My mom only had one eye. I hated her: She was an embarrassment to the many friends I had at school. My mom ran a small shop at a local mall. She collected little weeds, rags, and garbages, anything of values to sell for the money we needed. She was such a shame to my buddies, whenever we went to the mall. There was this one day during elementary school, I remembered that it was field day, and my mom came. I was so humiliated by her disfigured. How could she do this to me? I threw her a hateful look and ran away. The next day at school, “Your mom only has one eye?!” and they taunted me.
I wished that my mom would just disappear from this world so one day, I said to my mom, “Mom, why don’t you have the other eye?! You’re only going to make me a laughingstock. Why don’t you just die?” My mom didn’t respond. I felt good to have said what I’d wanted to say all this time.
Mom didn’t punished me, but I didn’t think that I had hurt her feelings greatly. That same night, I woke up, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water, to my surprised she was there, crying quietly, in the dark – afraid to wake me up. I took a look at her, and then turned away. Shame! for what I had done. My heartache with guilt. Even so, I hated my mother who was crying out of her one eye. So I told myself that I would grow up and become successful so I didn’t have to see my one-eyed mother and live in our desperate poverty.
I studied really hard. I left my mother and came to Saigon for schooling, and got accepted in the Ho Chi Minh City Universities of Technology, a prominent school in the country. After school, with a well paying job for an American company, I got married. I bought a house. Then I had kids, too. Living happily as a successful man, in a well to do neighbourhood, in a place that didn’t remind me of my mom.
This happiness was getting better and better, I got promoted to management and a large salary followed. Suddenly someone unexpected came to see me. “What?! Who’s this one-eye woman?” I felt as if the whole world was falling upside down. My little girl ran away, scared.
“Who are you? I don’t know you!!!” I screamed, “How dare you come to my house and scare my daughter! GET OUT OF HERE! NOW!!!” I continued. And to this, the woman quietly answered, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I may have gotten the wrong address,” and she disappeared. Thank goodness she doesn’t recognize me, I prayed, quietly relieved.
Then a wave of relief came upon me, one day, a letter regarding a school reunion came to my house. I lied to my wife saying that I was going on a business trip. After the reunion, I went down to the old shack, I used to call home, just out of curiosity. I found my mother fallen on the cold ground. But I did not shed a single tear. She had a piece of paper in her hand, it was a letter to me.
She wrote:
My son, I think my life has been long enough now. And, I won’t visit Saigon anymore… but would it be too much to ask if I wanted you to come visit me once in a while? I miss you so much. You’re all that I had. And I was so glad when I heard you were coming for the reunion. But I decided not to go to the school, for you, I’m sorry that I only have one eye, and I was an embarrassment for you. You see, when you were very little, you got into an accident, and lost your right eye. As a mother, I couldn’t stand watching you having to grow up with only one eye,so I gave you mine, so you can see a whole world for me, in my place, with that eye.
Story inspired by: unknown.
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