Somewhere I belong

It felt funny to hear a professor confess that she is a big procrastinator. On the one hand, I was glad to realize that after all, you can be professor and still procrastinate, a combination I have always thought impossible. I have condemned myself many times for my bad time-management skill, and bad self discipline. I knew I lost trust in a few people because I didn't deliver what I promised on time. Because of that, I have always suspected my ability to conduct independent research, when I would not be working for someone else, I might just dump it all and play some stupid games on the Internet. I have been considered myself unsuitable to the great world of the great academic, where everyone is so passionate about what they study that they can forget everything else while they are seeking new knowledge, or a tiny piece of truth. Until I heard with my own ears from a professor that she has been asking another professor for extension on a paper for a few times, that she has not done any literature review on the topic, and yet she is the chair, the president of this committee and that association. Well, a huge relief, perhaps I am capable of being the same too.

One the other hand, I felt like something has just broken. This reminds me of a story I read a long time ago, about a girl who idolized her teacher so much that when she saw the teacher eating noodle on the sidewalk, she sat down and wept, because she couldn't digest the fact that her teacher would eat like everyone else. In her mind, her teacher was everything beautiful, and that beauty shines so bright that the fragility of being human dilutes her image. I am no longer a child, and I have always thought I never idolize any other person. Worse still, I keep a treasured little box where I kept all the good stereotypes of professors. Little by little, I got to know more professors as people rather than absolute figures of authority in the realm of knowledge. The closer I come into contact with them, the more my eyes were open to their weakness and strengths, noble motivations and not so noble ones as they walk on their intellectual paths. Piece by piece, my box has been torn down. After all, professors are people, not sages.

I used to admire volunteers, and then NGO workers. My admiration was beaten hard with facts and gossips of corruption, of false pride, of concealment and cheating, of ignorance and snobbishness. At first I was motivated to be like them, later I only wished to not be like the bad ones among them. I am not saying all volunteers or NGO workers are disappointing. But as a Vietnamese saying goes "one worm ruins the whole pot of soup", I have known enough to no longer look at them with naive eyes. It is bad for them, and sad for me. To be able to hold some people up as role models, to admire them wholeheartedly and get inspired to be better than myself is a luxury I cannot afford anymore.

Young people are supposed to dream, and dream big. Years in my early 20s so far have been a string of disillusions, about myself, people I used to look up to, and the world I thought was nice enough to strive for. Perhaps you call it the process of getting mature. Somehow I find it quite bitter.

But I guess, after all, a naive optimism and a blind trust is easy. What is much more difficult is to experience the lowest pit of disappointment, but still find something to hope for and believe in. I have been yearning for a mentor, or a wise friend who I could come to for any questions, but such a fortune is no where to be found. So I am left alone to pick up the shattered pieces of my once sparkling little world with great people and great plans in it, and put them together despite the desire to just let go.

I hope I will have enough courage, patience and faith to build back my little world again.

My mother is smart. She sometimes proudly recalls being the best student in class throughout her schooling, and even now she enjoys learning new things and is a pretty quick learner. She is hard-working. For over 30 years, ever since she stopped going to school, she has been working seven days a week, usually from 7am to 5pm, with no vacations (except for the one weeks of Tet, which she is even busier with all the cooking and cleaning), no sick leave, and no complaints. She is very committed. She holds a strong conviction that whatever someone else can do, she can do too, because we are all humans. This belief was applied to bearing a son as well. Until recently, I have no idea how much time, money and efforts my mother invested in making my younger brother possible. She worked on her diet, her exercise, her period, her routine, her inner thoughts, and who knows what not. Fortunately, she succeeded.

Yet my mother has no friends of her own besides my father's friends and business partners. After she got married, she lost contact with her childhood friends, who also married and departed their natal homes. She has no secure pension for her retirement because she has never been employed by anyone but herself. She has no real property under her name. I remember distinctively one day when I was quite young, my mother frustratingly told my father who somehow really upset her that everything, the house, the motorbike, the bank account, and even the children bear his name, and nothing, nothing is really hers. Now and forever.

My mother is caring. She stayed up all night long in the hospital for a week straight to look after of my grandmother, and of course, never complained. She is as good as, if not even better, than my grandmother's own daughters (aka my mother's sisters in law). I realized for the first time what love is when my father wanted to eat noodle, and my mother got right up from underneath her thick blanket in a cold winter day to cook noodle for him. She cares for us, her children. My older sister, who has been married for over four years now, called my mother in the middle of the night, and few minutes later, my mother was already out on the street going to a hospital because my sister's divorced aunt in law got an accident while her mother in law and her husband were not home.

Yet my mother has no commitment, no priorities, no interest besides those of her family. She never understands why I always insist that she must inform me in advance if she wants me to go somewhere with her because I might be busy doing other things with other people. She has no time for herself, and wouldn't even take a day off when she suffers from a terrible cough, because not opening her kiosk for one day means some money is lost solely for tax. She has no power in decision making in my family, when my house was rebuilt in 2001, even the curtains she picked was turned down by my grandfather. She feels helpless, and maybe indeed she is, as her husband gradually sinks further into the pit of alcoholism, and her son turns into an aimless young man.

As far as I can remember, my mother always tells me and my siblings to study, because only by studying we will get a stable salary, weekends, and independence. She dares not take a day off because no one pays her for a sick day. She is often eaten by guilt as she can't visit her own mother as often as she likes because she has no break, and on a Sunday evening, she is no less tired than a Monday evening. And because she was dependent on her in-laws for a trade in her early 20s, she is always burdened by the fact that her income is never separated from that of the family. She often refers to my aunts and uses them as good examples of how studying can lead women to a good path. They can visit my grandmother every Sunday. They can afford vacations and not to worry constantly about the weather (my mother sells clothes, and a change in temperature can greatly affect revenue for a given week). They can purchase things they like because they have their own money. From what I was told, my three aunts were not as good students as my mother was, but my paternal grandparents were doing well enough to send them to universities. My maternal grandfather fought for the French (he said it was purely for the high wages they paid) and accordingly was considered politically wrong which made university admission impossible for my mother. And my aunts took for granted all the things that my mother yearns for, but can never achieve herself.

So she transferred her wishes to us. I unconsciously learnt to look up to my aunts and uncles, and look down on small traders like my parents. For years, I secretly wished that my friends would see me with my uncles and aunts, those intellectual looking folks, and not my parents. I associated myself with the image of a good student, even of a bookworm, because it seemed noble to me. My early attempt to earn money through small trading (I bought cakes at a bakery I passed by on the way to school and sell them to my classmates who got up too late to eat breakfast) was severely discouraged by my mother. She imprints her message on my mind: "Never be someone like me. Study. Get a decent job. Earn good money. Be independent. Make your voice counts."

I didn't start to examine these assumptions (i.e. earning money as a small business owner is not a good way) when I was in high school already. It was too late to revert the effects. I knew nothing about my family's business and had lost all desire to know because my mother never let us children help her. I was bad at maths and had acquired a fear of numbers. I was no longer interested in trading and never wandered anywhere near an Economics class. My mother told stories and read to me when I started learning to read in grade 1 (something Im not sure if my aunts do for their sons). I seemed good at language, and by then have developed not interest, but at least a sense of duty towards learning and earning good marks. My identity was attached to being a good student. My mother was pleased at the fruits of her labour.

I ventured further on the path of learning, and further detached myself from my parents' working class, this time actively from my own efforts. I felt closer to things my mother no longer understands, such as computers and the Internet. I mapped out ways to raise my own kids someday that resemble nothing the way my mother has raised me. I started wondering why, why a kid born out of a working class like me has such a great desire to grow out of her parents' class. Where does my aspiration come from, and where will it lead me to? Until one day my brother told me he might want to take up the family business and I realized such thought has never occurred to me. Why? Because as my mother's daughter, I have always held dear to my heart the idea that being a woman managing a petite business will never bring me a secure, independent, and fulfilling life.

Or to be more exact, a woman with no formal, paid job, thus no power within her husband's family, thus no life outside of it. Her life-long, greatest project is me. I said so because both my older sister and younger brother are not interested in becoming middle-class intellectuals as much as I am. I absorb her message, and I live her legacy. If one day someone asks me why I am passionate about women and empowerment of women, perhaps I will not tell them this long story, but I will know the answer in my heart. It is because my mother embodies everything I want to be as a woman, and everything I don't want to get out of life as a woman.