Stay-home Mom?

One Saturday morning my neighbor and I were exercising together, and out of the blue she asked me, "Did you have a good childhood in China?" The question suddenly struck me. I've never given thoughts as to evaluate my childhood. However, as a recall what I did as a child, almost all my memories involved my dad.

He was a musician who specialized in Chinese operatic music. He composed Chinese opera music, he coached Chinese operatic vocalists, he played Oriental and Western instruments of all sorts in the Chinese opera house he worked at. I wasn't sure if he was simply very flexible with his work schedule, or he was just very intentional about being there for me. Maybe it's both. I just remembered that we did so much together. He was very engaged in my childhood. I remember spending a lot of time on his bicycle, which he used as transportation to take me everywhere with him. We'd go buy food together at the street market. We'd go to pick up my mom from the school she taught at night and we'd catch fireflies in the nearby fields. We'd go visit my grandparents together or run errands for them. He taught me how to climb monkey bars, and how to play badminton. He taught me singing and piano. He'd even had a secret whistle to call me home whenever I was over playing at my neighbor's apartment. In summary, he invested his time and energy in me. While all other memories of China would fade, the memories of my time spent with my dad still lived so vividly in my mind, even after 2 decades and a hemisphere of distance away.

My relationship with my dad kept me grounded through times of uncertainty especially when we immigrated to the US. as I was turning 13. I was uprooted from everything I knew. Even though he and mom started working long hours to pay for our new lives in a new country, and I had to learn to grow up all of the sudden and I had to struggle through a lot of things on my own, I never felt that I was not loved or heard. Even when people at school laughed at me and teased me for being different, I wasn't really that devastated and my identity of who I was wasn't threatened because I was rooted, and I knew my identity as a beloved child.

Maybe it's my dad being a role model for me in my youth, I've learned to love my children the way he loved me and is so emotionally engaged with me. I love the fact that I am able to be available for my kids especially during the first few years of their lives when they need me the most. We have built, over the years, a strong trust with one another, in which they would feel completely safe to tell me anything that come to their minds. And I hope that with this foundation paved, they can go through life feeling confident about who they are and rooted in the knowledge that they are deeply loved .

This entry is not to compare working moms at all. In fact, I have seen some of my best friends as working moms balancing work and family so beautifully. Everyone has a different calling. For me, with running my piano studio as a creative outlet, I feel energized to be a stay-home mom. I recognize the importance of being emotionally engaged with my children. I see how much sanity this mutual trust has brought to my family thus far. I don't need my kids to be academically fantasically-amazing, but I need them and want them to be psychologically healthy so they can be there for the people that will need them and depend on them in the near future. Also hopefully one day when they reflect back on their childhood, they'd remember all the fun they had had with me, their mom who loves them to the moon and back, and they'd know that they've had a good childhood.