She sat there listening to her son talking about destiny. Destiny. He said it was probably written in his destiny that he would never get married, that he would always meet a girl who's not ready for him and the he wouldn't be ready for the girl who's ready for him. She listened quietly and thought intensely.
Life wasn't about destiny and being a slave to such adamant inflexibility. There was a way. She has concluded that she couldn't bend her son's will. She sympathized with his weakness in the face of his so-called destiny. Life was full of roadblocks, and his belief in a prewritten destiny and its acceptance was just another roadblock, which she could help him overcome. She had helped him overcome what would have been major roadblocks in a destiny that at some point seemed so certain. It seemed certain when he was young that they would be stuck in a village and he would, at best being the son of a high school teacher and a peasant woman, be an educator too at a local school. It was hard to imagine otherwise back then when talent alone wasn't enough to get you ahead, and she didn't believe her son had so much talent, anyway, to get out of his circumstances, and hence, circumvent his destiny. And so she worked hard, and with some luck, got the whole family to leave not only the village, but the country where poverty had been the entire framework of most lives. And when they had come here, her job had only started. She worked hard, along with her husband, so he could get the best education. He would be foremost fed the best food with the measly income they had, and he would have time to study. She would push him to go to the library when not in school or cooking for the family (they were too busy to cook). She had a plan for him. He would go to the best neighborhood they could afford, he would get into the best high school in the magnet system, he would get a job as soon as possible to learn the leaning of a dollar. And finally, he would go to the best university in the world, and one way or another, he would be able to afford it.
Despite her reservations about the capabilities of her husband in assisting her in this plan to thwart the so-called "destiny" for his son, they managed to pull it off. It was incredibly hard. And especially with the arrival of a new child in the middle of this execution of the Plan, life became a constant misery. The most painful part about the implementation of the plan, the most miserable part, was her constant feeling of loneliness. She had her husband, but he always seemed like an imbecile, a coward. He was educated, more than she was, but that was the only thing she respected him for. He was never ambitious, never asked for anything more from life than what was given, and always avoided hassle. The first few months of his life in this country boggled her mind, to say the very least. He was always yearning to go back to that village of simple-minded people, petty, backwarded. He just wanted to be a teacher for a bunch of children who shared that same humble destiny like her son. She felt even lonelier those months than the previous months being alone without her family while she worked to get them the papers to emigrate. The feeling that she was alone in her fight to change the course of her son's destiny still persisted. And she felt often resentment that the children, especially the son, the centerpiece and focus of her Plan, showed much greater affection for incompetent father than her. And as they grew older, she saw the injustice of life when they became closer to him, connected better with him, while shunning her ever more. Her loneliness deepened. Life was full of ingrates who couldn't see love through the thickets of their own preoccupations, and instead they appreciated and get caught up with superficial silliness like spending time together and talking and spoiling. Her husband spoiled the children, risking their straying off their paths, but he got the prize for being the good parent. This was especially true for her son. The bitterness never really faded.
Nevertheless, he brought in income that was important to the implementation of this Plan. And the Plan worked beautifully. The fact that by the time her son had graduated from college he was more distant and cold to her than before didn't make her regret what she did. It was common to sacrifice for your children, and in this case, it was reciprocated love that she had lost in order to win him a path out of his miserable destiny. Sure, it hurt every time he refused to call her even with manipulation, or when he didn't bother to show up for Thanksgiving or Chinese holidays, or he in fact moved to another continent. After her Plan was fully realized, she didn't know what else to do except think of the next step. But because he never bothered to talk to her, even call her for all those years after college, she didn't know how to realize the next step: getting him to settle down.
Hope arrived when he began talking to her, little by little. And she eventually got him to buy a house as a good investment. His destiny, unbeknownst to her, was partially already written by her. He was open to investments; he liked numbers, he liked efficiency, and so she convinced him of the merit of investing in a house with tenants so he didn't have to pay a lot of rent. That wasn't so hard for her, just required patience and persistence, and after three years of constantly cajoling him, he finally bought a big house with her help. But it was obvious what the next step for her was.
And the opportunity came now. He was talking to her in a way she could never have dreamed of. He spoke frankly to her about his acceptance of a destiny without marriage, without meeting anyone. And everything suddenly became familiar to her: a challenge her son couldn't overcome, but she could do it; it couldn't be harder than all those years overcoming a challenge most people with their background failed to even hope to overcome, let alone succeeding. For her mind, the world wasn't that complicated; you just have to use your smarts, analyze the problem, and find the solution using your experience and some patience. She was now a grandmother, she felt she knew enough about love and marriage to understand that the first part was actually simple, much simpler than marriage, which was the long and scary part that came afterwards. She also carried with her an appreciation rooted in her knowledge of the past traditions. In the past people didn't even have a choice on whom they could marry; and marriage was a means to build a functional unit in a cruel environment so you could survive in it. There were so many tricks in the past to manipulate the whole marriage system in order to survive. It was almost like a business, and happiness would eventually come, at least not any less likely than in today's relationships of so-called free love.
So the next part of her grandiose Plan, which has now expended as she sought more things to do in her life, was to demolish this new written page in her son's destiny. She remained quiet. She didn't protest very much her son's silly ideas, though admittedly it wasn't going to be that easy of a task. They went home and he went to his room to rest. She sat there in her couch, watching TV broadcast directly from her old country, but she wasn't paying attention. She was just thinking, formulating, dissecting, synthesizing proposals. Her plan had to be flexible, ready to change with the winds but never stray off course and never lose fuel of patience. She got up at the sounds of her son's steps coming down. And by the time he got to the bottom steps, she was waiting for him. Without looking at him, and certainly without showing any emotions, as have been the case for her in her interactions with her son his whole life, she asked if he would be open to her finding some women for him. She knew that she couldn't push him, corner him; she had him in a haven when he opened up to her, and she would not miscalculate by blowing him out into the open seas again. He smiled, which she couldn't really understand, and he said it was fine but only if she gave them his contact, not trying to set anything up. It wasn't exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be the matchmaker, the one that steered her son's wandering, lost boat into the river of a better destiny, but she was patient. She at least got his permission to start something.
Suddenly, life became meaningful again. As soon as he left, who knows where, she started coming up with names or ways to get names. It was simple, and she could make things simple because she was objective; she wasn't part of his confusing, wandering life. And this time she didn't need her useless husband to help her. It would be another lonely road for her; she already knew what people would say, that she was interfering, that she should just mind her own business. But her son's happiness impinged upon his finding someone to share his life with, to avoid loneliness that she felt was in most people's destiny, and a sure case for the unmarried. She stopped lamenting that she would die soon from whatever disease she felt was awaiting in her destiny. Suddenly, things became brighter. What decent, smart woman wouldn't want her son? He's well educated, well traveled, decent looking, and has a house! He's not a millionaire, but the list of eligible women still was large enough. She felt her heart racing just by thinking about this. His problem was simply that he was wandering, bumping into and preferring women who were equally unstable and strayed. But she would use his weakness in the face of his destiny as her strength to put him back on the right path.
A sense of purpose. She had always sought a sense of purpose. Whether it was making her house bigger and therefore more profitable to sell, one day, or getting the best investments with her limited English skills, she always needed a purpose to fulfill in life while waiting for her son to realize his purpose. Now she felt she could start taking over his role as the seeker of a right woman. Her hands started shaking, and she felt joy as never before. She walked into the spare bedroom where all her indoor plants were and started clipping and trimming. Taking care of plants gave her peace. And today she would celebrate her joy by giving away two of her precious plants to her son, as her way of forging a closer relationship that would help realize this next Plan.
