Mother's Day Tribute

This mother's day, I wanted to put something in writing I never have about my mom. I never had a chance to do so before my dad got dementia and ultimately passed away, so I'd like to rectify that this time around.

My family has never been a super lovey-dovey family that verbally expresses and proclaims love for one another. If anything, it's quite the opposite. I'd describe my family affection for each other as stoic. I've always been fascinated with families that comfortably demonstrate warmth with each other. I don't really know what exact actions makes someone come across as warm. So this is a series of observational studies for me. To me, it feels odd...even awkward to say the 3 little words: "I love you". Somehow, I'd more comfortably say it to my pets than to humans. 

If you asked me, I would always say that I have deep respect for my mom. She is an amazingly strong woman in ways that she doesn't see in herself. To me, she is the rock in our family. She is a highly capable woman who is great at solving really tough problems. She is a math wiz (I didn't get that from her!) who asks really sharp questions (I definitely got this from her!). 

She has a depth of business experience and she continues to provide useful counsel to me in my various business ventures. She's in her 80s and she learned about AI so we could have meaningful conversations about business, global government policies, and society. 

Back in the day, she named her company "C.K. Woo & Co." so that people didn't know right away that it was a woman who owned the firm. New clients would come into the office looking to see "the boss", expecting a man. She had to work hard to wow them to become clients so that they'd overcome their concern that she was a woman running the firm. She is a brave and tough woman who stood up against bully clients who treated women poorly.

She is always learning. After retiring, she insisted on learning the computer, how to use her smartphone and tablet, go online shopping, use social media, activate blue tooth, and how to pair devices when her peers gave up on technology. Her reasoning is that she wants to remain be plugged into society and know what people talk about and use daily too. She is the most technology-forward person in her age group that I know. 

During the pandemic lockdown, she even showed me how to pin the speaker's box on my video conference Zoom screen. And I was the person who had worked at 2 tech startups at that time and had been using Zoom for years before she learned to use it during the pandemic! 

Her starting to learn to play the ukelele at age 78 impressed me greatly. Being the oldest person in her class never daunted her. Even when people told her "why bother learning to play an instrument at your age?", it never stopped her. Respect!

I have spent a lifetime learning from her, and continue to do so. As her aging body challenges her, I continue to learn from her as she pushes hard each day with her daily physiotherapy to keep her muscle strength. Simultaneously, she demonstrates graceful acceptance of things that she can no longer do, or do well, both physically and cognitively. 

But she is not perfect (and neither am I). She's a tough-as-nails person with a tendency to be over-controlling. She is impatient and has a short temper. She is highly punctual (not a bad trait!), but that means no one can be late by even 1 minute without her getting cross. Admittedly, I'm very much like her. 

To afford all the opportunities for learning she lavished on her children, she prioritized work by working full-time and 2 jobs at one point in time. As such, even though she paid for my tennis coaching lessons, she didn't come to watch me play at any of my tennis tournaments in middle and high school. I recall it stung when it was the tournament finals and every player had a family member there to cheer them on, except me. I had hoped for those few times, that she would come watch me in action. But she missed most of everything I did while I was at school. For good or for bad, perhaps that's when I learned to prioritize work above all else. 

Bringing home a report card full of "A" grades never brought a smile to her lips, but rather a response that sounded like an advertisement from a financial services firm: "past performance doesn't guarantee future performance", she'd say. She always pushed us never to rest on our laurels. But of course, sometimes a bit of encouragement or praise would've been nice. This taught me never to have pursuits for the sake of gaining approval or praises from my parents or anyone else, because that would unlikely happen. I learned to be completely self-motivated and not rely on any external affirmations to spur myself on. In what can be a lonely entrepreneur's journey, this has proven to be a foundational pillar for resilience.

Just as she didn't learn from her own parents how to say "I love you", she too, didn't say those words to my sister and me. Today, I am learning to say those 3 little words in writing. Because I still can't quite bring myself to say it out loud to my mom. But I'll start by typing it here:

"Happy mother's day, mom, I love you. You've taught me that there's a first time for everything. You mentioned your biggest regret was not showing your children more care and concern (I'll add: love and warm affection too), so we don't know how to reflect those affections back at you. 

The first step to change is awareness. However, change doesn't happen till one takes action. Today, I'm taking action...baby steps in learning how to show more of the things that you now reckon are important things that were missed during our earlier years. If I've learned anything from you, it's that it's never too late to learn. 

Thank you for being my mom, for all of your positive and negative traits (it makes you human!). I learn from the things you did right in your life, but probably more from the missteps in your life. Your actions and inactions impress upon me and inspire me in more ways than you realize.

Let's face it, life is messy. It's hard not to get entangled in a mess every now and then. It's how we get out of those tough situations and to stand back up that matters. And you've taught me lessons in spades on how to do that while never giving up, no matter how tough it gets. Thank you. You have been and continue to be an amazing role model to me, and I love you immensely for that."