Oh How She Loves Me

Criticism was my mother’s love language. Any therapist would be prepared to dismiss her relationship with me as toxic, or at least say that it was something I needed to cut myself off from. “That’s not what love is supposed to look like,” they would say. “Love is gentle, forgiving, compassionate.”

For a while, they had me convinced. I was quick to grasp at the opportunity to blame her for all the parts of me she taught me to look down on, for all the small moments she taught me that I was weak, stupid, and useless. In the early years, I had excused the severity of her attitude with the trauma of her past as a refugee, but with time, I could not stop it from evolving into resentment and bitterness. I know she suffered greatly in her childhood, but did that mean I was required to suffer too? Surely, she who had lived through a war could understand the true value of life and joy and kindness. So why was nothing I did good enough for her? Even in her absence, I could always feel her scornful eagle eye bearing down upon me.

And then one night, I saw her weeping. Not crying, but weeping. I had never before seen any sign of softness in her. I was sure she could have watched someone murder me right before her eyes and not even flinch, yet there she was, in tears and whimpering. At first, I did not know whether to back away and pretend I saw nothing or attempt to comfort her despite knowing she would never do the same for me. When I had cried as a child, she had simply watched me and waited until I stopped. Was that what I was supposed to do then? Just watch her with a steady gaze and say nothing?

I finally turned to leave, but she must have heard me, because without looking up, she spoke.

“In the camps,” she started, “they beat my mother everyday. I thought it was because she couldn’t do it right, so I tried to show her how. She nodded every time but did not change.”

I knew that my mother had spent some time in the camps during the war, but she had never mentioned much beyond disdainful descriptions of the drunk and barbaric guards who held her and her family captive. I did not even know what she was referring to in “doing it right.”

“Eventually, it was too much,” she continued. “She became ill...that last night, her eyes were open...and she pointed to a little green light out towards the horizon, over the sea. The Jade Star, she called it. ‘I’ve been watching this star,’ she said. ‘You cannot tell now, but it has been growing larger every day. It means someone is looking for us. They are getting closer. They will save us.’

“The next day, she was dead, and the guard said to me, ‘Your mother is not here to take your beatings anymore.’

"She had never told me. It was I who had never done it right. And so they beat me. Every day, I did not think I could go on, but I clung to the Jade Star and forced myself to believe that it was slowly getting closer. As long as it was there, there was still hope.

“Then one night, the light vanished. I searched for it frantically in the darkness, but it was nowhere to be found, and I knew that I could no longer go on. I started to walk into the sea, no destination in mind, knowing that a guard would soon see me and shoot me dead. But instead, the sound of gunshots came from over the water. An alarm sounded, and I huddled down out of instinct. Soldiers came storming in through the waves. There were more gunshots, and then it was over. We were saved.

“I told myself, it was not the soldiers, but the Jade Star who had saved me. It was my mother’s spirit, her protection, her love. It had watched over me and kept me alive when I could not do it for myself.

“I did not think of it practically until years later when I came to this country and read about the event in an old book outlining the strategic blueprints of the enemy's camps. From it, I found out...the green light was from one of the patrol boats of the guards who held us prisoner. The light of my mother’s love was from a boat that kept us from leaving. It disappeared that night because the soldiers had arrived, and they destroyed the boat.”

I continued to be silent, as I had no idea how to react to my mother sharing something personal about herself. Where was this coming from? And why now? I could not digest her story as quickly as she told it.

“It does not matter if hope is true,” she went on, her tears having subsided and her face returning to its usual austere expression. “It does not matter if love is real. That is why they cannot take it from you. It is all for you to decide.”

She paused before finally turning to me, my diary clutched in her hand.

“That’s mine!” I immediately shouted angrily. “You’re not allowed to read that!”

“You do not need me to love you. Remember this. You do not need anyone to love you. You decide where it is, and it will be there. You will make it be there. You believe these American fairy tales they tell you at school. They make you believe someone has to give it to you…”

She tossed the journal roughly across the table.

“I will not!” her tone took a sharp turn, though it seemed more as if she were yelling at herself than me. “I have had one job, and I have done it right. You are valuable. You will do everything right, so no one will ever hurt you. You will be useful, and they will all need you, but you will not need them. Only then are you free, truly free, to choose your love. I do not need you to love me. It is your choice.”

Too enraged that she had invaded my privacy and ignored my protests, I did not listen to her words that night. My mind was also defensively clouded with a rising sense of guilt for her having seen the things I had thought about her, but then again, she was an ice devil who felt nothing. She must have only been looking for another reason to justify her poison towards me.

I do not know why I was unable to understand her until after she died. Or perhaps not unable to as much as unwilling. Within the context of the environment I grew up in, I had seen her as the most unforgiving force in my life. But in her world, mistakes meant death, and so she forced me to be perfect to keep me safe.

Is this the truth of how she really felt? I will never know. If not for the single memory of that night which passed like a dream, I would have no reason to believe that anything she did or said to me was not out of spite or selfish fears. But she is gone now, and I have two choices on what to believe: One. She failed to love me, and she preferred to die cold and alone than to admit it. Two. She succeeded in loving me, and it took me all these years to understand it. Does it matter which was true?