A picture of my mother and my sister Karin…

Mother’s Day is coming. The following is what my sister Karin wrote about our mother. (Karin passed away last Nov.)

***

My Mother – the Greatest

Mom was a very good mother. She always prepared our breakfast early in the morning and was always home when I came back from school. Mom washed clothes by hands and hung them up on the cloth line for drying. Then she walked to the supermarket to buy vegetables and meat for the day. Sometimes, I went grocery shopping with her; she was treated nicely and respectfully by all the vendors in the market.   Mom pampered us; her only requirement out of us was to study hard and get good grades at the school. She seldom asked us to do house chores. She especially wanted her girls to have a good education since she had missed so many opportunities because she didn’t have one.

Mom was very smart in managing money. With dad’s little salary, she somehow managed to have sufficient food on the table and never complained. One time someone suggested dad to teach at a local school as a second job. But mother said dad’s health was more important than money and rejected the idea. Both of my parents had never spent any money on themselves.

***

I remember one Chinese New Year, the sound of firecrackers woke me up at 4 am, and I couldn’t go back to sleep. That was probably the only day that I got up before Mom did. Mom was our alarm clock. If we needed to get up early, all we had to do was to let her know, and she would wake us up by the time we’d specified. “Five more minutes,” we would beg. And she would try to wake us up 5 minutes later.

I miss my mother. I miss my sister Karin.