admiring mother

As I was walking back from the swimming complex this morning, it struck me that it must be rather unusual for anyone to still admire one’s parents at an age like mine (the 25 – 30 category).. i mean, i know most of us still love and care for our parents dearly, and usually (but not always) try to be as “un-disobedient” as possible (i fear to use the direct verb, for the fact that it sounds strangely incorrect).. At the very least, most of us have learnt to hold our tongues and to avoid unnecessary arguments, even if it’s, more often than not, more for harmony’s sake than anything else. Yet, the fact remains that, having finally gotten done with our education, and having spent a considerable amount of time out in the “real world” experiencing and see what the world is really like, and even suffered a couple of hard and soft knocks here and there, most of us really do feel, as the Chinese say, that our “wings have grown hard” (i.e. we are ready to leap off the cliff like grown eagles and take off into the world). Suddenly, our all-knowing, all powerful parents appear like they have shrunken in stature, but yet by the same measure that they now seem less tolerant of every single one of our decisions in life (careers, relationships, etc) and find it necessary to poke their fingers ever too often and nagging way too much... maybe it’s an Asian thing, but as far as I know, most of us (who are still single) yearn for that independence and wonder why we are not getting it, even when we are no longer pimple-faced teenagers…

Yet unexpectedly, I found myself actually rather fascinated with my mum today as I accompanied her to the pool and she struggled with intense determination to get her swimming strokes right. My mother, in all my memory, has always been rather afraid of water, let alone of swimming. However, much to the surprise of everyone, she started a 10-lesson course to learn swimming halfway through my south america trip and has since been practicing really hard, resting not even once in the two hours we were there today. She even practices her strokes when she is watching television!! The last I heard, she is wondering when she will be ready to learn the front crawl!
Way to go, mommy!