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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Budding Writers -> 
Wonder Woman?
    2018-03-07  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

Qianyu Ann Nie, Emma Willard School

I remember one time in an interview I was asked, “Who is your hero or heroine? Tell me one besides any of your parents.” It was that moment when I came to realize that it was not just me; everybody admires their parents as their hero or heroine.

I always looked up to my mom ever since I began to understand all her responsibilities and hardships. I would always bring the newspaper to school and show my classmates that my mom’s name is right below the big title on the front page because she writes the news article.

Then, on my 15th birthday, my parents and I made a decision that they were sending me to study in the United States.

After the decision, it was months of preparation. I went to an SSAT and TOEFL academy every day to study, and my mind was always occupied with tons of new English vocabulary.

So eventually I got the offer from my dream school and here I came.

For the first time ever I could completely cut off any connection between the school and my parents. I was my own person and I felt autonomous.

Since my parents do not speak English, I took charge of signing the contract and replying the emails. I was proud of myself until one day my mom got some emails from my teachers.

I was busy with school so I asked her to reply them. Although she does not speak English well, she learned English in school like we take French and Spanish here. I knew that with the help of modern technology she could manage to write some simple sentences in English.

Then that afternoon I received an email that I was copied to. It was my mom’s reply to my teacher and I grew furious as I was reading it. If anyone were watching me at that moment, they could probably see a thunderstorm in the background and my face dark.

I sent a voice message to my mom because I could not control my fingers well enough to type.

“Oh my God. You attached one single photo but you wrote ‘The attachment is a photo with you.’ Kids in pre-K don’t even make a mistake like this.

“Never mind. You just leave it as it is and I’ll work on it later. If my GPA is screwed up this semester, it’s all your fault.”

I felt tired because she could not even do a simple thing like this for me while my friends’ parents could find them internships with family businesses or big companies.

After about 10 minutes my mom replied to me. I glanced at the clock; it was 1:30 in the afternoon, which means 1:30 in the morning in China. Her soft voice flowed out of my phone.

“Just leave this email alone. I don’t want you to waste your time. These are small mistakes. It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t okay, so I snapped back, “Imagine your employee submits a report to you and it is missing periods and commas. Also, I’ve told you so many times that after addressing people at the beginning, you put a comma, not colon.”

Tears streamed down my face as I knew my remark was too hurtful for her. She is a woman with pride and she is always assertive at work. I know she cannot tolerate her colleagues being stupid, and me telling how stupid her mistakes were must have hurt her feeling.

But I had my reason to be disappointed. It was the disillusionment that she is not the Wonder Woman who can accomplish everything and come save me whenever I need her. It was painful when my belief was crushed, considering how I had always looked up to her as my role model.

But after all, realizing that she is a human and humans make mistake, I felt closer to her. As I began to experience the world 7,000 miles away from her, taking responsibilities upon myself, my worship for my mom faded away and instead, it turned into a rapport based on unselfish love and understanding.

Although I still do not have the patience to teach her English because she always forgets what I’ve told her, I understand that she does things her own way and things have worked out in the past three decades in her life. She understands that I do not mean what I say when I am exhausted.

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