There was a time in my youth when I was lost and confused, perpetually puzzled by my own family. Why was it, I wondered, that other children’s parents could immediately lavish them with gifts and favors the moment they asked — while we always seemed to have so little?
Whenever I tried to ask my mother for something, she would look at me with an exhausted yet tender expression and say: “Child, I know it’s hard for you. Hold on a little longer — someday we won’t lack for anything.”
Over time, I began to doubt her. A quiet, nagging suspicion grew in me — that perhaps she was deliberately keeping me from a comfortable life, while secretly enjoying one herself.
But then I grew up, and I finally understood the difficulty of running a household. I understood that the exhaustion and tenderness on her face had both been real.
I came to see that beyond me, there were so many brothers and sisters in the countryside who needed education and support.
Beyond me, there were so many matters of family survival that had to be faced and managed.
I came to understand why other families could spend money so freely — because their ancestors had been genuinely wealthy, and so their parents could naturally be generous. But our ancestors, through careless stewardship, had lost everything. My parents had to start from scratch, forging a path through hardship with nothing but sheer determination.
Most importantly of all: as our circumstances gradually improved through years of hard work, the promises she had made to us were fulfilled — again and again, in ways that exceeded anything we had imagined. The doubts and resentments I once held toward her dissolved at last, as I came to see the foresight in what had seemed, at the time, like nothing more than empty words and suffering.
We are not a wealthy family by any measure today. We are still on the road, still building.
But everything we have now bears witness to the truth of who she is: she never abandoned her original heart, even as the righteous path proved long and bitter. She kept refining herself, never clinging to old ways. She faced reality squarely, never letting herself be dragged down by what wasn’t real.
She is truly a wise, diligent mother who kept her children’s happiness at the center of everything — and made building our better future her highest calling.
Today is her centennial birthday. I turned over countless heartfelt tributes in my mind, but when it came time to speak, only one sentence remained:
In youth I was foolish and I harbored resentment. Now at last I understand a parent’s grace. May you live long in health and peace — and may this bond between us endure through all the days to come.