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Sometimes when I most crave time with Elena, she pushes me away. Have I done the same to my mother?
有时我最渴望和埃琳娜待在一起时，她却把我推开。我对母亲也做过同样的事吗?
Stuck in my point of view, all I hear is my mother in my teenage years, with her bad English and her haughty attitude, trying to fit in and failing.
困于我自己的视角，我听到的都是我十几岁时，我的母亲英语很差，傲慢自大，试图融入他乡，但却未能成功。
Maybe it’s enough to understand her briefly.
也许简单了解一下她就足够了。
To know that she’s (a little) right – everything is about culture and language.
要知道她(有一点)是对的——一切都与文化和语言有关。
To me “concubine” is a slur. To her the word means nothing more than thousands of other words she’s said in her life.
于我而言，“小老婆”是一种侮辱。对她来说，这个词的意义不过是她一生中说过的成千上万个词。
My mother’s culture says that young women must serve and sacrifice.
我母亲的文化认为年轻女性必须服务和牺牲。
A few days ago, I asked Elena if I could eat one of her french fries.
几天前，我问埃琳娜我能不能吃她的薯条。
She thought about it, then said: “I’d like to give you a chip, mummy, but I’m sorry, I think I will want to eat all of them.”
她想了想后说: “我想给你一个薯条，妈妈，但是抱歉，我想我要把它们都吃掉。”
I laughed, trying to decide if this was time to teach her sharing, or to be grateful that my daughter knows how to say “no”.
我笑了，试着决定现在是教她分享的时候，还是应该感激我的女儿知道如何说“不”。
Deep down, I was relieved. My god, I thought, I did this.
内心深处，我如释重负。天哪，我想，我做到了。
This is my reaction to a generation of overbearing immigrant mothers and their selfless-daughter dogma.
这是我对专横的移民母亲一代与她们无私的女儿这样的教条的反对。
And that dogma happened because of a previous mother, and one before that.
这个教条的产生源于文前的一位母亲，之前提到的那位母亲。
My writer friend, the fellow Asian with the kind heart, sent me some words by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.
我的作家朋友，这位心地善良的亚洲同事，寄给我一些一行禅师的语录。
Our talents and our faults, Nhat Hanh wrote, are all inherited. They’re not our own.
一行禅师的话是，我们的才能和缺点都是遗传的。这些不是我们自己的。
My friend wants me to accept that we’re not very different from our mothers.
我朋友想让我接受我们和我们的母亲并没有太大不同的观点。
She wants me to fight on, and to fight better.
她也想让我继续战斗，更精彩地战斗。
Many grown children understand that you can love someone deeply and not like them at all.
许多成年子女都明白，你可以深爱一个人，但也可以一点儿也不喜欢他/她。
And we prepare ourselves to survive the painful moment when our own child struggles with this distinction – we hope they’ll like us and love us, too, but the frightening possibility remains: maybe it won’t be a struggle for them; maybe they’ll just decide that loving us is enough.
当我们自己的孩子纠结于这种喜欢与爱的区别时，我们也要准备好熬过这痛苦的时刻。我们希望他们既喜欢又爱我们，但可怕的可能性仍然存在: 也许这对他们来说不是一种挣扎; 也许他们会觉得爱我们就够了。
So we close their bedroom door and count the minutes, trying not to listen as they do their playtime ablutions, negotiating borders that we’ll one day have to respect.
我们关上了他们的卧室门，数着时间，尽量在他们的游戏沐浴时间不去偷听，对我们总有一天必须尊重的边界问题进行谈判。
