Battle Hymn of the Russian Daughter

I felt like, since I blog so often about writing and motherhood and life, that I wanted to blog on the controversy surrounding the Chua memoir.

I don't mother that way. Instead, I mother in a messy, mushy, cry-at-ever-single-Christmas-pageant-and-pre-school-extravaganza slightly hippie/Buddhist quoting, chaotic way. But it's not as if I was raised this way.

I was raised by a strict Russian father. When I brought home a 98 on a test, his response was, "If you studied a little harder, you would have gotten 100." I have been yelled at over math grades and pushed until I thought I would throw up from the pressure sometimes. I skipped my senior year of high school and went off to college on a scholarship where I triple majored (because double majors are for slackers) with a minor in creative writing. My Significant Other loathes that I say to my kids, over a bad grade, "Well, did you try?" and then shrug. I have looked teachers straight in the eyes when they have commented on x or y about my kids, "I don't care." Because I don't. I care that they turn out to be decent human beings who know how to love and laugh, who always know, in their heart of hearts, that they are loved fiercely. But Significant Other will point to results of Tiger Russian Father upbringing as if that is some proof that if you want achievers, you push them relentlessly.

My dad has moved in with me now. Every day, that Tiger Father rears its head. I am told--every day, often--all the things I am doing wrong. I am not a clean enough housekeeper, or a strict enough mother. I apparently know nothing about finances, and don't know enough how to winterize my lawn, or that the house may blow up at ANY MOMENT because of a gas leak. And I smile and nod.

Because there is a difference between Chua's story and my own.

He's mentioning the gas leak because he fears I will perish. The clean house because it will be better for us all if I am neater. He LOVES us all together and wants us to have a happy life. Behind every criticism is the idea that he loves us all and is still the patriarch, even if it seems like I take care of him more now.

On the flip side of every time I was pushed were the times when he called EVERYONE (and I do mean everyone) that he knew from his old neighborhood to tell them I won the scholarship. It was that he flew sometimes across multiple time-zones on planes for 30 hours back to back to never miss a birthday. He wrote postcards to me from Vietnam and Nigeria and all these strange places he traveled. He once, though he had never done anything outdoorsy in his life, went on a hike with my Girl Scout troop and came home with bleeding blisters. He taught me how to score a boxing match. He taught me how to play craps. And mostly, he told me he loved me, and THAT I never doubted.

When he hangs up the phone with me now . . . that's what he says, "I love you." Every time. And so as I watch this publishing/media firestorm, what I seem to come away with is this . . . I don't think Chua did her children a disservice by never letting them have play dates. I can even "sit" with the idea that she pushed them to achieve by demanding they practice piano for hours. Not my way to parent, but fine. No, it's that I don't get the sense, when she is ripping their birthday cards in front of their faces for not being up to her standards, or any of the other sound-bite friendly moments in the book, that I ever think that message of love comes through. Her love seems capricious, EARNED through achievement. And that, to me, is what sits so uneasily with me.

I am blessed beyond belief with my children. They may sometimes make choices I wish they didn't. But in the end, the lessons of family I learned in my childhood is they have your back when the rest of the world doesn't. And in the end, you don't earn it. It just is.