Let me first off say that last week was an amazing week.  So, so, so, so many great things happened.  I was selected as a speaker at our spring TEDx talks on campus, a chapter proposal for a book project that I’m excited about was accepted, a call I’ve been waiting on for awhile happened, I made progress on a research project that I love.  So many great things.

Last Friday, my eldest twin daughters also turned 30.  We adopted them when they were 15 so they’ve now spent half their birthdays as part of our family.  Our relationships as a family have been complicated in ways that no one could have prepared me for, ways complicated by our individual traumatic losses of our mothers, by struggles with mental health, by different understandings of how to show love and be loved, by our different races and the ways we walk through the world.  I love them more than the world, but that love carries with it a lot of complexity that I hold close to my heart because it is not fully my story to tell.

In 11 days, my mom would have turned 81.  She died when she was 56.  November and the Thanksgiving season have, for 25 years, been complicated by the deep sense of loss at her absence.  Even more so in the last 15 years since becoming a mother. I’m always prepared for it to hit, except that I’m never fully prepared for it to hit because grief is tricky that way.

This last weekend, I worked with a colleague and her research team to do some data collection at a local aquarium.  One of the families was a mother, father and the mother’s parents with their two young daughters. As I observed the family, I felt the profound emptiness that I have felt before, that my own children will not ever know my mother, and can only hope to have a few memories of my father, who is in his 90s, in Myanmar, and who I know so little about myself, having grown up largely without him. I felt a ridiculous sense of guilt at not being able to give my children that love that grandparents can provide. I felt tired because we sometimes feel so alone as parents, with my in-laws (who love my children deeply) across the country and my own parents not around.

After coming home from data collection, my daughter and I read A Big Mooncake for Little Star by Grace Lin. It was by request of my daughter who said that it was her favorite because Little Star and her Mama are so beautiful.  My daughter sees the beauty of Asian faces reflected back at her.  Although she doesn’t know it, she sees that she can be beautiful and included.  It reminds me that I didn’t see myself when I was younger and how my son still doesn’t see himself in his middle school reading and I feel moved and full of love, but also that there is still so much work to do.

Then yesterday, a text on the Chinese school group chat about the low test scores in the class.  Cue all of my guilt at my son being the only one in the class who doesn’t have any real Mandarin speaking family members in the house. Cue my profound sadness that I didn’t value learning Mandarin as a child when my family spoke it around me. Of course, I know this is structural and due to pressures to assimilate and earn worthiness. I know I am not alone because I’ve heard it in my interview data of Asian American teachers. But, I feel so deeply alone. And I wish that my son still had my mom so that he could practice his Mandarin with her. I wish she could see that I see the importance of embracing all of who we are, that I am proud of all of who we are, that I am sorry I didn’t see when I was his age.

I miss my mom.

In all of it, the joy of the last week, in all the struggles, in all the beautiful everyday moments and the hard, complicated moments of mothering and life, I miss my mom.

Cue grief that comes from the deepest parts of you at a time when you just didn’t think it would be there.

That’s it. That’s the post. Sometimes grief and mothering is just so hard.