My 7-Year-Old Mom

I think many people imagine an ideal Boss Mom as a lady who balances her love, family, and career life like a yoga master. While maintaining the ability to look young, fit, and have a healthy sanity.

My sister and I to this day do not connect to our parents, especially my mother at any level. In my journey of growing up, I had a hard time grasping the idea of what an admirable role model mother looks like. Many of my friends seem to have a boss mom, and throughout my life I always felt like an orphan outside looking in another kid’s loving family. I’m not writing a sob story of what I didn’t have, but who filled my “Mom” position: my sister.

In traditional Asian culture, it is universal that parents pressure the eldest child to take care, and be responsible for their younger siblings even until adulthood. It’s unfair to make children become adults before they are kids. Kim was no exception.

My sister was a tiny, reserved, model sibling in our house and a decade older than me. Our family was the whole nine yards of what immigrant families were: parents didn’t know a lick of English, poor, uneducated, traditional, and dependent on their kids. It was up to my 7 year old sister to quickly learn English, and learn to be the mature child-adult that my parents turn for everything. The moment I was born, Kim was automatically defaulted to be the only viable parent in our broken family. If parents were graded on the level of how well they nurture and mentor their children, my parents would not pass; they’d get a big F. Deprived us of love and proper care, ridiculed and neglected us. They let my sister take the fall of guardianship responsibilities towards me. I knew my parents were lingering in the background, but Kim was always the clear mother figure in my life.

Apparently, it’s very common knowledge that siblings fight and sometimes end up with a distant relationship. I saw it differently because I have never fought with Kim. I figured having a loving sibling and neglectful parents was the normal standard. The contrast of my sister’s love compared to our parents was unparalleled.

Instant food and 3 week old leftovers were always the meals Kim and I had. Our folks were terrible cooks and terribly lazy. It was so terrible that I remember vividly being scolded by my daycare supervisor for what my mom packed me for lunch: day old, cut up donuts. Kim was the best cook in our house when she was 10 years old. I was only excited for dinner when she cooked, right after she picked me up from daycare. Never late to retrieve me, and never late to feed us. My first fond memory of a genuine home cooked meal from scratch and with love, will always be my sister’s tomato soup. Somehow, memories of seven years of instant Ramen breakfast were distant.

I always envied my classmates whose parents were attentive to their school life. Our mother taught my sister to forge her signature. That way, neither of my parents needed to take time out of their “busy” schedule to be involved in our lives. I always went to Kim with permission slips, report cards... you name it. She was always aware of what was happening in my school, right down to my achievements and my weakness. Our parents hated to be dragged to school events, like after school productions or parent-teacher conferences. They always refused to go and gave us the “what’s the point?” excuse. Kim always had the gumption to hound our parents to be present, and managed to drag them kicking and screaming at any of our school events. I rarely saw our parents amongst the crowd of other proud parents at my performances. Only my tiny sister in the front row, waving back at me.

Kim believed that if someone cares about you, they will invest in you. While our parents sent money to their extended family, money that could have helped their children, it was up to Kim and I to support each other. We were each other's investors, more so for Kim than me. My sister never wanted me to struggle in school the way she did, which is why she willingly sought out as many resources to help better my education. Dished out a chunk of her own earnings and bought exercise workbooks, literature books, education toy sets, and quality school supplies for me. On top of that she was always patient to be my tutor nightly and coach my mind, even when she had her hardships at school. There was no picture, homework or award I did not show to Kim, the only one who cared to look at them.

It should be nature that parents miss work and stay home when their child is sick or injured. Not our parents. Chasing the money trail was their prime philosophy. It was natural for them to make Kim my free caretaker. She had no choice but to forfeit all her freedom and youth. It was hardest for her every time I was sick, injured, or off of school. Not only a nurse and nanny, she was my saviour. I had many dangerous fevers as a baby. She had gone above and beyond to carry me, on foot, in cold winter, to the doctors as an unsupervised child. I only hear stories of that calibre in third world countries! Who knew we were living one. She had to skip school extensively to take care of me. It jeopardized her attendance and contributed to her struggle in her education. Back then, a couple of unjustified absences resulted in suspension. Kim was nearly expelled from Junior High, after months of unjustified absences.

Our parents’ minds are backdated to the 1800s, superficial and morally outdated. Mother preached two main beliefs to us:

1. The only valuable asset a woman can contribute to the world is her appearances
2. A son is worth more than a wealth of daughters

Mom of the year.

Kim is fierce, heroic, and a real underdog. First woman in our family generation to achieve beyond junior high education, finish post-secondary, fluent in 3 languages and the only helpful family member to dig our parents’ generation out of major trouble. She was a translator and interpreter before she was 6 years old, and my parents are illiterate. Always pulled away to translate high-level English documents, or be a translator of many adult verbal conversations. Even my extended family used her to be their translator (my aunts and uncles also were not fluent in English). She was a failing immigrant child who couldn't speak English, and became an honour student within a couple years. Definitely a zero to hero scenario. Kim taught me that women are more than face and uterus value. Our greatest value as a woman is based on how we make ourselves thrive, and how we break the different molds that society attempts to confine us. She proved women are equally valuable as men are.

She was the model daughter that at times, I felt I don’t know how to live up to. Sometimes I felt it wasn’t our parents but me who robbed Kim of her experiences, her youth, and her freedom. What if I wasn’t born and Kim was an only child? She could have made more friends, and filled her social group with dynamic people. Maybe dated more and found her true love faster. Had she had extra time and energy, she could have done some soul-searching and sought her dream.

I asked her once: “ Did you ever regret the time you spent taking care of me? Surely your life would have been easier if you were an only child”. She thought about it for a bit, and answered:

“No. Our parents were terrible adults, and that’s entirely... terrible luck. Despite the many hardships that I had to endure, you are one of the few things that I don’t regret. If I was an only child, I would guarantee I would become a damaged person. You were the reason I had to ground myself to be better’”.

Sadly, no amount of sacrifice my sister did to help our parents was suitable enough to them, and was usually ridiculed. I rarely saw Kim cry over the amount of pressure she had to take, but I have witnessed her broke down once. It’s heartbreaking to see Kim questioning herself why our parents patronize her, and not validated for her extensive contribution to keep our family afloat. That moment was the only time I saw my vulnerable sister, rather than a mother image.

She was always there for me.

Never let me be unloved, starved, and unsupervised.

She gambled her childhood and half her life away, and protected me from worse fates she had experienced. Our parents were merely background characters, robbing whatever they can from our lives. It always had been a two person family, and I didn’t need anybody but Kim. My sister was more than enough than any parent I wished we had. She rose up to a position that not only a sister, but a child, should never experience so young. I retold my story many times to others. All had disbelief to a certain degree that I was overdramatic, that they can’t believe my sister was a child “boss mom”. Had she not done what she had to do, we would have been somewhere lost in the foster system or become broken people, forever repeating our parents' primitive ways.

A boss mom is not necessarily the woman who can multitask, like she has extra limbs of a Hindu Goddess. Or the woman who had children, or a good cook, or have a bankable career. Those are optional in the job position.

A boss mom, to me, is a woman who grabs the bull of responsibilities by the horns and tangos with struggles that come her way. A woman who orchestrates everything and somehow, conducts the day like a symphony. Somebody who wasn’t nurtured from privilege, but risen like a phoenix from layers of hardships. Even with the tiring demands of the role, still doesn’t throw the towel in the ring, gets up, and keeps fighting. All that work, merely to pave down a better and maybe clearer road for us. A path that future generations will stray less towards the darkness.

That is my sister, the youngest boss mom I have ever met. My only role model I personally had, and the few good things that came through from my shattered childhood.

I dedicated this piece to the readers who share the same heartache of having a mother absent in their life, and the mother figures that were chosen or given a guide for the lost and forgotten souls in the world. Most of all, I dedicate this to Kim.

For always being my shelter when we didn’t have a stable “home”.

The biggest supporter who believed I was more than a pregnancy mistake, but a blessing.

For giving girl power a run for its money.

For all the times you were Santa, playdate, mentor, and friend.

She is a badass Boss Woman.