Before Motherhood
Looking back to old, what people would call “vintage”, pictures of my long ago babyhood, I can’t help but still feel nostalgic despite not remembering any of it. Nostalgia is a funny word that reminds me of noses, smells, and different hair gels—probably because of the way it sounds. Nostalgia also reminds me of my three half-sisters cooing and coddling me when I was little and still didn’t speak English. I would sit in the corner of the living room on my little pillow with a picture book upside down, babbling nonsensical words while my sister Maggie and her white high school friends giggled at my silliness. I remember how my mom would pretend to be impressed, encouraging me and occasionally flip the book right side up for me.
She would come back from work at the tiny Chinese restaurant with my grumpy dad in tow, carrying me from the couch to my bed while I pretended to be asleep, a small smile sneaking onto my face. Her short-cropped hair peppered with white strands would shine in the light briefly while she tucked me in, leaving the door slightly ajar to filter in some light from the hallway.
The next morning, like any other morning, she would splash cold water on her face and brew coffee. She would quickly slip on the opaque, faded gold wedding band she and dad always wore to implicitly show customers that this was a “mom and pop” restaurant and be off to work, red apron on and ready to take your order. This ritual would repeat itself for the next decade with my mom occasionally forgetting to wear her ring to forgoing it completely because it became a hindrance during her work.
Nostalgia wouldn’t be the picture I stumbled upon recently where I was still a chubby baby, cradled in my mom’s arms by the ocean side on a breezy day. I couldn’t remember the time where her hair was so long it caressed her lower back, or the time where she still cared to dust her face lightly with beige powdered foundation, her lips painted in a deep mauve lipstick and the golden wedding ring polished shiny, gleaming like the ocean behind us. I hear the gulls crying in the distance and the waves ricocheting off the rocky cliff side—but my mom’s dolled up face and pretty locks are a blur.
I wonder what my mom’s version of nostalgia was like before motherhood, before this ocean side moment. Her hair would be even longer than it is now, thick bangs still framing her oval face, and she would still be wearing the polished ring instead of keeping it away in a small box in the back of a drawer forever. Or perhaps she wouldn’t be wearing any ring on her fingers—free of work, free of marriage, free of any kind of commitment. She would explore the Californian coast some more to celebrate her citizenship in the U.S., excitedly buying herself a red swimsuit because she always told me that red was a lucky color in our culture. She would maybe also buy a pair of John Lennon shades and a big floppy sun hat before exploring the sandy shores, being famously mistaken for Yoko Ono even though my mom is Chinese and not Japanese—“Very big difference,” my mom would used to tell my friends in broken English when she was explaining the difference between dumplings and gyozas at the restaurant.
She would never cut her hair in this fantastical nostalgic picture of her. She would maybe someday marry a rich man who would let her bake all the desserts she desired because I remember her loving to bake banana bread with me. And at the end of the day, she would rest her head on the couch with an empty glass of wine on a nice coffee table, a Chinese drama playing softly on the flat screen TV in the background, and the house would smell like cookies and Chinese moon cakes. The image of her lips slightly curved up coyly and eyes gently shut would be captured on camera while she pretended to sleep, waiting to be carried to bed by her fantasy husband and tucked in like she once did me.
