With the speed of a scrawny, ancient turtle determined to cross a wide, rocky road, my eye lids secretly collapse while trying to shut out the non-stop lecture by my stereotypical asian mother who I struggle to live with everyday. “Chilling with your friends is not important. You should be spending as much time as possible with your family and focusing more on your studies.”
  Too many years ago, my mother grew up in a squishy house neighboring the large city with my four aunt and uncles. Speeding through the air a couple years later, my mother found herself in California, retreating from the Vietnam War. For a tiny eight year old, going through life felt like stabbing yourself with a thousand needles. My mother went through third grade with kids deriding her for being asian. “Being asian today is not like being asian back then,” my mom tells me constantly. Immediately, I always feel the urge to scream at the top of my lungs that it is no longer the 1970s and that she is still living in the past and needs to move on. I contain myself though knowing the punishment that would lie ahead if I ever said that.
The passing of the war was a significant time for my mother; life turned for the better. Having more friends in America than she ever imagined, my mother hung out with her friends as long as it followed a strict policy enforced by my grandmother. You must be home by ten o' clock. No more sleepovers since you are now over thirteen years old. The list of rules went on for miles and yet, my mother still happens to remember all of them to enforce on to me. Finding focus once again during the “no chilling with your bros” lecture, I begin to ponder the fact that my mother might be so strict on me because  as a young child she was raised in the close comfort of her family with few strangers around; she was practically forced to like only her family. Then out of nowhere, the rebellious side of me kicks in and thousands of questions about my mother stampede through my head demanding answers. Why has my mother enforced stricter rules on me than my grandmother ever did on her?
My mother's mouth continues rambling, “Darling, you know you can never go to the mall. You and your friends are going to get bored and rob a store.” My drooping, tired face transforms into a tomato as steam shoots out of my ears. All I intend on doing is going around maybe buying some cute, new shirt or something, not storming through Macy's demolishing cash registers and mannequins. “Oh and your father and I have agreed that we do not like you missing Saturdays because we visit grandma, and that is very important. You know there is only one reason why you can skip, guard or marching band competition.” Astonished by these words, I do not know what to think because every Saturday consists of me greeting my grandmother and then plopping down on a disgusting couch for about 7 hours. Every time I sit on that couch, I feel as though my brain rots and I could be one million times more productive doing anything else. If only I had the courage of a lion to speak up and tell my mother.
As six o' clock approaches, my mother abruptly stops talking and runs of to whip up some dinner. I am left there marinating in the thoughts my mother left me. I realize my mother's view about hanging with friends is on completely different sides of the world from mine, literally and figuratively. I agree friends will never be as important as family, but friends are what keep me together sometimes when I am shattered into a thousand pieces. In western culture, friends are very important and sometimes they become so close they are basically considered adopted into the family. In Vietnam and many other parts of Asia, family is what you treasure the most in your life. The tradition of family being the most sacred has grown for centuries, and it has now been planted in my mother's roots by her parents. I recognize that my mother has partially planted this tradition in me as well, but I feel as though this tradition is choking me at the same time.