The first time my mother said “I love you” was likely on the day I was born. As she held me, she must have thought as she brushed her hand against my cheek that this—this was love. I was love. A joy brought into the world, a gift of the many loves before me.
Born with five other siblings in a household stricken by poverty, my mother often mentioned how she felt ignored growing up. Her parents had prioritized her step-siblings over her, leaving her with scraps from dinner and the remainder of the chores in the house. It was a struggling time, but one that she simply accepted as another part of reality.
Eventually, my mother was trafficked to rural China, where she was sold to a kind family for no more than 500 yuan. She lived there relatively happily, never asked to do anything she disliked nor to find a suitor for marriage. Although days passed by slowly in the small, impoverished village, my mother found a quiet appreciation in life and its mundaneness. There was a beauty in watching the sun rise, in seeing it set over the grassy hills. As the water reached the shores and the neighborhood dogs barked, my mother’s eyes would gaze into the distance, taking in the world around her. Life was beautiful — yet there was always a yearning for home.
Years pass and time makes its marks on the lonesome village. One day, a man, who was soon to be my father, steps into the place. He scours the area, searching for a new spot to build his next home and expand his entrepreneurial empire. By coincidence, his new home was to be built next to my mother’s place. When my father spotted my mother from the corner of his eye, the two became intertwined from that moment on. My father belonged to an ethnic group of Chinese people in Vietnam called the người Hoa — also translated as “the flower people.” To my mother, he was a remnant of the culture and home she had lost. He had everything she longed for — and he was willing to abandon his previous wife, his daughters and sons, for someone he simply thought was beautiful.
My parents moved to the States sometime after their engagement to assist in my father’s capitalist endeavors. He built restaurants and hotels, and eventually had me and my brother. It seemed like they had everything. Life was not just beautiful, but a dream in every waking moment. As my father’s capital grew, so did his greed and desire. He wanted other woman and left his two kids who barely learned how to talk. When all they could say was ‘dada,’ he was already gone. The two kids couldn’t understand why their dad never came back. Like their mother, they had accepted it as just another part of reality.
All these years of growing, yet I am still that same, ignorant kid unaware of the world around me. I don’t think my mother ever truly learned how to love when she held me against her chest. After all, can you love when you come from such a world of hurt? When you have been abandoned—not once, but multiple times—by your family, by your husband? Although I mentioned my mother, I don’t think anybody in this world has truly learned how to love, in fact, I question my ability to love even myself. Am I to become just like my father—who had beat his daughters and left his wives? Or am I to become just like my mother—all alone, left to live the rest of her life in solitude? While I may not know the answer, I know what love is and what love feels like.
Love is a variety of feelings: from a piercing aching in the heart to warm, flushed red cheeks. I know love in my mother when I see her smile, when I see her laugh, and when she takes the chance to spend time with me out of her day despite always working late. I know love in my friends as we inspire each other to grow everyday, even through the hardships of everyday life. And I know love in the simple things, like in the “how have you beens?” and the “have you eaten yets?” I know love because I am love. A joy brought upon the world as a gift of the many loves before me and shared with others now, as it was through love that I have lived to share my story—to finally say, I love you.
