Reconnecting with My Mother Tongue

“What are your classes this year?” my mom asked in Mandarin, a few weeks before 9th grade started. 

I showed her my schedule and told her I had biology, one of my favorite science classes.

“What is that?” 

“It’s.. It’s like a class where you study animals,” I explained in a mix of Mandarin and English. “And plants.” 

“That doesn’t sound like a useful class,” she said. 

“No, there’s more! You study about life and how these animals and plants can grow, too.” 

I wanted to tell her more, about the science behind cells, reproduction, evolution, and human body systems. There was also a whole unit on genetics, but I couldn’t explain it because I didn’t know how to say any of that in Mandarin.

“Yeah, I guess it is like that,” I said finally, not knowing what else to say.

How Language Became a Barrier

I was born in America, but went to live in China for a couple of years with my grandparents when I was around 2 years old. I learned Mandarin, but when I came back to the United States to live with my parents in New York, they thought I should focus on learning English, and I quickly lost most of my mother tongue.

My mom didn’t want a language barrier to develop between us, so she took English classes. But when my sister was born, she had to give up the classes in order to take care of us.

As a kid, my limited fluency didn’t really impact our relationship because there was never anything too complicated that I needed to say. When I grew older, I began to realize that my Mandarin wasn’t going to work.

She and I could barely communicate and often relied on Google Translate or my father and younger sister, who both understood more Mandarin than me and more English than my mom. I couldn’t talk with her about college, future careers, interviews, driving tests, etc., which often made me feel disconnected and unable to rely on her for help or advice.

While I was close with my dad, and relied on him, my mother and I spent far less time together. When we did try to talk, our conversations were so mediated and awkward that I felt like we weren’t really talking. Being unable to communicate with her, even about things I loved like biology, made me feel guilty, but I didn’t know what else to do.

On top of that, when my grandparents would call or visit, our conversations could never go beyond simple greetings. They tried asking me various questions, but I hardly responded because I didn’t want to embarrass myself with my poor Mandarin. I began to wish that I had done more to keep practicing it.

Then, my dad passed away in the summer after 7th grade, in 2020, and it became especially painful to not be able to communicate with my mom. I wanted for us to grieve together, but the language barrier made it seem impossible, not just to find the words to talk about my dad, but also because we had been distant for so long. It felt like we needed to bond or get to know each other all over again.

Heart Hurts

In the span of a few months, my dad had gone from a seemingly healthy person to being hospitalized with brain cancer and passing away. After that, I constantly worried that something similar would happen to me or someone else in my family. Then I started experiencing anxiety symptoms: chest pain, breathing problems, dizziness, and headaches.

For the next year, I mostly kept my symptoms to myself; I didn’t have the words to tell my mom what I was feeling. We didn’t really talk about my dad, either, or the grief we were feeling. It was as if his death had never occured and, instead, he just never existed. 

When my symptoms got worse in the summer of 2021, I tried to ask for her help, but she didn’t understand. Afterwards, I lay in bed, feeling hopeless and wondering how long my life would be like this. I knew I needed to find a way to communicate with her.

Growing Closer With My Mom

After our conversation, my mom noticed that my chest pain kept up, so she made a doctor’s appointment.

The visit didn’t solve my anxiety, but the doctor was able to describe the symptoms I was experiencing to my mother in Mandarin.This was the first step in improving our communication. She started asking me to try and describe what I was feeling to her.

I slowly opened up, telling her that I was worrying about our health (if she even had a headache, my anxiety would spike). She understood and reassured me, patiently explaining that her head only hurt because she hadn’t gotten enough sleep the day before (or something like that). Having a solid answer helped me relax.

We didn’t talk directly about the grief that was fueling my anxiety but, throughout our small conversations, she explained how my father’s health had deteriorated. Understanding clearly what happened helped me process how he had passed and worry less that the same thing would happen to her. She also started taking my sister and me on frequent outings to limit my time alone where I could worry.

Though this time was difficult, and painful, it also marked a new start for my mom and me. We started to get to know each other again, and I eventually learned to rely on her.

Re-learning Mandarin

After the appointment in August, I started high school in September and signed up for a Mandarin class to help me relearn the language. When I told my mom, it seemed that she was more excited about the class than I was. 

Then I shared that I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to keep up, and she told me not to worry, and to ask her if I needed help on any of the assignments.

In class, we practiced traditional calligraphy and writing characters in Mandarin, and although my pen strokes were uneven and shaky, my mom looked at every piece and claimed they were perfect. She would hang up some of my writings on the walls of the house, and gave me advice on how to make neater lines when writing the characters. At the same time, she also began to relearn English, and we helped each other. 

Of course, that didn’t mean our relationship had suddenly become perfect. There were still times where we had misunderstandings (usually due to mistranslations or my inability to convey an idea to her), or moments where I felt frustrated that she didn’t understand my thoughts. The difference was that now we were more patient in understanding that there was a language barrier.

Rather than giving up if my mom didn’t understand a topic I brought up, I would revisit it later on, finding other ways to explain it to her. She also encouraged me and, overall, I found that we were speaking more as time went on.

Traveling to China?

But I was still struggling with my father’s death, and it was hard to feel academically motivated, so I wasn’t very dedicated to my studies and I had a hard time memorizing Chinese characters. On top of that, the pressure of school made me feel that I was learning the language just to get a good grade.

Around the start of the spring 2022 semester, my mother suggested that I go back to China after I turned 18 to experience the Lunar New Year, one of the biggest celebrations in the country. She wanted me to experience some of my culture. It wasn’t the first time that she had mentioned something like this, but now that I was older it felt like a real possibility. 

When she suggested it, I wanted to avoid the whole trip altogether, and refused to go. My mom tried to convince me, by describing all the events and how much fun I’d have. She also reminded me of my improvement in the language, and told me she’d believed I should give it a try, as many of my relatives would be there to help me.

The possibility of experiencing New Year’s in China gave me a concrete goal and re-motivated me to learn Mandarin.

I studied harder for my Mandarin class and even downloaded various apps (HelloChinese, Infinite Chinese, Duolingo, and many others), but their lessons were boring and too challenging for me.

When I talked to my sister about how I was struggling, she suggested that I start with watching kid cartoon shows. I watched the Mandarin version of the anime Doraemon with Mandarin subtitles on and, after some weeks, I started recognizing some characters.

Learning and Understanding

In a few months’ time, I was able to learn a lot of simple characters. I could not read sentences yet, but had memorized many individual characters, and could start guessing meanings of sentences by relying on the characters I knew. 

One afternoon, I was at home and noticed my mother reading text messages from her friend. I hovered behind her, looking at the characters, and realized the friend was asking her to buy something from the market.

“Is she asking you to help her buy fish?” I asked.

My mother paused, then looked at me in surprise. “How did you know?” she said. 

“I saw the fish and the buy words, and guessed the rest.” She remarked about how I was growing up and said that she was impressed and proud of me for trying.

“I want to learn it,” I said.

“If you have anything you don’t know, you can ask me.”

I told her that I was going to try.

Reconnecting to Our Homeland

In the following months, I started making Mandarin a bigger part of my daily life. 

My mom, sister, and I watched Chinese shows together. Most of the time I didn’t understand what was going on, so I asked them questions, and they paused the show to catch me up. 

When the three of us took walks to the park, we chatted in Mandarin about various topics along the way. These discussions brought us closer, as I got to pick up new vocabulary while also learning more about my mother through her ideas.

As she and I have grown closer, she’s shared with me many of her memories of China, which has helped me reconnect to my Chinese heritage, learning about various traditions and holidays through my mother’s childhood. 

Our relationship has become so natural that, now, I view her as a friend. Looking back, I never imagined it was possible for us to get to this point, but I’m glad we kept trying.