Silent confession: Why are mothers with dreams sad?

The man you marry will know what kind of eggs he likes. He may not like your eggs, so a good wife should master six basic cooking methods of eggs.

The above paragraph is so harsh on his wife, from China woman writer Wu Qishi's Silent Confessions.

Wu Qishi, whose parents are scientists, immigrated to the United States from Hongkong with her parents, and she is a second-generation immigrant. As a graduate of Harvard University, she likes writing and has published many works. This silent confession took her six years to write.

20 14 Silent Confessions won the first prize of Amazon's best book of the year, the best book of American National Radio and many other awards, which filled the gap of China writers in mainstream literary circles in Europe and America.

Silent Confession tells the story of Lydia, the favorite daughter of a Chinese family, who died suddenly in a small town in the western United States through a sad story and clue interwoven with light and darkness, thus showing all the experiences and contradictions of the family and causing people to think about the identity crisis, life achievements, gender, family and personal path of the Chinese.

The social and family problems reflected in this book are various. But the origin of the story is that in order to make her daughter realize her dream of becoming a doctor, Lydia's mother Marilyn neglected the friendship and understanding her daughter needed in the process of growing up, which eventually led to her daughter's rebellion. When her daughter was determined to be herself, she drowned.

Marilyn was immersed in the grief of losing her daughter, and it was not until she tidied up her daughter's bookshelf in her room that she slowly restored a real daughter.

Marilyn, a white girl, bravely married James, not afraid of other people's strange eyes. After marriage, she is a good wife and mother. On the surface, she is a qualified mother and wife, but she is not.

All her life, she lived for her dreams, but she never realized them. She is a poor mother.

1. Every woman was once as young as a flower and had a sea of stars.

Marilyn's childhood dream was to be a doctor. She was outstanding and was admitted to Radcliffe College, the top women's college of arts and sciences in Cambridge.

At Radcliffe College, she took chemistry as an elective to realize her doctoral dream. She is the only girl in the chemistry class, so she is laughed at by the teacher and despised by the boys. Ignoring these disapprobations, she studied hard and left a deep impression on her teachers and classmates with the first place.

Excellent, she has been working hard for her dream. Until I met James, who taught American history in the history class of senior three, she fell in love with James at first sight, took the initiative to go to James after class and gave her the first kiss, then fell in love with James and got pregnant unexpectedly. I had to give up my studies and married James despite my mother's objection.

When she got married, she thought her dream was only temporarily suspended. It won't be long before she returns to campus to finish the rest of her studies and realize her dream of becoming a doctor.

Chinese-American writer Wu Qishi

But the reality is cruel. After marriage, she not only failed to realize her dream, but even never went out to work because of James' male chauvinism.

Marilyn's story reminds me of a Korean drama I watched many years ago. In the play, the mother worked hard to raise her children, and each child realized his life wish. At the end of the play, the daughters gathered around their mother and asked her about her dreams. My mother said with tears in her eyes that if she were young again, she would like to study abroad and do many things she wanted to do.

Probably every mother has a dream of a sea of stars before becoming a mother. Those dreams and passions have been worn away with trivial family life.

What I face all day is my family's three meals a day, picking up the children, tutoring my homework and washing.

2. Is your dream still there?

In order to realize her dream, Marilyn made a lot of efforts. When she was in high school, she applied to the principal to take a handicraft class like a boy, but the principal refused her. To this end, she kept deliberately doing something wrong in the home economics class, hoping to give up the home economics class, but in the end it backfired.

This is Marilyn's tragedy, which is essentially caused by her incorrect resistance, and this thought has continued into her married life.

The busy life after marriage made her gradually stop thinking about her dreams. What made her regain her dream was the death of her mother, and her soul was shocked.

She just woke up from a dream. It seems that someone is shouting in her ear: Your mother is dead. In the end, the only unforgettable thing is her cooking.

So Marilyn anxiously thought about her life: preparing breakfast and dinner for hours on end and putting lunch in a clean paper bag. Does it take that long to spread peanut butter on bread? Does it take that long to boil eggs? James wants sunny-side up, Nice wants well-done and Lydia wants scrambled eggs. A good wife should master six basic cooking methods of eggs. Is she sad? Yes, she is very sad. Sorry about the egg. I'm sorry about everything.

When sorting out my mother's relics, I found that my mother never left a photo, and there was nothing worth keeping in the relics. At that moment, she suddenly felt that her mother's life was too small, coming quietly, leaving no trace.

She felt sorry not only for her mother but also for herself. She remembers spending hours preparing breakfast for her family every day and cooking eggs according to everyone's preference.

This feeling made her afraid. She was afraid that she would live a mediocre life like her mother and be as silent and mediocre as an ant.

That kind of unwillingness, like a bug bite, like a whip, makes her suffer and wakes her up.

This dream appeared in front of her in a sad way.

Being a wife and a mother is a compulsory course for almost every woman. Countless people have given up their beautiful dreams for this.

Unfinished dreams are only opened in the dead of night, and are touched and dusted again.

The saddest way to realize your dream is to pass it on.

After sorting out her mother's belongings, Marilyn drove aimlessly and subconsciously came to the hospital. Seeing that her neighbor Dr. Woolf was respected in the hospital, her first thought was not how powerful this woman was, but "she had no husband, and she made her son a wild child." No husband, no children, so it's possible. I could have done it. "

So she chose to leave home quietly, thinking that her life could be rewritten without the fetters of her husband and children. Finally, I couldn't help but miss my family and get pregnant again, but I still returned to my family.

When she got home, Lydia told Marilyn that she had thrown away her cookbook. She has mixed feelings about this move by her 5-year-old daughter.

Although she can never realize her dream of becoming a doctor, her daughter can. She thinks that her daughter is talented and mistakenly thinks that she has thrown away the recipe. Of course, she doesn't like being idle in the kitchen all her life. So, she passed on her dream to her daughter, hoping that her daughter would realize her unfulfilled dream.

Marilyn wove a gorgeous future for Lydia with the gold thread in her heart. She believes that her daughter also hopes to have such a future: Lydia wears high heels and a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck. Lydia stood on the operating table, surrounded by a circle of men watching her skillful skills in awe.

This is the bright future she weaves for Lydia. This golden future made her walk out of the sadness of losing her dream and set out to build Lydia's future.

She no longer focuses on three meals a day for her family, no longer prepares a hearty breakfast for her family, but lets them eat convenient food.

Almost all the time is spent on Lydia, ignoring her other two children. She bought Lydia a a diary, hoping that she would record her extraordinary life every day, let her give up social activities with her classmates and attend the science and technology exhibition, so that she could study the courses of Grade Two in advance.

She thought, all this is for the good of her daughter. As long as my daughter follows the path of life and study designed by her, there will be a different life and future.

Everything she did crushed Lydia like a wall, but in order not to lose her mother, she could only do what her mother liked, but it backfired. Her failing grades in physics failed to awaken Marilyn from her dream.

She only pays attention to her daughter's study. She never found out that her daughter was alone or who she was with in the last six months of her life.

It was not until her daughter drowned that Marilyn discovered that her daughter didn't like the lifestyle she imposed on her.

In fact, in real life, because their ideals can't be realized, parents who finally pass on their ideals to their children abound. But many times, what parents give is not necessarily what they want.

Those "for my parents, I want to be admitted to a key university." "My mother asked me to learn dance, and I don't like it." Parents can't hear crying.

Wu Zhihong in "Why does the family hurt people", there is such a passage.

Parents, especially mothers, have come to a standstill in their own growth and have great anxiety about whether they can adapt to society. However, they did not solve the problem through their own growth, but put more hope on their children. As a result, the children were under double pressure.

Parents will pass on their will to their children, which will not only hurt the parent-child relationship, but also make their children's lives fall into sadness and depression.

Marilyn's sorrow is that she didn't realize her ideal and pass it on to her daughter, but she didn't know what her daughter really wanted.

Until her daughter died unexpectedly, she was still a cocoon wrapped in layers. She peeled it off bit by bit before she knew her real daughter.

Therefore, it is sad for a mother to have such a dream. Such a mother thinks that she has given her child a golden road, designed every link of life for her child, treated her child as a machine, input her dreams, and let her child realize them for herself.

4. Conclusion

Family and children are the reality that millions of mothers can't escape all their lives. Sometimes they have to give up their dreams for their families and children. These mothers were brilliant in their jobs, bright and bright, and had a bright future. But for the sake of family and children, we can only wear clothes and skirts, even unkempt.

But these are not excuses for us to bind our children's lives and let them help us realize our dreams.

What we have to do is to grow up with our children and give them some space. We can't give up our dreams because of family and children, and we can't parasitize our dreams on children and break their wings, so that children can spend their lives in the pain of losing their dreams.

Such a mother is very sad.