Mommy loves me!

Today, I spoke with my mom after class. We talked about the weather, what we were each doing at the moment, and then I told her I was going to work later on in the day—that I had 2 hours before my shift began and that I was going to eat dinner at five. At this moment, she told me, “Oh, you should get some sleep before then!” And I was contemplating it, because I had wanted to start on revising my essay. But then she was persistent about it—“You have to sleep, okay?”—and of course, all of this is in Chinese. At that moment, I felt loved. I felt warm and fuzzy, I felt emotional. My mom is never like that with me—we never take anything seriously, and so we never show much affection. But at this moment, when her true motherliness had shown, I was taken aback and became suddenly very happy that, despite her kidding, her tough exterior, she loved me and cared about me. Not that I didn’t know she loved me, but it’s so profound how deeply a gesture that shows it, proves it, gives it substance—that gives her love a vehicle to shine through; it honestly touched me. I swelled with joy to know for sure that my mom loved me.

So I went back to my room, checked e-mail and Facebook, and proceeded to nap. I set my alarm clock for 4:42 p.m. Too bad I didn’t activate it. Good thing my roomie came in at that time and semi woke me…I might already have been awake, otherwise I don’t think she would have waken me up. But anyways, I did make it in time for dinner! Almost late to work. Good thing I wasn’t. I did a bit of running.