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What do you give to the person who not only wore you for nine months, but who also faced the difficulty of moving to a new country and learning a new culture and a new language, who has made a new life for herself and for yourself? For me and for many of my friends who are also children of immigrants, Mother's Day is not just about celebrating the person who gave us life. It's about showing gratitude to someone who gave us a better life than it had been. When I think about what my mother did – and what she sacrificed – a diptych candle does not seem to me enough. More importantly, she will know that I paid too much for it and she will think it's too good as a candle.
Every spring, I scroll through the Mother's Day gift guides – in front of candles and shawls and fancy perfumes – and every spring, I think. Mom would hate that I spent money for that. Not that I did not try. Once, it was a Kate Spade bag in her favorite color. The gift was well received, but a few months later, I found the handbag in the linen closet because, my mother said, it was "too good" to be used. Even excuse for a dragonfly necklace that my brother and I bought for her another year. When I offered to pay a maid service for a few months so that she could devote herself to a hobby, she felt stressed. The house was too messy, she said, insisting on cleaning up a bit in advance. Which child does not want to give the gift of stress?
"The fight is real," says author Celeste Ng. "It's almost impossible," she says, to find a Mother's Day gift that will make her immigrant mother, who has left Hong Kong, happy. The chocolates were kept well beyond the expiration date, the photo calendar was too nice to be written and the indoor plants took too much time to manage.
With permission from Vivian Lee
There are not two identical immigrant experiences, but overall, my fellow immigrant children seem to have more trouble buying their mothers than their other friends. The first obstacle is existential: what do you buy for the person who wants nothing for herself (and everything for you)? "You do not build a family without losing interest," says my other important man, who saw his mother do it in America as a woman, a woman of color and immigrant woman of color. "So, the gifts are" nice "but essentially frivolous in reality."
Then there is the fact that Mother's Day gift guides are often categorized according to their interests: suggestions for the mother who loves the baths, the mother who goes hiking, the mother with a vegetable garden, etc. . "I do not know if my mother I had a lot of time to develop interests or hobbies," says my friend Anam Syed, whose mother emigrated from Karachi while she was in her thirties, accompanied of three young children. After leading a family and raising children in the stress of the immigrant life, Syed's mother is "struggling with her sense of reason to be," she says. In addition, immigrant mothers are used to relying on themselves. "My mother is so practical [she ends up] buy things that she likes, "says my friend Andi Bui, whose mother emigrated in the 1960s from Saigon.
The immigrant mother's resistance to gifts may seem paradoxical: what was the purpose of her struggle except to raise a prosperous child with disposable income to spend on gifts? But for my friend Diana Le, offering a "fancy" gift can give the impression of showing her "white-collar" salary to her mother, who has a blue-collar job and lives more or less on her paycheque. She gives money to her mother instead.
Lately, I've been resorting to sending a bouquet that has two purposes. The flowers look great on the dining room table and, later, after my mother has dried them, they become potpourri or decoration in the guest bathroom. Still, my guilt of immigrant tells me that I am taking the easy way. The flowers say that I care about my mother, but do they say that I care enough about the sacrifices she's made? Where can I get a bathrobe that says, Thank you, Mom, for giving up a life so that I can have a better life and you refuse to benefit from it because you would prefer that I take care of myself.? Did you say Neiman Marcus?
According to my informal survey of friends, these are the most successful gifts that highlight the fruit of his work, that is to say you. In the words of my friend Cecily Feng, "I think nothing beats the attention and the time that passes". Ng says that her mother is generally more enthusiastic about her son's or family's videos than any other gift she has made. "The [handwritten] card always means more to her [than the gift]Said my friend Shazia Haq.
With permission from Vivian Lee
The last time I really celebrated Mother's Day, my mother had just been deported. Fortunately, she was able to move in with her sister to Canada, but we knew she would feel sad for not being able to celebrate with her children. So, my brother and I arranged to surprise my mother by taking the plane and spending this weekend with her. "It meant so much [to] me, "said my mother a few days ago on WhatsApp. "[It] still makes me cry even thinking[ing] about it now. "
Thanks to a good immigration lawyer, for whom I was proud to pay, my mother is back in the United States. And although it's not very practical to visit her every year on Mother's Day, being able to secure her (and my father) a green card is a good reminder of the only something that she is willing to let me buy for her: the gift. to be back in the house that she built, able to be close to the family that she created.
What to do for the mom who hates when you spend money for her
According to my informal survey of immigrant children, the most successful gifts for mothers correspond to three parameters:
- You must have bought it on sale because the retail price is for "American" families.
- The gift must be utilitarian because it already has too many things to follow in the house. You'd better make this article productive.
- It must be easy to use. Otherwise, you could spend long hours on the phone giving her a tutorial on using her iPad, which she would definitely put away after having forgotten how to use it again.
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