A Chip Off The Old Block

I am like my mother. She has eight siblings. When she was a child, she had to do the house work and farm work for her family . She had no time to go to school and her family could not afford the school fees also. But my mother said nothing about that, just kept continuing to do her job. At that time, she felt happy to share the burden for her parents. She understood the situation and knew what she should do. She missed some experience of a young girl, but she got the love and respect from her entire family instead.

After she got married, she had me and my younger sister. She is a hard worker and nice to every one, but the relationship between my father and my mother were not good. Although the fault was always on my father’s side as we knew, my mother always kept quiet and she never let the bad thing bother her, which gave a peaceful and safety feeling to me. That influenced my personality later. I learned that rule from my mother. She is a patient and tolerant woman, worthy of my respect.

I knew two of my daughters are like me. They think like me, they act like me, even their appearance look like me. They are shy but they respond to the things that I assigned. They listen to me and like to discuss with me when they have problems.

My oldest daughter and my youngest son are like my husband. They are ambitious, intelligent, competent, hard working and have high self-esteem. On the other hand, they all have no patience and hot temper. When they talk to each other, they always like to yell. My mother-in-law has the same personality.

We have two different kinds of personality in my family. One group has intelligence, but has a short fuse. My group is modest, responsible but don’t have as many ideas as they. Fortunately, my husband and I have been able to maintain a peaceful family since we got married with two different kinds of personality, but I think the patience of my personality is a very important factor to prevent the family’s war!

Some of my personality traits are inherited from my mother, such as patience and content. Without this kind of personality, my family won’t be that peaceful. So I thank this piece of chip of patience off from my mother’s block. It is really a treasure to me.

By Vera Chan. Spring 2002