It was one of the great irritations of my childhood that if my mother had a coupon for something, we had to use it. If we were out and wanted something, but the coupon had been left at home, we were forbidden from going ahead with the purchase until the next time, when the coupon could be redeemed. Mom, you’re going to spend more money on gas to come back than you’re going to save, we would argue in exasperation. No go. ##M:[more]##
She was sweet, but she sure knew how to hold her ground. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the origins of the stubborn gene which I possess and which I am discovering in alarming degrees in my own children.
I now do the very same irritating coupon thing with my kids, and have gone so far as to dub myself the Coupon Queen. While I find this highly amusing, my children do not. What I don’t find so amusing is that I have indeed, turned into my mother in so many ways. I’ve always heard this happened to women in middle age — that they unconsciously find themselves emulating their own mothers in speech, behavior, and even dress, and while I would have scoffed at that notion as a teenager, I have to confess, everything you have heard on this subject is true.
Is it nature or nurture? Do we become our mothers because it is coded in the DNA, or is it because like animals in nature, we learn through mimicry, and mother is our first model of human behavior?
My mother also had a strong superstitious streak, which probably was passed on to her by her own mother. We love the family story about how grandma came out to California, saw our bed facing the wrong way — west (which symbolized death, finality, the end of things) — clucked her disapproval, and made us flip it around to face east (the sunrise, life, the beginning of new things). And just a couple of months later we were pregnant with Katie.
This event probably had less to do with superstition and more to do with feng shui, literally, wind and water, and the Asian belief that the forces of nature can be put into optimal alignment for good things to happen. Nonetheless, it probably was not the first time a Korean grandmother had something to do with the creation of the next generation. Lots of grandparents say come on, give us grandchildren already. How many can say they played an active role in making it happen?
My mother was superstitious about what I thought were odd things — such as scraping out every kernel of rice from the bowl so as not to leave any traces of wealth behind. But now, as an adult, I realize that is a variation on what I tell my kids — take what you want and don’t waste food, because there are children who go to bed hungry.
There were other things I didn’t understand, however, that were rooted in Korean superstition. I was so in love with my babies that I would coo at them and tell them they were the cutest, best babies in the world, and my mother would scold and warn me not to say that. She believed that saying such things would tempt the gods to be jealous, punish me for my pride, and take away my treasures of which my children were the most precious. Of course, I believed this was pretty much nonsense, but I did stop talking in superlatives.
However much I tried, I couldn’t help but be influenced by her beliefs. Amy Tan’s novel, “Joy Luck Club,” focuses on four Chinese mothers and their Chinese-American daughters and explores this idea of how ideas are passed from one generation to another — ideas both rational and irrational, rooted in fact, rooted in superstition.
I also find great comfort in the fact that my friend Janet Wong, noted children’s author, former entertainment attorney, UCLA and Yale Law School-educated, is also profoundly influenced by her Korean mother and just as superstitious as I in some ways. It was she, who has a Chinese father, who infected me with my latest superstition about the number four, which, in the Chinese language, is pronounced “si” a homonym for death, or to die, or to kill. This explains why in some parts of the Orient, some buildings don’t have elevators with the number four, or some roads skip that number in sequencing homes.
This also explains why I won’t let Will pick the number four for his sports jerseys, and why, when I am picking out avocados or oranges at the supermarket, I’ll take three or five, but never four. I drive past mile markers on the highway with a little bit of dread if they include that number, and I won’t put anything in the microwave for 44 seconds. Please don’t think I am crazy and consumed by this obsession to avoid this number. But I do think about it at the oddest times, including now, when my computer clock reads 9:44, but I rationalize it is only because I promised to have this column to my editor by 10:30.
I realize that I will probably see more and more of my mother in myself as I grow older, and she will laugh at this, just as I will start to recognize more of myself in my own children, especially my two daughters. Though understandably alarming in so many ways, it is also very cool to see the way things are passed along, not just physical characteristics, but mannerisms, beliefs, even superstitions. There is no fountain of youth from which to drink and become immortal. It is our children who give us that.
