By Peggy Rose Webster
I n recent years, the term “Tiger Mom,” made popular by the book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mothe r by Amy Chua, has become synonymous with Asian mothers. It is meant to describe the way some Chinese mothers raise their children, pushing them to be competitive and to work hard to be the best.
In my family there was a term that was equally as frightening and even more powerful. It was MEAN MOMMY. My mom who adopted me was a Korean national. She grew up knowing what it was like to live under the Japanese occupation of Korea and be forced to speak only Japanese, leaving her native Korean language to be abandoned in the back of her mind. She also knew what it meant to be forced from her home in the city of Kaesong, located in what would become North Korea after the division of the country along the 38th Parallel. Her family lost everything and moved south. Her father (as she told us) had a factory and her mother was an opium addict. She had another brother from her father’s other marriage. She was never clear if her father had been married before or was a man who had more than one wife simultaneously. She said her parents had wanted her to be a boy so they named her Pak Hung Oak. Hung Oak is a boy’s name. She grew up as an only child with a maid to care for her. She and her maid ran away when the Korean War broke out.
Pak Hung Oak was born in 1931. The Korean War officially started in 1950, but U.S. and Soviet forces occupied Korea after Japanese rule ended in 1945. In 1950, she would have been nineteen years old. She lived with her maid for about five years, and then we really don’t know too much about her except for what she told us, which was that she never learned to cook or take care of herself. She lived in Hannam-dong, a neighborhood of Seoul near the Yongsan military base. The part of Hannam-dong that she lived in was called U.N. Village. It was filled with foreigners. She worked for the base as a switchboard operator. She loved to dance and it seems she loved to party.
My own start in life was shrouded in mystery. My adoptive father and mother met while he was stationed in Korea in about 1954. He loved to dance and so did she. They met at a club. He was nineteen and she was twenty-three. She said he was crazy for her but she thought he was just a little boy. He wanted to marry her, but his family found out and were opposed to it. So his father wrote his congressman and was able to claim that because his son was the only heir, they needed him home for the family business. I don’t know what details were added to this claim, or who made the decision to change the course of my father’s military career, but my father’s commander called him and told him he was to be sent home on the next flight out of Korea. This was extremely unusual for an enlisted man but somehow Grandpa Walker had made it happen.
Once they had their son home and away from that “blankety blank ‘n_ _ ger’ woman” (This was what Grandpa called her), they thought it would all end. It did not. He was passionately in love. She had been his first love and he was not going to lose her.
My father returned home in May 1956. He was twenty. By the time he was twenty-one, he had himself sent back to Korea. He was bound and determined to marry my mother. He decided he would do whatever it took to get her.
My half Korean story is one of love, fear, commitment, and ultimately adoption. My adoptive Korean mom had been told she could never have children and it seems, by her accounts, that she had miscarried several times before. At one point she said she had been married before (perhaps it was a Korean common law marriage, as I never saw paperwork to support it) to an American pilot and he had been killed. His death left her numb and dead inside. She wanted a baby so badly she would do anything to get one.
She also had a drinking problem. Without reservation, she often called herself an alcoholic. Her best friend, who knew her in Korea, told me she was a “wise guy.” Let’s say that means she ran hard and fast, drinking and partying. She had found someone she thought could give her what she wanted. She said to him, “If you give me a baby, I will marry you.” The prospect of this lovesick puppy wanting to marry her seemed like an answer. She said she was never in love with him. He was a nice guy and very sweet. He brought her presents all the time. Actually, she told me she felt sorry for him. He was head over heels in love with her.
They lived together in a little apartment located in the foreigner area of North Hannam-dong, Yongsan-gu, in Seoul. She claimed she had no family but she remained in contact with the family maid.
After the Korean War ended, many women who had worked for the military as civilian workers or at the “dance bars” as prostitutes found themselves connected with American military service men. Many GIs played house with these women only to leave and never come back. Many Korean women were left with babies as “souvenirs” which placed them in vulnerable positions socially. These women were forced to make difficult decisions for mixed-race children, who were considered lower than human, unworthy mongrels who had no rightful place in Korean society. They would never have a family registry to legitimize them as members of a Korean household and they would never be allowed to go to school.
I was born in Korea, January 6, 1957, the day of Epiphany. This day in the Catholic faith, twelve days after the birth of Jesus, is when the wise men brought gifts to his parents. Unfortunately I wasn’t Jesus and my parents, were not happily awaiting my birth. Because my biological father had a family waiting at home for him in the U.S., he was not in a position to help. I was a problem that had to be taken care of immediately.
Fortunately for me there were people who wanted to do just that. They would become my adoptive mother and father. Even to this day, I cringe when I have to say adoptive mother or adoptive father. It seems disloyal or of diminished value in my mind.
When I was growing up, I heard statements like, “You know, they are adopted,” or “You’d better be good or you’ll be given away” or “Too bad your parents could not have kids of their own.” The general consensus seemed to be that adoption was an option, but not the first choice.
My adoptive parents decided they would never tell me I was adopted. There was, in their minds, no reason to do this. All the paperwork said I was born to them. My adoptive mother made sure of this. My adoptive mother was present when I was born. She said she acted as interpreter and helped with my birth. I was born a blue baby. My adoptive mother was so upset! She said she took my birth mother by the shoulders and shook her and said, “YOU TOLD ME this baby’s father was white!”
My birthmother said, “YES, he is WHITE! He is Irish. He has red hair!”
To have a mixed-race child was part of my adoptive mother’s plan. I would be passed off as the natural child of my Korean mother and my English and American father. It was critical that I be the right mix of Korean and Caucasian, and the timing—that I could have been born during the time my father was stationed in Korea—had to be right. My little four-foot, nine-inch tall adoptive Korean mother was short in stature but she lived up to her newly coined name of “TIGER MOM.”
My mom worked at a sewing factory running a power sewing machine but she had worked at a farm in the past. When I was about eight years old, she sent me to work on the farm with one of her friends. She felt it would be good for me to learn to make money. She said, “Some day you will thank me. I, mean mommy, teach you how to work and how to save money.” When pay day came around, she made me put the money in a savings account. I was so mad. I was sure she was lying to me and keeping the money. She told me that I needed to save money because you never know when you will need it. I was given a few dollars and the rest went into the bank.
I got fired from the farm. My job was to pick radishes from the ground, twist off the green foliage and fill up farm boxes. Each box was worth fify cents. Instead of working like they wanted me to, I would fill the boxes with random clumps of mud and then put the radishes in. The mud would create the weight and fill the boxes fast. That is, until the radishes were washed. They decided that I was too young to do radishes so they sent me to do green onions. I was to take a bunch of green onions and pull off all the yellowing leaves, wrap them in a wire twist tie and put them in the box for rinsing. I did not pull off the yellow leaves well enough because it made the job go too slowly.
Needless to say, I heard the words, “You’re fired.”
My mom was so—as she would say—“bare essed you”!
Long before there was a term for ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), I was it. I frustrated her because I was nothing like her. I really was sort of a female version of Huckleberry Finn. I was always in trouble and I thought it was funny. Until the belt came out! When I was ten, she got very sick with cancer. She had already been training me to work in the house. I started cooking for the family then. We always had an American meal for my stepdad (my mother remarried when I was two) and a Korean meal for any one else who wanted it. I was in charge of cooking American.
Because she was so sick, often she would not get out of bed for days. My job was to cook and clean. I hated it most of the time because it was so monotonous and mundane. I did it, but with a lot of anger. She used to say, “You think I mean mommy, but I tell you true, I not mean mommy. I make you strong. I help you. Some day you thank mean mommy. You be so sorry when mean mommy gone. Mean mommy make you so you live good life, find good husband.”
She was right. I am grateful that she taught me to think and to work and to figure out what I don’t want to do and what I do. I learned that she would make me re-do my work if she did not like it. I learned that I could get paid for doing jobs that I did not like and that the money could help me have what I wanted. I also learned that she did seem mean but she was not like the other “mean mommies” out there that I saw at the farms.
One of these was Nancy’s mother. Nancy was about ten years old and she took care of her two younger siblings. Nancy was not the “real” blood-related older daughter. She was the house girl they picked up and brought from Korea. She became the baby watcher. She would carry the babies on her back and go everywhere with them. This was not unlike how it was in Korea. She would cook and clean because her “mean mommy” worked at the farm and was to be catered to when she got home. Nancy was a servant. When she did anything wrong, she was beaten. It was so awful. My mom would often comment on how wrong it was. She even talked to Nancy’s mom. Eventually, Nancy ran away.
Of course Nancy’s mother thought she had done Nancy a favor. She gave her a life in America that was so much better than the life she would have had in Korea. She gave her food and a roof over her head. Obviously, Nancy was an orphan when they found her and that is why they could bring her to the States.
My mom was definitely a Tiger Mom who wanted her children to be the very best. Or as she would call it, “Number One!” My sister, who I later learned was her biological child, was an incredibly gifted child. She was a genius. However, she suffered from shyness. Her biological grandmother (my stepdad’s mother) had the same affliction. She could not talk to people. Now, it’s called “selective mutism.” She went to school at four years old and was already reading and writing. Our family doctor told my mom that she needed responsibilities in order to find her way in the world. She was a beautiful child and received unending attention that she hated. She would hide behind our mother’s legs.
She did everything perfectly and had brilliant grades in school. Our mom was so proud of her. She told me that she had always wanted to have the smartest, most beautiful and talented daughter and a handsome husband. She was so happy she had them. It hurt my feelings when she said that because I wished I could be that for her. Then she would say, “But you, Rosie, are the kindest girl. You scatter brain but you good girl.”
In spite of my sister’s brilliance, our “mean mommy” did not let my sister get away without being insulted. She told my sister, “You are smart but you have no personality. You are like your dad. You walk like a bear. You are mean and selfish.” Then she would hug and love on my sister. She really loved her so much.
Many times I thought, “Wow! Is it because of language differences or is this the way all Asian moms are?” I had certainly seen enough to know it was true. After the tiger mom stories in the book, I realized that survival was more important than grace or genteel behaviors. Being #1 would get you what you needed to make it in the world.
My mean mommy used to say to me, “Someday you will understand.”
After a long bout with illness resulting from radiation for cancer, my mother took her own life. The pain and suffering was too much. She had tried many times before. Her heartache and pain was more than I could understand. She once told me, right after an attempted suicide when they had pumped her stomach, that we were selfish to want her to stay around. She was in so much pain. She just wanted it to end. Because she took as many as a hundred pills a day to help her live, she was what I later determined to be a drug-induced manic depressive. When she could not go to sleep she took sleeping pills. When she could not function for the day, she took her “peppy pills.” She was a mess.
She wanted to be a good mommy, and she did this by being tough, working hard and providing us with a home, toys and lots of pretty clothes. She never bought anything for herself. She said she was an old rose and did not need it, but we were young buds and we needed it.
During her lifetime, she helped many Asian women who immigrated from Korea, China, and Japan. She knew how hard it was to come to a foreign land and to find herself alone with strange foods and no friends. She became known as “sick Peggy.” She was loved by so many people. I was one of them.
I know she loved me. She said, “When I had Sheila, I could have given you back, but I kept you because I loved you. I did not treat you like Nancy’s mother.” At fourteen, being told you are adopted answers many questions, but the biggest one that every child needs to know the answer to is, “Am I loved?”
My mom loved me the best way she knew how. Having a “mean mommy” was what I needed. I am a person who learns through experience, and if the pain to change is not great enough, I won’t. Somehow she understood that about me. I am forever grateful to my mean mommy. I have missed her everyday since she died. I was twenty-two years old when she died. At twenty-two, I had already married and had a child, bought a house, gone back to school and become a hairdresser. My life is richer and full of love because my mean mommy paid the price as a parent and made me do the things I didn’t want to do so that I could have the things I have now.
“I love you Momma. Thank you for being my mean mommy.”
Adopted at birth and learning to cope with the various self-esteem challenges that come with that designation, Peggy Rose Webster created a career that allowed her the freedom of entrepreneurship and the blending of family. PeggyRose and her husband, Michael Webster, are the parents of four children, two biological and two adopted from Korea, and grandparents to six. In 2015, Peggy Rose met her four paternal half siblings. Since her beginning in the image and beauty business in 1975, Peggy Rose has been growing and learning to this day.