That moment you realize your parents are humans too with separate lives and hopes and dreams! I often wonder now what does my mom think when she looks back on her life. Were the sacrifices worth it? Does she have many regrets? Of course, I shouldn't wonder. I should ask! She got pushed into a career that she didn't really want because her mother was adamant that there were only a handful of options that were acceptable for a woman at the time (besides being a full-time mom and domestic).
Here were two quotes that I saved on that theme that really got to me.
Quote:
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You realized, Oh, Mom has a brother, too! Sometimes you laughed to yourself when you remembered what your mom was like that day, your aging mom jumping down from the porch and running across the yard to your uncle, shouting “Brother!” as if she were a child—Mom acting like a girl even younger than you. That mom was stuck in your head. It made you think, even Mom ... You don’t understand why it took you so long to realize something so obvious. To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom.
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Quote:
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Remember how much we ate? We had two small tables filled with food. Remember how big our rice pot was? And she had to pack all of our lunches, including the side dishes she made with whatever she could get in the countryside.... How did Mom get through it every day? Since Father was the eldest, there was always a relative or two staying with us. I don’t think Mom could have liked being in the kitchen at all.” You were caught off guard. You had never thought of Mom as separate from the kitchen. Mom was the kitchen and the kitchen was Mom. You never wondered, Did Mom like being in the kitchen?
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