We lived in an apartment complex with many children, who would run around in the plaza after school while the aunties gossiped about the latest neighborhood drama. The late summer nights I spent playing with my friends next door were the most saturated memories of my early childhood in China—everything from the neon green popsicles we shared to the incandescent fireworks that danced across the night.
My family of four moved to the United States in the summer of 2012. Although I came here before I could even speak, I am still filled with bright memories of walking down streets decorated with fire lanterns and indulging in shāo kāo, Chinese barbeque kabobs.
It has been more than a decade now since we have moved away from China. I find myself wondering what happened to my childhood best friend who used to host fairy-themed tea parties at her house almost every weekend. I could imagine that my parents miss home, too. My mom complains about how the nearby Safeway and Costco do not have the ingredients to make her favorite lotus root and pork soup, a family recipe my grandmother taught her when she was growing up in the countryside of China, where a raging river ran through my mom’s town and the wild grasses grew up to people’s knees. I can imagine it must have been difficult for my parents to make the decision to move to the United States and say goodbye to all of their family and friends they had known since they were children, not knowing if there would be a chance to meet again.
When we moved, I clung to my mother’s hand in the bustling airport near Kaiping. My nine-year-old brother was too old to hold hands, but I was only four. My mother’s hand was sweaty, and I wondered if everything was okay as she turned to me.
“Life will be better in the States, Mèimei,” she said.
My family of four moved from a spacious three-bedroom apartment in China into a scruffy, old room when we first settled down in Northern California. I was unaware of my family’s relationship with money as a young child, but I noticed many hints.
My mom’s brows knitted together whenever I asked her if I could buy a new jacket from Abercrombie or the newest Barbie doll with purple streaks in her hair that I was mildly obsessed with.
“Maybe in a few weeks if you’re good,” my mom would say to me.
Sometimes, I would wake up to my parents arguing over money in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. My mother’s muted cries from the living room still paralyze me.
My parents had very demanding jobs that required them to work six days a week, in twelve-hour shifts with few breaks in between, in exchange for fifteen dollar hourly wages. My parents would complain about having to work every morning, but they had no choice but to stay at their jobs.
In the early mornings, before the sun woke up, my mom would get up to take me to school and then go to work. She was a server at a Taiwanese restaurant during the day and my mother in the evening. I would wait patiently for her to come home every night at 10 p.m. She always smelled like braised pork when I hugged her, and there were soy sauce stains on her work uniform.
Throughout my childhood, I saw how my parents dedicated their lives to working and were cheated of the opportunity to pursue the life that they envisioned. While my parents never pressured me to become valedictorian or encouraged me to choose a particular career, I still felt the weight of responsibility to make my parents proud and prove that their sacrifices were worth it.
“I should have tried harder to study so I would have lived with more purpose,” said my mom. In the past, both of my parents have expressed regret over not pursuing higher education, my mother wanting to work as soon as possible to support her family and my father choosing to help his family’s business.
I have always held my mom’s words close to me, grasping them like a compass. Eventually, I became obsessed with the idea of getting accepted into an elite college, recognizing higher education as a means of granting freedom to myself—and my family. In my freshman year of high school, I would stay up to study for my exams with a cup of strawberry sparkling water in my hands because it seemed to keep me awake better than coffee. It felt like every cell in my body’s purpose was to work.
Despite the hours I put into studying and my extracurriculars, I felt like I would never catch up to my peers in the marathon of high school. I always blamed myself for getting lower marks and achieving less than my peers, but it was not a fair comparison now that I am looking back on my journey. I live in the heart of Silicon Valley, where there is a concentration of wealth. Many of my peers have access to tutoring, college consulting services, and more extracurricular opportunities. Meanwhile, I have to juggle my responsibilities at home with my classes and activities with minimal support.
While I have been through challenges in my pursuit of higher education, I am hopeful of the possibilities that a college acceptance letter could present to my family and me. I want to provide my parents with lifelong peace, knowing that their daughter was able to attend college and gain the opportunities that they had been robbed of. I also wish I could find my purpose and have the liberty to choose my roles in this life for once.
All these experiences reveal who I see in the mirror—a daughter of immigrants who carries the weight of their unfulfilled dreams and a determined first-generation student hoping to become the living proof of their American Dream.
Kaelyn Tan is a high school sophomore from the Bay Area, California, interested in literary arts and advocacy. Her work often explores themes like identity, coming-of-age, and social issues. When she is not matchmaking words, she enjoys studying East Asian history and drinking pearl milk tea.
Featured image by Pascal Meier on unsplash.
