Son, do you know how much I desire to come close to you?
I seldom talk about my son because there is always a vague pain in my heart whenever I think of the distant relationship between us. As I recollect the days of
his childhood a warm feeling will be aroused from the bottom of my heart. How
cute, bright, smart, pretty a boy he used to be! It is true that he deserved every nice word I listed above and I prefer the word of “pretty” to “handsome”
though I am not sure if it is a suitable word to describe a boy. But anyhow in
my eyes he was the loveliest, prettiest baby in the world. What’s more, unlike other Chinese parents I always prefer a girl to a boy, and unconsciously I regarded my son as a daughter and I trained him to be quiet and obedient.
At that time, the Republic was just recovered from the 10-year-turmoil and I, like other people of my generation, busied myself with studying in evening school
besides daytime work, endless housechore. Just imagine we had only one-day off
in a week at that time and most families didn’t have household electric appliances like washing machine, vacuum, refrigerator etc. Gradually I became weary of his endless questions (children around 2 or 3 years old like to ask questions)
and always interrupted him if he attempted to ask and let him play with toys or
leaf through children’s books all by himself.
I don’t know exactly from when he became really very quiet and tried hard to avoid me. If I wanted to talk to him in my leisure time, he always hesitated in speaking even jabbered, feeling too timid to meet my gaze. I didn’t know at all
it was all because of the lack of communication between us and because of my neglect of him for so long. Instead, I started to nag at him all day long how he
was “not boyly enough”, “no promising”, or “good at nothing” …
All I could read from his eyes were cowardice; and all he could read from my eyes were complete disappointment until one day he asked timidly: “Mom, am I the right kid you expected? Do you really love me?” His childish questions shocked me greatly and pounded me to think further. Yeah! I could not hide my disappointment, but was it his fault? I was completely ignorant about the subject of
the growing pain for a child; I neglected him when he needed me the most.
Now he has grown up into a young adult, still very “pretty” and obedient but still keeps at a distance to me though both of us have tried hard to be close each other.
As everyone knows, most of the parents of my generation have set up great expectations on our children; in addition they are the first batch of inevitable products of “one child policy”, do we have another chance to learn how to parent our kids?
