Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [32]
At Crystal Lake, Florence felt that her granddaughters should be able to swim, walk, and explore wherever they pleased. By contrast, I told them that if they stepped off our front porch, kidnappers would get them. I also told them that the deep parts of the lake had ferocious biting fish. I may have gone overboard, but sometimes being carefree means being careless. Once when Florence was babysitting for us at the lake, I came home to find two-year-old Sophia running around outside by herself with a pair of garden shears as large was she was. I snatched them furiously away. “She was going to cut some wildflowers,” Florence said wistfully.
The truth is I’m not good at enjoying life. It’s not one of my strengths. I keep a lot of to-do lists and hate massages and Caribbean vacations. Florence saw childhood as something fleeting to be enjoyed. I saw childhood as a training period, a time to build character and invest for the future. Florence always wanted just one full day to spend with each girl—she begged me for that. But I never had a full day for them to spare. The girls barely had time as it was to do their homework, speak Chinese with their tutor, and practice their instruments.
Florence liked rebelliousness and moral dilemmas. She also liked psychological complexity. I did too, but not when it was applied to my kids. “Sophia is so envious of her new sister,” Florence once giggled, shortly after Lulu was born. “She just wants to ship Lulu back where she came from.”
“No, she doesn’t,” I snapped. “Sophia loves her new sister.” I felt that Florence was generating sibling rivalry by looking for it. There are all kinds of psychological disorders in the West that don’t exist in Asia.
Being Chinese, I almost never had any open confrontations with Florence. When I said “butting heads with Florence” earlier, what I meant was criticizing and railing against her to Jed behind her back. With Florence I was always accommodating and hypocritically good-natured about her many suggestions. So Jed had a point, especially since he’d borne the brunt of the conflict.
But none of that mattered one bit, because Florence was Jed’s mother. For Chinese people, when it comes to parents, nothing is negotiable.Your parents are your parents, you owe everything to them (even if you don’t), and you have to do everything for them (even if it destroys your life).
In early April, Jed checked Florence out of the hospital and brought her to New Haven, where he carried her up to our second floor. Florence was incredibly excited and happy, as if we were all at a resort together. She stayed in our guest room, next to the girls’ bedroom and just down the hall from our master bedroom. We hired a nurse to cook and care for her, and physical therapists were always coming and going. Almost every night, Jed, the girls, and I had dinner with Florence; for the first couple of weeks, it was always in her room because she couldn’t come downstairs. Once, I invited a few of her friends and threw a wine and cheese party in her room. When Florence saw the cheeses I’d picked, she was aghast and sent me out for different ones. Instead of being mad, I was glad that she was still Florence and that good taste ran in my daughters’ genes. I also made a note of which cheeses never to buy again.
Although there were constant scares—Jed had to race Florence to the New Haven hospital at least twice a week—Florence seemed to recover miraculously in our house. She had an enormous appetite and gained weight rapidly. On her birthday, May 3, we were able to all go out to a nice restaurant. Our friends Henry and Marina came with us and couldn’t believe this was the same Florence they’d seen in the hospital six weeks earlier. In a high-necked asymmetrical Issey Miyake jacket, she was glamorous again and didn’t even look sick.
Just a few days