Mothers

Mom is coming tomorrow. It's parents weekend on campus so she (and legions of other Asian mothers from across the country) is flying up to Boston to see her son who she hasn't seen for two months and will not see again until Christmas time when the first snow has fallen over the Smokies and I come back home, spent from my first semester as a college freshman.

She'll bring food with her I'm sure. Food and money that she will slip nonchalantly into my hand. "It's okay, just take it. Don't spend it on clothes you already own!" She'll appraise my room in that motherly fashion, tidying a little in each corner, sniffing pointedly at the damp, mildewy air, flicking the light switch on and off and pulling the sheets straight on my bed.

It'll be strange for me to see her here. She is incompatible with my experience here, anachronistic, emblematic of another place, another time, another me. When I think of mom I think of dumplings floating in a boiling froth, thick rimmed glasses shielding a face that is young but old at the same time, her raven hair swept back behind her ears, oddly mismatched ensembles in monochromatic color schemes and piles of dogeared biographies cluttering the coffee table in the parlor. As a college student, I've made strides towards  independence. Without mom, I wash my own clothes, budget my own time, meet with whoever I wish at odd hours of the night. There are no rules here, no arbiters watching over my shoulder. But then again my mother (especially in the last years of high school) never was the type to dictate with any real force. Where dad would rage and pontificate from his middling perch, mom resigned herself long ago to my choleric temper, my maddening stubbornness. So she watches instead, working behind the scenes. Even with her miles away in Tennessee, I feel her presence, guiding me with a phone call here and there, a gently rebuking email in my inbox.

"now is that what your really want to do?"

Mom is hard to describe actually. She's not like most mothers. I mean she does the normal motherly things. She worries about me when I could care less. She stays up late nights watching Chinese soap operas, waiting for the sound of the garage door opening so she knows that I'm home and she can at last close her eyes and sleep. But she's distant, aloof. I know nothing about her past life, who she was in that first blush of girlhood. And she likes it that way.

I bet she's finishing packing right now. I bet she's looking down at all the neatly squared off jackets and candy bars in her suitcase, ticking off the things she knows I forgot to ask for in our last phone conversation.