Why I Cannot Leave My Mother: A Personal Essay on Family

Introduction: Two Stories of Difficult Parents

The family bond varies and is relative from one family to another. Some families display qualities of being supportive to each other, while other families are disjointed and indifferent. The relationship I have with my family is hard to understand and very challenging: we truly love each other but repeatedly hurt each other at the same time. I was struck when I read "Reunion" by John Cheever, a short story about a boy who chooses to diverge from the path set by his father.

The story begins with the boy, Charlie, waiting for his father at Grand Central Station. He is excited to see his father because it has been a long time since they were together. When they finally meet, his father seems a little tipsy and emits a strong whiskey stench. The father takes Charlie to a restaurant near the station, where Charlie observes his father's generally rude behavior. Charlie's father calls waiters and waitresses by shouting and clapping his hands at them. This behavior is unacceptable in most restaurants, and they end up being kicked out of two establishments. As they are about to travel together by train, the father wants to buy a newspaper for Charlie, but, true to his pattern, he becomes impolite once again. His son cannot take it anymore. Charlie has no option but to tell his father, "Goodbye, Daddy" (Cheever 2), and boards the train alone. They never see each other after that day.

My real-life situation is similar to Charlie's. I will be going back to my home country, Korea, when this semester ends. My mother and I are genuinely thrilled to see each other. However, I know my mother's personality well. I know we are bound to fight and hurt each other within a few weeks of my arrival — my mother is in some ways analogous to Charlie's father, and the quarrels are inevitable. Charlie's father shows off his white privilege; my mother asserts her authority as a parent. The crucial difference, however, is that Charlie resolves never to see his father again, while I am not contemplating leaving my mother.

What Charlie and I Have in Common

There are a few things that Charlie and I have in common. First, we have both tried to limit communication with our families. Charlie has not seen his father since his parents divorced, and nothing in the text suggests he keeps in touch with him. When Charlie wrote a letter to his father requesting a chance to have lunch together, it was his father's secretary — not his father — who replied. Similarly, I have been in the United States for eight months, but I called my mother only three times during that entire period. One of those instances was a birthday call; she was so startled that she asked what had prompted me to call, as if she never expected — or appreciated — hearing from me. Even before I came to college, when I always lived with my mother, I did not talk to her much.

When I reached puberty, the trouble with my mother grew worse. In middle school, I used to fight with her over mundane issues. One day, I came home from school and she scolded me because she believed I had not turned off the air conditioner when I left. That was not true — I clearly remembered switching it off. I stood my ground and insisted I had done so, but my defense led nowhere. My mother did not believe me, not because she had any tangible evidence, but because she always assumed she was right. She blamed me whenever anything went wrong, never accepting that she could be at fault herself. She kept pointing fingers at everyone except herself.

The anger in me boiled over, and I inevitably shouted back, "Stop saying bullshit!" — an outburst that deeply angered her. Each time we had a heated argument, my mother would send messages to my older sister, who was living in Japan at the time. In those messages she omitted every detail of her own errors and highlighted only my supposed faults. In this particular case, she simply messaged my sister: "[Student] said bullshit to me." It was common for my sister to receive messages such as "[Student] shouted at me today" — always one-sided accounts. My sister later confided in me that she had thought I had an anger-control disorder. Eventually my sister moved to the United States, and when I came here for college, she traveled to Korea to visit my mother. Within a few days she messaged me saying she finally understood why I fought with her so frequently.

Returning to Charlie's story: during their reunion, when his father is being obnoxious, Charlie never attempts to talk to him openly. If Charlie had spoken honestly with his father, he might have come to understand why his father behaved so badly.

Alcohol and Its Role in Both Relationships

A second parallel is that both Charlie's father and my mother struggle with alcoholism. During the reunion, Charlie detects the smell of whiskey on his father, making it clear that his father's rude behavior is at least partly fueled by alcohol. In the same way, my mother becomes offensive and inconsiderate when she is drunk.

I recall one instance when I called my mother asking her to send me $20 to help purchase books I needed for school. She sounded incoherent and drunk. She tends to speak harshly and carelessly when she has been drinking, without regard for the effect her words have on the other person. When I asked for the $20, her response was: "You were born to take away all my money." She went on to call me a monster, saying she did not know why a child like me had been born, and worse — that she wished I had died earlier in life. Those were harsh words that kept ringing in my mind. It was not easy to process such language from my own mother, and I did not know whom to turn to for help.

The reason my mother drinks heavily is rooted in her previous career. In Korea, work colleagues often go out together for drinks after work — a practice described by the common Korean term hwesik. When her working hours ended, she frequently went out for dinner and drinks with her team. The habit continued even after she retired. She had worked as a bank clerk, dealing with many people daily; a significant number of customers were rude to her, and this took an emotional toll. Drinking became one of her ways of relieving stress. Even our two dogs would avoid her when she was drunk.

References

Chun H. & Monica Das Gupta M.D. (2009). Gender discrimination in sex-selective abortions and its transition in South Korea. Women's Studies International Forum, 32.

Health Communication Capacity Collaboration. (2018). Social learning theory. Retrieved April 21, 2018, from

"The Struggles of South Korea's Working Women."