December 1999

I watched her back as she walked through the "Boarding Pass Only" door. The guard's stern glare depleted all hope of slipping through without a Pass or special permission. At 1mXX (5'1"), she quickly disappeared from sight, hidden by the crowds at the departure gates. I stood on tiptoes, trying to keep her grey curls in sight from behind the glass door for as long as I could. I had enjoyed showing her my version of Shanghai in the brief ten days she stayed with me. I love this woman. I' m going to miss seeing her face light up each time I showed her a new piece of the city, or her girlish laughter at my silly antics.

Our relationship wasn't always like this, my mother and I. We fought for most of my teenage years until, in relief, I escaped to college and never looked back. Our beginnings were especially difficult. I came along when she was well into her 40s – in an era when being 40 was considered retirement age. I was more of a shock than a blessing.

She lost a lot of blood at my birth and was confined to bed for the first three months of my infant life. Thus began the kind of a mother-daughter bond that was to last a lifetime. I was the daughter that came to her already-formed – a mystery being she had no part in creating. She was a mother-absent – one who could not give me the nurturing crucial to my growth.

While she did not sustain me with her breast milk, my mother gave me – by example – perhaps an even greater gift. I never saw her fail at anything she set out to do. She had but one simple goal – to see her family thrive. But China's history wrestle control of the people she loved from her hands. And so she found herself on the mainland with children and infants on other continents: one in America and a 3-year old in Hong Kong (me). She managed, with great patience and quiet fortitude, to recollect her scattered band. It took over a decade.

I didn' t see any of this while growing up in America. Instead, I was irritated by a mother who had brought old country values to the promise of a new life. While my friends had sleepovers and pajama parties, I was forbidden to go for fear of it getting "out of control." Their mothers would hug them and say "I love you," but my mother wouldn't even say good night to me.

Instead of expressing caring, my mother seemed to show a tremendous lack of respect for my wishes and opinions. At the dinner table when I would declare that I was full, she would insist that I eat more. She harassed me constantly about bringing an extra sweater or taking the umbrella – not realizing that such accessories was sure to make me an outcast at the local high.

Her English improved in proportion to my Chinese being forgotten. By the time I entered college, we talked only with her limited English. Every missing word in her vocabulary became a hole in our communication. Our connection was reduced to the essentials, "are you eating well?"

Then came a fateful night when her demands and my willfulness seemed to clash beyond all repair. Fiery words drove a shattering wedge between our fragile bond. I responded by erecting an impenetrable wall to keep my real life on the "outside," going home only when duty demanded. I came to accept that from the only mother I would have in this life, I would never have the bond that I craved.

One day my "outside" life came careening into my past. Leaving an ordinary life in the States, I went looking for extraordinary experiences in the country of my birth. I expected China to teach me about history, about culture and about language. I didn' t expect it to teach me about my mother.

Life with my host family and Chinese serial TV revealed a world that looked strangely foreign yet oddly familiar. I found myself surrounded by millions of mothers who acted like mine. I saw not one mother kiss her child on the street, I heard not one parental "I love you" in any movie dialogue. Yet the constant haranguing of "eat more," and "bring your sweater," made me realized that in this culture, a mother shows her love by saying, "I made your favorite dish."

Yet my mother's daughter was on a low-fat, vegetarian diet. Her way of saying "I love you" became the bane in my fight against food invasion. I thought she was dismissing my values. Ten years later, I realized she was giving me her own special brand of love.

Today my Cantonese is better than my mom' s English. The last time I visited home, we had a three-hour conversation. It was the longest talk we have ever had. China has given me many things, but most of all, it has given me a mother. We have the relationship I always dreamt about.

It is true that one has but only one birth mother, but it is not true that one can only have one mother-daughter bond.