I am sure it was bad shrimp. It had to be. Out of all of the food I ate with my relatives in town for a weekend, I was the unlucky one who had a case of bad food poisoning. I woke up in the middle of the night sweating bullets and feeling nauseous as I sprinted towards the bathroom. I quickly attached myself to the nearest toilet and hurled until I could feel my energy leaving my body. As I sat on the cold bathroom floor and waited for what seemed like hours, no one came.

Who could I call? The clock read that it was three in the morning. I hesitated to call my siblings because I knew they would be disgusted to see the sight of me on the bathroom floor. Reluctantly, I called my mother, and she surprised me when she picked up on the first ring. As per usual, she started to yell in Vietnamese when I told her that I was throwing up: “It’s because you’re always on that phone of yours! Those little things are corrupting you into getting sick; I’m on my way.” Her explanation and language were strange, but it was her usual response because she could never pick up on American culture and technology when she came over to America. While others had hugs and kisses for signs of love in America, my mother gave me a beating and a ‘you should know better’ as a sign of her Vietnamese culture, so I wasn’t shocked to hear another lecture about phones. But from the moment she walked through my door to help me get up from the floor, she took one look at me and immediately made her homemade hot ginseng tea and rice porridge. At that moment, she was my savior. She spoon-fed me, made sure I was tucked in, and threatened me when I refused to put on socks. But I suddenly felt ashamed and even guilty as I saw her rummaging my drawers to find socks, I completely forgot about how much my mother does for me unconditionally. My mother never complained about working everyday selling used cars and dealing with vulgar and disrespectful customers to give me a good education; she never once stopped working to give me a chance for a better life.

Growing up as a first-generation Vietnamese American, I learned how to adapt to the American culture. I thought it was hard for me to learn in a foreign environment, but my mother went through ten times as much. To her, it wouldn’t matter how tough and busy her life was; if I asked, she came. My mother always made sure that I was healthy, safe, and well-fed before she was. My mother never once told me that she loved me verbally, and she didn’t have to. She had already taught me one of the most valuable lessons I could have learned: love is unconditional, love is more than just money, and most of all, love can just be a threatening call from my mother to put on socks.