Sam’s Thanks to Ma!

SAM HSIUNG Editor-in-Chief

Tomymother

I am 11. You’ve just picked me up from school in our white Lexus after track and field practice. We drive down Bubb Road, rustling through familiar routes — past wandering children, creviced sidewalks, fluorescent skies. You gaze at me in the rearview mirror, and I look back, seeing your eyes so full of light, your cheeks flushed red. I wonder why you seem so happy. Nearing home, you tell me that I’ve been accepted to Pinewood — the school I interviewed with two months ago. As you pull into the garage, I run out the car, slamming the door shut on my way into my room.

I’d told you that I didn’t want to apply to Pinewood, and that I didn’t want to switch schools. But, like a mother, you bribed me with Costco trips and Target runs until I begrudgingly agreed. On the day of my shadow visit, I sat in the Spanish classroom, cold and unmoving. When asked to recite the conjugations for “estar,” the words cut like switchblades against my tongue. In my interview, I forced on my best smile, pretending to love everything I hated about Pinewood — the small class sizes, rigid literature curricula, artificial turf.

Ma, I cannot imagine how hard that must’ve been for you, to see me so disgruntled about something you were so proud of me for — to see me crying, stomping the hardwood floors with so much anger when I told you