A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.

I take a few quick sips. "This is really good." And I mean it. I have never tasted tea like this. It is smooth, pungent, and instantly addicting. "This is from Grand Auntie," my mother explains. "She told me 'If I buy the cheap tea, then I am saying that my whole life has not been worth something better.' A few years ago she bought it for herself. One hundred dollars a pound." "You're kidding." I take another sip. It tastes even better.

How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?

I saw what I had been fighting for: It was for me, a scared child, who had run away a long time ago to what I had imagined was a safer place. And hiding in this place, behind my invisible barriers, I knew what lay on the other side: Her side attacks. Her secret weapons. Her uncanny ability to find my weakest spots. But in the brief instant that I had peered over the barriers I could finally see what was finally there: an old woman, a wok for her armor, a knitting needle for her sword, getting a little crabby as she waited patiently for her daughter to invite her in.

My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didnt always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.

We are lost, she and I, unseen and not seeing, unheard and not hearing, unknown by others.

I love my daughter. She and I have shared my body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born, she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since.