Bedtime Story

This is a formative event from my past. I'm not sure why, but I feel driven to put it out there.

My parents came to the US from southern China via Hong Kong. After I was born, my mother took about two months of ESL classes before starting work as a seamstress.

My education about American culture and family life came through reading childen's books and watching TV shows such as Dennis the Menace. And one of the things that stuck in my mind was that children were told a bedtime story before going to bed.

I was somewhere between the ages of 6-8 when one night I asked my mother to read me a bedtime story. My mother had discontinued her schooling about the age of ten, and had only two months of ESL before beginning to work full time as a seamstress making parochial school uniforms, and I was too young to understand her hesitation. Eventually, she gave in and began to stumble her way through the story of the three little pigs. She was in tears by the time she finished, as was I. I never asked her to read me a story ever again,

There was a lot of shame in that event. My mother felt shame that she should couldn't even read her son a bedtime story, I felt shame that I had dared request something of my mother that would cost her so dearly. Enough so, that I sought to be self-sufficient so as not to request or need anything from my mother that would cost her again so dearly. And it now occurs to me that she sensed that, and her sense of shame prompted her to try and make up, which complicated the relationship between my mother and my older sister, who perceived that I was rarely disciplined, and if so, never as harshly as my sister was at my age. And I was trained at an early to be aware of how my needs cost other people. And *that* still influences my behavior and choices to this say.