Forgiving mother
Monday December 10, 2007 STORIES FOR MY MOTHER, By CHONG SHEAU CHING
The end of the year is a time for forgiveness and forging an understanding with people we have a hard time getting along with.
MY mom is driving me nuts!” I complained to a friend who is in her 50s. “She rummages through the rubbish bins and takes back things I throw away. She stores them under her bed for ‘future use’!”
“You shouldn’t be complaining! She is saving your money so you don’t have to buy more things,” my friend scolded me.
I took her to my parents’ room and showed her the “treasures” I had found – empty biscuit tins, glass containers and paper packaging. “Not only these! There’re other empty containers all over the kitchen. She hides them behind the food in different cupboards so I won’t be able to find them unless I take everything out! My kitchen is so untidy because we now have more things since she moved in several years ago! We also have cockroaches and rats!”
“I quarrel with her sometimes,” I grumbled.
My friend listened and nodded with sympathy.
The next day, she called me. “You really should see your mother from another perspective. She was a child during the war, she saw hunger and suffering. After World War II, her family did farming and had a small business. They stacked things all over the house so that they could use them to generate income. People who lived through that era didn’t have all these containers. These were luxuries. So they never threw away empty glass bottles or containers – they saved them for many uses.”
She reminded me that I, too, saved polystyrene containers when I studied in Canada because these containers were considered luxuries in Ipoh in the early 1980s.
“Malaysia was more prosperous in the 1960s and 1970s when you were a child, compared to the 1930s and 1940s. So forgive her and let her be. She will never change because she is already 76! It is us younger people who should change the way we think!”
“Sometimes I am so angry that I can’t forgive her!” I said frustratingly. “She is so difficult, so stubborn!”
This prompted my friend to tell me a story from old China:
A girl named Li-Li lived with her husband and mother-in-law. She couldn’t get along with her mother-in-law at all. She didn’t like her mother-in-law’s habits and criticism. Her mother-in-law scolded her and saw her as a disobedient daughter-in-law. And so both of them argued and fought daily.
According to Chinese tradition, Li-Li had to bow to her mother-in-law and obey her every wish. She grudgingly performed these duties but vented all her anger on her husband, who was caught between his mother and his wife. Finally, Li-Li could no longer stand her mother-in-law’s bad temper and bossy ways any longer, and she decided to see her father’s good friend, Mr Huang, a herbalist, to ask for some poison.
Mr Huang agreed to help her but with one condition – Li-Li was to do what he said. He gave her a packet of herbs and told her to boil some daily and give the concoction to her mother-in-law. By serving the poison in small doses, no one would be suspicious. Every other day, Li-li was also to prepare a delicious meal for her mother-in-law and act friendly and obey the woman.
“Don’t argue, obey her every wish, and treat her like a queen,” he instructed.
Li-Li hurried home to start executing the plot to kill her mother-in-law. She controlled her temper, and obeyed the older woman, treating her like her own mother.
After six months, things at the whole household had changed. Li-Li had practised controlling her temper so much that she almost never got upset. She hadn’t had an argument with her mother-in-law and the old lady’s attitude towards Li-Li had also changed. She treated Li-Li like her own daughter!
Li-Li went to see Mr Huang for his help again. She wanted an antidote to keep the poison from killing her mother-in-law, whom she now considered such a nice woman. Mr Huang then informed her that the herbs he had given her were not poisonous, but were to improve her health.
“The only poison was in your mind and your attitude towards her, but that has all been washed away by the kindness you have been showing her.
My friend asked me, “Don’t you remember the famous Chinese proverb – the person who respects others will also be respected, the person who loves others will also be loved in return? How you treat your mother is exactly how she will treat you. Forgive her for who she is because she hasn’t seen the things you have seen and she doesn’t understand the things you take for granted.”
I thought about my friend's story for several months. In the last few months, I have been taking away things my mother collects only when she is out of town instead of directly confronting her. And I involve her in an eco-basket project for disadvantaged women as a volunteer so that she understands that recycling doesn’t mean throwing things away wastefully. Surprisingly, she is now more cooperative and the number of cockroaches in the house has been reduced.
sourced primarily for your reading pleasure by Mr Kelvin Liew Peng Chuan 2011/12
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