My thirst for nature can be traced from Bixby, Lantrip, permaculture, the backyard chickens, on and on, all the way back to my mom.
She’s a cute little lady, effortlessly stylish, and tiny. Underneath her sweet smile and pleasant wit, she's feisty, stubborn, straight up annoying. Of course, take this with many grains of salt as I am her feisty, stubborn daughter.
Most of all, she is strong. At 76 years of age, and perhaps, pounds, she would walk a half mile to get groceries and carry them the half mile back home. She would garden for hours, as she has daily for decades.
For her, her love of nature started when she was tiny the first time around. In her village, there was an elderly gentleman who tended a prolifically flowering garden. She was drawn in, like a bee to pollen, and she extracted all the green sorcery she could from the gardener.
I love her, but our relationship is not of the friend and open conversation ilk. So, as I looked for ways to connect with her, finally reaching my hands in the soil was a clear path to her. In addition to seeing her care for her plants as I was growing up (she loved to scold me with – “The plants, they listen to me more than you do!”), I got a healthy dose of nature in her village as a child as well. That lush, lively place became an emotional oasis for me, a place I visited in my mind whenever I was frustrated or sad.
Some recent challenges may change how she’s able to tend to her plants, but I trust her stubborn spirit will find a way again. For now, I’m honored to share just an ounce of the splendor her thumbs have guided into this world.
Hair is considered a gift from our parents in Confucian philosophy. Way back in the day, hair was seldom cut as a way to honor this gift.
It’s no longer common practice of course. But it just so happens, as a Chinese American, my hair has been cut by very few people in my 36 years of life. I can count on one hand the number of people who have ever cut my hair.
This has less to do with Confucian filial piety and more to do with my mom. She is ever self-sufficient, and ever the penny-pincher. Since my birth, she has given me most of my haircuts, including the bowl cut I sported throughout my childhood into my awkward pre-teen years.
As I entered my teen years, I whined at my mom during each haircut. I did not have the confidence back then to pull off something as bold as the bowl cut.
“Mom! Puuuhhh-leeeasssee, it’s too short!”
Finally, I convinced her to let me grow out my hair in my teens and my hair passed my shoulders for the first time in my life.
I would keep my hair long well into my adulthood. I got my mom to chop it shoulder length once or twice to donate, and then grow it out for years afterwards, trimming it every so often myself to manage split ends.
In late 2022, I began biking more. I got tired of braiding my hair before putting on my helmet before each ride. And, quite frankly, I was excited about whatever time and money I could save with less hair washing and conditioning. I went to my mom in March of 2023 and declared,
“Cut it short. As short as possible. I want a buzz cut.”
My mom was ecstatic. She ignored the request for a buzz cut – she never liked when I presented too “boyish” – but she had long been a fan of short haircuts on me, mostly because she liked sporting short haircuts herself, for her own convenience.
Just like every other time, I sit, she cuts, we bicker. It’s more than a little choppy. Cutting my long hair was easy, but a pixie with a fade, that took a little more finesse than my mom had. I tried fixing it myself, but instead, I made things worse. The back of my head looked like a rat had decided to gnaw at my hair in random spots.
This was one of the few times I got my hair cut by a professional — shoutout to AJ at HAM Barber Studio. It was so simple. I sit, he buzzes, we conversate. I felt so…cool, like I could like a super star by the time I walked out of there. Like I could become anyone.
After the clean up, my haircuts settled back into the pattern of trims by myself, and then asking my mom every so often for a cut.
Thanksgiving of 2024, I got my mom to cut my hair. We bickered, our same usual tiffs, our funny little ritual.
A month later, my mom visited the ICU after what was considered a relatively minor stroke. Daily tasks such as getting dressed became difficult for her to do without guidance. Somewhere in the midst of all the talking to nurses at the hospital and then rehab, in the midst of the confusion, and questions about the changes to my mom’s life, to my life…I realized that Thanksgiving cut may have been the last haircut I would ever receive from my mom.
In the months that followed, my hair grew and grew. A time or two, I would trim up the sides enough to look kempt. Eventually, the back got out of hand, and my hairstyle morphed into a bit of a mullet. By April, I needed help lest I repeat my mistake of a patchy back trim.
Glen happens to be my very hairy partner who is very practiced with a trimmer from edging up his beard every other day.
As my hair started to tickle me behind my ears, I teased, “Hey Glen, think you could cut my hair?”
Glen is usually very quick to help me. For this particular task, however, he engaged in some uncharacteristic procrastination. Somehow cutting my hair is scarier to him than fixing the washer or replacing my bike tires.
Finally, he obliged.
My mom saw my hair and laughed excitedly, “Glen, you did that? It looks good!”
Throughout my life, I’ve wondered, do I pursue a life of passion or focus on the financial stability necessary to support my family? Do I live my life to my hopes and dreams or live my life to honor her sacrifices for mine? How do I balance these ideals for me? I wrestle with “Western” individualism and “Eastern” filial piety now more than ever, as I’m pulled screaming and kicking internally, back to my childhood home to be my mom’s caregiver. I’m not fully into the idea of my hair being a gift from my parents, but there is something very sweet to me about the care of my hair being passed from my mom to my partner.
I love thinking about brains. This started when I was a kid. I was lovingly teased about the shape of my noggin from day one. You see, my forehead is kinda big and protruding. Like, I have two literal, physical corners of my forehead. I like to think they’re vestigial horns from my previous life as a goat, or perhaps, a mischievous little demon.
Anyways, I’ve loved thinking about brains since I was a kid. There’s the physiology of it all – neurons and axons and electro-chemical signals, the psychology of it all – theory of mind and motivations and spectrums, the philosophy of it all — does a brain in a vat sent all the signals of day to day life know any different than a brain in a living human skull? You know, like, in The Matrix.
I got really into what happens when something out of the “ordinary” happens. I learned the theory that psychosis is what happens when our sensory channels are jammed with too much noise through a broken reality filter.
Recently, I watched psychosis settle into a brain. My mother’s brain to be exact. It started as thoughts, breadcrumbs of strangeness.
“There are ants everywhere.”
“The neighbors are evil, they’re poisoning us.”
“This silver ring has special powers. You must protect it at all costs.”
The thoughts became stronger, and scarier, and stronger, and scarier until they rooted into her brain. There was a battle going on, poisons everywhere, bombs, vile experiments on people and espionage to boot. Everything was urgent, all actions were critical and part of the ongoing battle. Characters in this other dimension included real people from her life and mythical beings from works of fiction. All of this was soaked in paranoia. Eventually, she became agitated, manic with fear.
There were fights against invisible monsters and court trials detailing her enemies’ hateful crimes. She took center stage, pleading passionately for the case of her allies against her enemies and their war crimes. I found myself transfixed by her. She’s my mom, so of course I’m no stranger to her authoritative side, but this was different. I found her impressive; her posture commanding, her voice strong, her diction formal, coherent and convincing. There was an air of performance about it, befitting of a court trial.
My mother never allowed herself to believe she might be creative. And thus, I found this world from her mind fascinating. I wondered what wrinkles in her brain this epic was spinning from. Who would show up next? How exactly did allies from all over the world come to humble little Sugar Land? How did we fight the enemies? What did the monsters look like?
I did not enjoy watching her experience these signals in her brain, but there were times I wished I could thread the pieces of the story together.
Back in suburbia, though, my reality clashed. I couldn’t quite get her to stay in my reality, so I tried to play a part in hers. Most times I was too tired to sell the ruse. Other times, I would add another layer of make-believe and take it as a challenge to improv and yes-and.
“I can’t take this medicine,” she’d say.
“But you need to, it’s for your blood pressure. You could have another stroke,” I’d say.
“No, it’s poison. The evil people have tricked you. Where’s my goddess doctor?”
“These aren’t poison. I got these from the goddess just now,” I’d promise.
This ploy works, just once. After a few missed doses, I was desperate. I tried to force the pills into her mouth, like giving pills to a dog.
This does not work.
Fast forward two weeks in real time and we’re in the ER for her high blood pressure. I watched the shock of a foreign environment get slowly integrated into the Mama Shih Cinematic Universe. At first, we were in the hospital to reach her doctor from her world. Soon enough, the monsters and spies had infiltrated, and everything was dangerous again.
I watched how others watched her. The agitation is noted, and I felt so seen. Days of falling into this other reality had left me disconnected and dissociated from what could be real or not.
I watched the signals quiet in her brain with sedation and sleep. I wondered if she would wake up and escape that world back into the one I was in. I was hypervigilant. Every little action looked to me like she was falling back into her world. I wondered if her paranoia had infected my brain.
By the third day, the nurses could see that her brain was in another reality. I finally got to consult with a psychiatrist for medications to soften the signals of that world.
I will never know exactly what’s going on in her brain, in any brain. Part of it is she was in a lot of pain from a fall. The pain signals became warped in a brain that had survived a hemorrhage in the thalamus, the sensory relay station of the brain. Warped into a battlefield that included invisible, faceless monsters, mythical creatures, superhumans, and lots of violence.
With time, pain management, and signal quieting medications, her brain began to flicker slowly back into my reality. She was no longer frantic and scared, but everything that happened there is still very real to her. There are times I see questioning in her eyes. Most days, I play along, and remind her that the battle is over, the scary people have been caught and punished, that we are safe.
I find it strange to witness her get stripped of that world. I can’t shake the feeling that I am taking something from her. Throughout the battle, there were moments of brightness: the rallying of old friends, visits by their bedside, small victories and times of celebration. Now, as I struggle through changing her medications and seeing her breakthrough psychosis, I see that same world is still there, and will be there with her till her end. I see times when she is half here and half there. How does she experience it all? Does she know when she passes between them?
I’m pulling on strings I cannot see.
