My Mother's Story
My mom was born in Beijing, China in the 1970’s. She lived with her older sister, grandmother,
grandfather, and her parents. Her parents weren’t home very often, her father was in the military
and her mother worked full time as a teacher leaving my mom spending very little time with her
parents. Despite both parents working, China was struggling financially and that essentially
caused everyone to struggle. She was very close with her grandmother, as she raised her most of the time. Unfortunately, she wasn’t close with her grandfather. She was born briefly before
China’s “One Child Policy.” China was severely overpopulated and they needed to somehow
change this, and they did so by limiting each family to only have one child so that they would
decrease the population and hopefully improve financial situations. Her grandfather believed that my grandparent’s should’ve only had one kid. He would consistently make backhanded
comments and went so far as to call her a “financial burden on the family”. These were
extremely harsh things to say to an 11-year-old, and when she told her parents, it was dismissed
and she was told to “understand” her grandpa and respect him. This really impacted her mindset
and she never felt extremely sure of herself or abilities.
Regardless of the degrading comments her grandfather made, she excelled in her school and
soon found a passion for computer science and learning English. After she graduated high school, she decided that she wanted to immigrate to the US to pursue a degree in computer science, a MBA degree, and most importantly: a new life for herself.
My grandfather was an amazing physicist. He was the creator of a patent that ended up being
very helpful in the construction scene, and was given a large sum of money for this patent. That
money was the main reason that they could send my mom to the US, where she would study at
the University of North Dakota, earn her degree, and soon find a job where she would meet my
Dad. My mom has no other family in the US. She has spent the last 30 years of her life here, but
she only sees her parents about once every 5 years. She never had a community where her
experience was shared, until within the last several years she found a Chinese Church with more
immigrants and shared life stories than she’s ever been with, and found an amazing support
group within the church.
My great-grandfather died before I was born and my mom didn’t have too much remorse, but my great-grandmother died recently in 2021 and it really impacted her. Losing someone she was so close with and not being able to travel back because of the COVID-19 pandemic felt just so unfair. Despite not being able to go back for her grandma’s funeral, she managed to not let it affect her life and remain a strong and amazing role model. It’s become increasingly difficult for my mom to visit her parents, with travel to China being so expensive, but also it’s become physically hard to see her parents age so much within the periods she doesn’t see them.
Despite her English not being perfect and not having her family near, her parents growing older,
and general hardships in her life, she still created a family and community that I could not be
more proud of being a part of. I truly respect my mother so much and I’m so thankful for all the
efforts she’s made for me to be able to experience the life I do. Even though I’ve written this
short essay about her, I still have so much more to learn about her life before me and can’t wait
to learn more about her.