By now, you probably know my thieving mother, who stole me out of the hospital where I was given up for adoption shortly after birth. Maybe you came across my tweet, read it on UpWorthy, or saw my live performance in New York City with The Nocturnists! (podcast episode not yet released) Maybe my mother’s heroic story is why you subscribed to my newsletter.

In any case, if you are a fan of my mother, you are in for a treat! 😂

But if you are not familiar with the story, here is the 280-character version of it:

36 years ago, I was misdiagnosed with brain damage at birth & put up for adoption (in China). My mother climbed the hospital walls & stole me out. “Your only child will be stupid.” They said when they got her. She signed the papers. My mother gave me life twice. I give her everything I am.

You can read the full story “My Mother Was A Thief” here.

Recently, I turned 36. To mark my 3rd full circle around the Chinese zodiac (say hi if you are a fellow dragon!), I am dedicating this newsletter to my mother, without whom my life could never be as full as it is today.

“Are we buying this for any special occasion?” The jewelry shop owner asked me while packaging a green crystal necklace I picked out for my mother.

“Oh, it’s my birthday! So I am getting a gift for my mother to thank her for giving me life.” Twice. I whispered to myself.

“Aww! That’s so sweet! Your mother must be an amazing woman.” She tilted her head and tapped her heart with her hand.

Amazing at STEALING, sure! But don’t believe me. Judge for yourself after you hear about the other “criminal” stuff my mother did. 😉

Threatening

One day, my mother sat me down for a serious talk.

“My dear daughter, you have entered a stage of your schooling where you are about to exceed my level of education.” She sat up straight and used a formal tone — something I had never seen her do.

Oh boy.

“So,” she cleared her throat, “if you can handle the burden of studying, we will support you until you are satisfied with your degrees. But if you can’t…” She paused.

I leaned forward to listen, nervous about what she might say next. Will she stop buying me snacks? Send me to boarding school? Disown me??

My mother put a hand on my shoulder: “But if you can’t make it, your father and I won’t blame you. Maybe our family just isn’t meant to produce an educated person.”

Wait, what?

‘And…” She looked into my eyes and I heard myself gulp like a fearful cartoon character: “Daughter, you are on your own now in your academic endeavors.”

Readers, I was TEN.

Terrified of having to drop out of school if my grades weren’t good, I studied and studied. I asked my mother to sign me up for after-school and weekend classes. I read the next year’s textbooks during summer vacations and practiced speaking English (the required second language in Chinese schools) tirelessly.

Almost thirty years later, now in the United States, I was packing for a writing fellowship after having just finished a medical fellowship when my mother asked: “Why don’t you ever stop studying and just enjoy life?”

Why do I ever stop…Is she joking?

“Ma! You told me I was on my own in my ‘academic endeavors’ when I was 10, remember?” I stood up and threw another shirt into the suitcase like I was mad at it. “I am trying to become an educated person for our family!”

“Oh! You remember that silly talk?” She started to laugh. “I just said it to scare you!”🫠

Smuggling

I panicked when the crowd around me at the Chicago O’hare Airport International Arrival dissipated slowly. I was now the only person still standing there after my parents’ flight from Beijing landed.

Oh no! Did they not make it to the airport on time? Did something happen to them in flight? Did they get rejected and sent back home by customs and border protection? My mind started to spiral as the last few Chinese people hugged their loved ones and left.

I was in my late 20s finishing up residency in the Midwest. And my parents were —supposedly— on their way from China to attend my graduation. But where were they?

I closed my eyes to make a mental list of people and places I could call to locate them: my cousin who dropped them off at the airport in Beijing, Delta airline, my friend who worked for Delta (whom I hadn’t talked to for years), USCIS…

Then I heard the gate slide open again, and a familiar voice darting toward me: “OMG, I was so scared!” — Yep! It was my mother running toward me, dragging her large suitcase. My dad walked behind her, shaking his head.

“Ma! What happened??” I nearly dropped my phone when she grabbed my hands.

“The immigration officer thought the lotus root powder I brought you from home was cocaine! So he put us in a little room and interrogated us!” Her palm felt sweaty.

Great, my 60-year-old Chinese mother was suspected to be a drug smuggler. 🫠

“What? Lotus root… Ma! I told you, many times, that the customs people don’t like powder-like substances!” Simultaneously wanting to laugh and fume, my face twisted into a confusing mixture of human emotions.

“Well…he told me he would take it away. And I said no.”

“You said NO to the border protection officer? Why?” Every immigrant knows that you do whatever the immigration and border protection people tell you to do.

Clearly, my mother missed that lecture.

She told the officer, in Mandarin Chinese, that her daughter liked to have lotus root soup for breakfast when she was a child. And now that she was about to become an attending doctor, she should be rewarded with her favorite childhood food. Of course, the customs officer didn’t speak Chinese (nor did they care about whose favorite food was what). So they had to wait for an interpreter. Once the interpreter arrived, my mother offered to make them each a bowl of soup to prove that this was, in fact, not cocaine. But she was not about to leave without this unlabeled, suspicious-looking bag of white powder!😰

“Please tell me you let them throw it away, ma!” I begged.

“Hehehe,” my mother put on a big grin and took out a bag of white powder from behind her back: “Who wants some delicious soup?”

Bad Economic Decisions

In the 1980s, my mother received a small property from her job as a result of China’s Welfare Housing Allocation System. The house was very small but located in a busy neighborhood. So, she decided to make it into a storefront and rent it out. A young couple living with disabilities rented it from her and opened a small bodega. A few years later, they had two boys whom they raised in that little one-bedroom house.

“They are such a hard-working couple despite their disabilities!” My mother always said, “They take care of the house like it’s their own. I never have to worry.”

“Well yeah! If I had YOU as my landlord, I would do whatever I could to make my landlord happy, too!” My aunt muttered during a family gathering a few years ago. We were all sitting at the table eating seeds and chatting in Beijing, China.

I’ve always been kept out of the family money decisions. So, I had no idea what they were talking about. But my aunt’s smirk made me curious.

“Auntie, what do you mean by that? What kind of landlord is my mom?” I put a sunflower seed between my teeth and twisted my wrist slightly to crack it open. My uncle had brought these seeds from the west side before the Chinese New Year. And everyone had been looking forward to tasting them.

“Ptttuu!” My mother suddenly made a loud noise spitting some shells out, everyone turned to look at her. She squinted her eyes and frowned her eyebrows toward my aunt, who in turn made an “o” shape with her mouth and nodded.

“Um…oh! These seeds are so good, aren’t they? You can almost taste the sunlight from the Himalayas!” My aunt suddenly changed the topic.

“Ma! What did auntie mean by that?” The seeds were very good — nutty, toasty, airy — but not as good as my ability to smell secrecy!

Under the spotlight, my mother finally confessed that for the past thirty years when the couple living with disabilities had been renting from her, she had not raised the rent by a single penny!

And during the pandemic years, she lowered the rent even more…

Let me put this in context for you, readers. In 1990, the housing price in Beijing was about 140 US dollars per square meter. And by 2020, this number had spiked to over $8,400 — over 60 times more expensive!

“Ma!” My mouth dropped open upon hearing this news. “You mean to tell me, for all this time that I had to take out extra private student loans, you could have helped me with rent with the rent you would have collected?” As my parents’ only child, they’ve always done what they could to support my “academic endeavors” as promised.

“Let’s not dwell on the ‘could haves’ and ‘would haves’ eh?” My mom cracked open a couple of sunflower seeds with her fingers at the speed of light, “You turned out OK, didn’t you?” Then she stuffed the seeds in my mouth to shut me up.

“Plus, all you need to be happy is a good Chinese New Year family reunion and some tasty sunflower seeds!”

In the constant stream of time, though inevitable, there are a few people I can’t imagine living without. My mother is one of them.

Due to China’s Cultural Revolution, she didn’t go to school much. But in her own (smartass) way, my mother distilled the importance of education in me and stayed true to her words in supporting me with no limit. “Even if I had to smash the woks and sell them as scrap metal, I will send you to school.”

This hunger for education took me to the other side of the world. In the decade and a half when we lived an ocean apart, my mother stopped at nothing (quite literally) to bring a piece of home to me whenever she could. But she didn’t know that “home” wasn’t a flavor. Home is a person.

My mother lives with me now in the US, because dreams do come true. Sometimes, she comments about what a long way I have come in a strange culture speaking a strange language. I know she is proud of me. But I also marvel at the benevolence she embodies even though she is completely out of her comfort zone in every possible way.

“Can you tell your mother ‘thank you’ for me?” The young girl who worked at the YMCA reception ran after me as I was walking out the door.

“Excuse me?” I took out my earphones.

“The Chinese lady you sometimes come with — that’s your mother, right?”

I nodded.

“I had a terrible day the other day and was crying at work,” she explained. “Your mother gave me a hug, which made me feel so much better.”

“She did?” I was somewhat surprised since my mother doesn't speak much English.

“Yes. She said something to me in Chinese, I assume. Of course, I didn’t understand her. But it was nice and somehow very funny! It made us both laugh.”

“What did you say to the girl at the Y, ma?” I asked my mother later that day when she was mincing garlic with mortar and pestle.

“Oh. I told her to tell me who made her cry —” She waved the marble pestle in the air. “So I could go and hit that person for her!” 😂

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