her lesser, incapable, just unnecessary. She just doesn't get it, she'll never get it. I can't tell her things, I can't show her who I am. She's just my mom.
This may not be parallel exactly to Chi-Hon's situation with her own mother, but it evoked enough similarities as I was reading it, that I felt it was worth noting. Slowly, really without her being aware, Chi-Hon lost touch with her mother.
And then, suddenly, she was gone.
I hate to focus on this one segment of what was an intricately woven and complex book, but I guess this first portion is just what struck me the most, because I am a daughter, and I have a mother, and I know how it is.
I wonder about the point-of-view: both the father as well as the daughter's portions were told in the rare 2nd person. I want to say that this highlights their similar disconnect from the mother. I mean, everyone in the story was disconnected in some way, but the father and the daughter in ways that I found strikingly alike.
They both forgot her. She was there but she was not recognized. Her importance in their lives was undermined. They could not see how much she loved them and was devoted to them until they felt the sting of her absence. More than that, it was not until she was gone that they could clearly see how much they themselves loved her. It was not until then that they could see how strong she had been, and how much she had been wilting, disintegrating right before their eyes, because of their own neglect.
I don't want anyone to come away from this thinking that I neglect my mother or that I don't think about how much I love her or that I ignore her or find her obsolete. I'm merely trying to draw a connection in saying that I can see how easily and unintentionally that situation could happen to someone. I could see the misunderstandings between my mother and myself developing into something greater, a gap too wide to bridge by the time it is discovered, a pit too deep to fill.
I never want to forget my mother, I never want anyone to forget my mother, to forget what she does and what she gives and how very important she is. I never want to have to ask anyone else to look after Mom; I want to be the one doing the looking after.
No comments:
Post a Comment