A drop of sweat hit the burning pavement. Though it was December, the streets of Bangkok were shimmering with heat. I felt a buzz coming from an intense headache.
“Mom, can we rest here for a couple of minutes?” I nearly shouted, as her quick strides made the distance between us greater with each step.
“No! Come on, we’re almost there!”
The air, without even a ripple, seemed to intensify the heat inside my heart. I didn’t want to be here. Anxiety mingled with despair as I thought of the reason we were trudging through Bangkok, a thousand miles from our home: my mom wanted to go to a concert. This was my winter break, a short respite from the grind of the school year, and my mom was forcing me to spend half of it accompanying her to a pop concert in Thailand because she was too embarrassed to go alone. The worst part was… I didn’t even like the singer! I thought about all the fun I could be having back home with my friends, and felt my footsteps become heavier and heavier.
Why? Why did I follow her meekly all the way to Thailand? Why did I allow myself to be dragged here in the first place? As we walked along the dirty sidewalk, I pondered these questions, and unwillingly admitted the answer—because she is my mom. In Chinese culture, filial piety is the prime virtue; as a daughter, I owe my mother unwavering respect, gratitude, and obedience. Resistance would have brought harsh criticism from all sides of the family: “Your mom works so hard for you, and she just wants you to go to a concert with her. You are a person without gratitude…” I wanted to scream, “I don’t want to go!” but it was like a tape was wrapped around my soul, muting my expressions. Though the emotions in my heart burst like tsunamis, I stayed silent. My mom never asked me how I felt about the trip. It was like she did not even care how I felt at all.
We stopped at a grand central shopping mall. Crowds of fans were gathering outside. My mom, like the other fans, wore a bright blue dress—the singer’s lucky color. Carrying handwritten posters with adoring messages to display during the concert, she rushed like a happy child up to the atrium. Ignoring my exhaustion, she asked me to take photos of her with the flowers in the hall and then stand in line to buy raffle tickets for a chance to go on stage and meet the singer. As before, I quietly did as I was told. There were still three hours until the concert, but I was already exhausted from attending to a superfan. Straining under the weight of two large bags of fan products—two magazines, three photo albums, three t-shirts, a water bottle with the singer’s face on it, and a box of his favorite chocolate—I thought the worst part was already over. Nevertheless, when the concert was about to start, the ticket-taker gave me another shock.
“Yes, madam. This is a ticket for Zone A… Wait! Miss, your ticket is in Zone D. You are heading the wrong way.”
I turned around in disbelief. This was too much. My mom had gotten herself a ticket in the very front row and a ticket for me in the far back. As we turned towards opposite sides of the hall, she winked at me and quickly disappeared into the crowd.
Zone D was as far back as one could get: I couldn’t see the stage at all, just glimpses from the large screen that was hung above the section. The music was muffled after crossing the hall crowded with more than five thousand people. I sat in boredom for two hours, until the concert finally reached its climax: the reveal of the raffle.
“Let’s see… who gets the lucky draw?” The singer drew out a ticket: “Zone D, Row 18, Seat 1!”
I was in Row 18! Seat 1 was just a few seats over. I looked around to try to see the lucky ticket-holder. There was an awkward silence; no one stood up, then whispering sounds spread around the hall. A staff member came by and confirmed the seat number, then waved at the other staff members on stage.
“It seems like there is no one in Seat 1! Let’s draw another seat number… Seat 7!”
Seat 7… my seat! My blood boiled up in excitement. Was this real? Could I be that lucky? Was this my reward for spending my break going to a concert that I didn’t like and suffering for my mom? Perhaps it was karma; I had fulfilled my filial duties with obedience and good manners, and now I was being justly rewarded. I texted my mom ecstatically: “Mom, I WON THE RAFFLE! Out of five thousand people!!!”
I walked slowly up the aisle towards the stage. I did not look backwards, but knew everyone was staring at my back. My body was shaking out of nervousness and excitement. The lights were bright and colorful on stage, and in just a few more steps I would be there…
Just as I was about to get up on stage and receive my prize, someone darted up in front of me. I turned around in confusion… who could have jumped out in front of me and stolen my reward? But then, before I saw it, I knew. Even before she turned around, happily holding up the prize, I knew it was my mom.
My excitement froze; my warm blood turned to ice. How could she take this away from me? After ruining my winter break and forcing me to do all of those tasks for her! Winning the raffle was the only good thing that had happened this whole trip. Anger, stress, and astonishment howled inside of me like a winter storm. I felt lightheaded as the cold wind of the air conditioner blasted. I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t know what to think. Dumbfounded, I turned back to my seat and shivered in the cold, artificial air.
I opened up my phone and started scrolling aimlessly through my photos for a distraction. Pictures of my mom were everywhere–I wanted to delete all of them! I closed my eyes, letting myself drown in the memories.
Images began to float to the surface. As long as I could remember, I recalled my mom always being busy. When I was little, the burden of raising me fell almost entirely on her shoulders. I heard my dad repeating the same phrases: “I’m sorry, I tried my best”; “I have no experience in child raising”; and “I hope you can cover that.” My mom—like my father, a first-time parent—tried very hard to balance childcare and her career as a business consultant at a top international firm. It was common for her to fly to three different cities in a single day and return home around 4 a.m. Although she rarely came home before midnight, she still packed my backpack and prepared my breakfast the next morning. The stress was torturous, and by the time I was about to start primary school, she reluctantly started thinking about quitting her job to focus on childcare. She was aware that quitting her job would mean losing her autonomy. Once she stepped away from her career, she would have to fully depend on her husband for economic pursuits. Not only would she have a long gap in her resume if she ever wanted to go back to work, she would also lose status in the eyes of our extended family, being viewed as a homemaker rather than a breadwinner.
However, rather than quitting, my mom made a decision that surprised our whole family: she started her own business. With this change, she believed that she could keep working and at the same time keep educating and accompanying me. Her field, creating custom business analytics software for large multinational companies, was competitive and filled with large established companies. In the beginning, almost no one believed that her small studio of five employees would be capable of deploying complex software that the big firms were still struggling to develop. Many people ignored her calls, believing them to be spam; some even mocked her for trying. On more than one occasion, she obtained a meeting only by standing outside of a potential client’s office for hours to beg for a chance. My entire family thought it was too risky and tried to persuade her to give up. They told her: “Your daughter relies on you, and she just needs you to be around. You are a person without a proper sense of responsibility…” Many times I heard her sobbing in her room with the doors shut. And yet, after seven years of struggling, she succeeded. Her company became one of the top in the field. Only because of her persistence and faith in herself was she able overcome the pain of no one else believing in her.
All the while, she never gave up taking care of me. As I continued scrolling, I came across a drawing in the margins of a textbook. A memory flashed to the surface: the time she had read my entire history book in primary school and rewrote it as a story of cartoons to help me understand better. I recalled her words, making fun of the historical figures: “Henry VIII is this old-looking man on the left; the girl who looks like the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland is Elizabeth I…” I did not know what it meant back then: at 10 years old, I was laughing at Elizabeth’s heart-shaped hair instead of appreciating my mom’s gentle gaze. She taught me how to work hard and enjoy the challenges, she told me it was cool instead of shameful to be different from everyone else, and most importantly, she taught me how to always love myself and the ones around me.
My anger subsided, and I felt some warmth come back to my body. I thought I had been confined by societal expectations, but now, I realized that my mom was the one who had been confined. Taking this sudden trip to Thailand to see her favorite singer was her way of breaking free. After struggling for more than a decade, she had achieved the freedom to do what she wanted. Her hard work had paid off, and she finally had the time, money, and autonomy to go to a concert whenever, wherever, however she wanted. Well, maybe not total autonomy… She still felt uncomfortable going without her daughter.
I rubbed my eyes; they were blurry from the tears. As the world came into focus, I saw my mom standing there in the dazzling lights. She stood at the center of the stage, glittering and iridescent; I could see that now, in this moment, she was standing at the center of her own life. Like a butterfly bursting out of a cocoon, she had broken free from everything that had been holding her in. I felt like I broke free at the same time. I did not feel anything other than my love towards her. I was sure that I had thousands of words that I wanted to say.
When the concert ended, I found her at the exit. As we stepped out into the city, I felt a soft breeze mingling with the coziness of the evening warmth. The sky had become softer, friendlier. I looked at my mom and said, “Let’s take a taxi, Angela.”
She laughed, surprised that I had called her by her name. She showed me the prize she had won in the raffle: a gold medal with the singer’s face delicately carved on it.
“I’m glad I didn’t go on stage.” I looked at her with a smile, “I would have been so disappointed if that was the prize. I don’t even like that singer!”
We laughed together under the sunset.
*****
from Yun Lin’s cover letter:
This story is about accompanying my mom to a concert in Thailand, a concert that I was not interested in attending, but still did so without complaint, although it took precious days out of my winter vacation. I felt intense conflict within myself during this trip, and I wrote this story to help figure out why. Why did I resent my mom for dragging me along to this concert, and why did I not speak up? By asking these questions and describing this experience, the narrative explores themes of filial piety and the social pressures placed on women throughout all stages of our lives.
