Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [64]
Sophia really nailed that one. This might be a good time to raise an important point about Chinese parenting and birth order. Or maybe just birth order. I have a student named Stephanie, who recently told me a funny story. An eldest child and the daughter of Korean immigrants, Stephanie told me that when she was in high school (straight As, math whiz, concert pianist), her mother used to threaten her, “If you don’t do X, I won’t take you to school.” And this prospect would strike terror in Stephanie’s heart—miss school! So she would do whatever her mother asked, desperately hoping she wasn’t too late. By contrast, when her mother threatened Stephanie’s younger sister with the same thing, her sister responded, “Awesome. I’d love to stay home. I hate school.”
There are lots of exceptions of course, but this pattern—model first kid, rebellious second—is definitely one I’ve noticed in many families, especially immigrant families. I just thought I could beat it in Lulu’s case through sheer will and hard work.
“As you know, Sophia, I’m having trouble with Lulu,” I conceded. “What worked with you isn’t working with her. It’s a mess.”
“Oh . . . don’t worry, Ma,” Sophia said, her voice suddenly kind. “It’s just a stage. It’s awful to be thirteen—I was miserable. But things will get better.”
I hadn’t even known that Sophia was miserable at thirteen. Come to think of it, my mother hadn’t known I was miserable at thirteen either. Like most Asian immigrant households, we didn’t have heart-to-heart “talks” in my family. My mother never told me about adolescence and especially not about the gross seven-letter word that starts with p-u and ends withy and is what happens to adolescents. We absolutely never talked about the Facts of Life—just trying to imagine that conversation retroactively sends shivers up my spine.
“Sophia,” I said, “you’re just like I was in my family: the oldest, the one that everyone counts on and no one has to worry about. It’s an honor to play that role. The problem is that Western culture doesn’t see it that way. In Disney movies, the ‘good daughter’ always has to have a breakdown and realize that life is not all about following rules and winning prizes, and then take off her clothes and run into the ocean or something like that. But that’s just Disney’s way of appealing to all the people who never win any prizes. Winning prizes gives you opportunities, and that’s freedom—not running into the ocean.”
I was deeply moved by my oration. All the same, I felt a pang. An image of Sophia racing home from school, arms full of books, flashed into my head, and I almost couldn’t take it. “Give me the broom,” I said. “You need time to practice piano. I’ll clean this up.”
29
Despair
My sister Michelle and I were both tested to see if either of us could be Katrin’s bone marrow donor. Siblings have the best chance of being a perfect match—about one in three—and I felt strangely hopeful that my blood would come through. But I was wrong. Neither Michelle nor I was a match for Katrin. The irony was that we were perfect matches for each other, but neither of us could help Katrin. This meant that Katrin now had to try to find a donor through the national bone marrow registries. To our dismay, we learned that once siblings had failed to match, the odds of finding a donor decreased dramatically, especially for people of Asian and African descent. The Internet is filled with appeals from dying patients desperately searching for a bone marrow match. And even if there was a match out there, the process could take months—months that Katrin might not have.
Katrin’s first round of chemo had not been a nightmare, but the second round more than made up for that. It was brutal. Now days would go by without my hearing from her. In panic I’d call Or, but often just get his voice