All About My Mother

Pedro Almodovar is one of my favorite directors. Almost without exceptions, his movies showcase strong, vivacious and interesting leading female characters overcoming hardships and challenges frequently caused by the weak, irresponsible and somewhat shabby male characters in their lives. I do wonder what the Spanish men think of his movies…

Of his movies, “All About My Mother” is not necessarily the best, but the title has led me to ponder the possibility of writing about my own mother one of these days. In fact, I think everyone should enter into a writing contest under this title. A great ensemble feature film can be made out of the best stories. After all, don’t we all have very interesting mothers?

My mother just arrived two weeks ago in Bay Area from Beijing to help me with the upcoming arrival of this baby boy. Since the baby has not come out, for the past two weeks, my mom has taken up all housework. She’s someone who absolutely hates being idle more than anything else. Since she does not drive and does not speak English, it is quite a challenge for me to find enough activities to engage her.

Fortunately, the rental house I have is close to a lot of shops, including an Asian super market, where my mom likes to buy fresh groceries on her own. She gets up early in the morning and exercises in the backyard. She brought a set of exercise tools from Beijing – a performance sword and some gadgets that look like that they belong to a magic show or an acrobatics show. Michael was highly amused to see my mom perform in the back yard. I must say that I am just glad that our back yard is not exposed to the street! Since she’s a pretty good cook, I have had people over for dinner a few times. About every two days she will spend a few hours cooking a feast. In fact, the day after she arrived from Beijing, we had 3 people over for dinner, and my mom spent half of a day cooking, whereas my guests felt that it was a bit too demanding. She loves talking so much – I thought I liked talking, but compared to my mom, I am actually quite reticent! When we went over to a friend’s place, she talked practically the whole time, and I was exhausted just listening!

Just within the past two weeks, I have taken her to many different famous hiking trails around the peninsula, and we would walk for an hour or two at a time. In a way, because of her, I have become more physically active as well. I also have a need to discover new scenic places and new hiking trails. During the hike, she would comment on the flora and the fauna around, tell me about her friends or our relatives’ latest news, make observations on people walking by, etc. She loves the scenery around San Andreas Lake as well as Crystal Springs Reservoir, and she thoroughly enjoyed visiting Half Moon Bay. By comparison, she was not so impressed by downtown San Francisco (“as a city, it’s not as impressive as New York”), or Berkeley (“it’s an okay campus but not as beautiful as Princeton”).

With Michael being so busy starting his faculty job, I am the one that she talks to the most on a daily basis. I asked my cousin and another friend to call my mom periodically to chat, as in the daytime she could occasionally find herself with nothing to do except for watching TV or reading novels. When I thanked my cousin for calling my mom up, I told him how much my mom loved talking and how she could not stop talking. His wry response was, “like mother, like daughter.”

Indeed, as I get older, I am beginning to realize how much I am like my mother, even though both my mother and I have always believed that we are very different. I guess I should credit her for my strengths, and I can also blame her for my weaknesses! Like her, I cannot stand boredom, although we find different things interesting. Like her, I am irreverent and even a bit rebellious towards authority or convention, although she claims correctly that she’s paid a lot more attention to manners than before. Like her, I can be impatient and quick-tempered, although she’s become much more patient in her old age. Like her, I am overall disciplined and pragmatic, although I am still probably still more sentimental than she is. Like her, I care passionately about people I love, perhaps to the point of annoying them. Like her, my strong will has led me to accomplish things that are considered challenging, but has also caused me some unnecessary troubles. Like her, my eagerness to help/change people I love has sometimes led to resistance or even resentment - in some cases, I eventually have been proven right, but in others, it has become a completely lost cause.

Knowing “All About My Mother”, I think to myself, do I mind turning out to be more like her in the future, now that I will become a mother myself shortly?