Personal Response to Amy Tan's "Mother Tongue"

    Like Tan, I grew up with parents who spoke English as a second language. Well technically I cannot call English my parents' second language because for my father, who speaks 9 languages, it was his fifth language, and for my mother, who speaks 4 languages, it was her fourth language. They learned English at early ages in their lives because of the residual effect on language British colonization had on Pakistan. Learning English gave them a level of prestige in society because it noted that they came from families that were wealthy enough to educate their children in Westernized schools. I think with this in mind, the transition to living in America, where everyone speaks English and my parents end up speaking not-so-perfect English, affected their self-esteem and insecurity levels.

  As a kid, my mom would tease that I didn't want her to chaperone on school field trips because I was embarrassed of her accent. Quite honestly, I was usually indifferent to how my mother spoke because what ever she said invoked cheery smiles and giggles from almost anyone she talked to; my mom's a crowd pleaser no matter what language she speaks in. But of course, I had my bouts of insecurity relating to my parents, but they were in the parameter of insecurity and self-consciousness and sheer embarrassment that any other kid has some point in his or her adolescence. My parents always found ways to negate my being self-conscience with their intelligent and fluent, whimsical style of speaking in other languages that they acquired throughout the years. For example, it's not possible to ask my dad an innocent, child-like question such as "where does chocolate milk come from?" without receiving a  Shakespeare-esque soliloquy in Farsi about how cows have four stomachs and that lactose is not digestible by all human beings and other scientific yakety yak that I, as a kid, did not care to interpret or philosophize on.  I wanted simple answers. Instead, I was left to theorize about what the hell my parents were talking about and fill in many blanks to construct answers that I could comprehend.

  The dramatic complexity expressed through many languages, other than English, by my parents, led me to discover at a relatively young age a sense of recognition of their profound understanding of many different realties. They may stutter and add an extra -ed at the end of verbs in the past tense, but they brush this off, knowing it is a simple pothole in their complex, integrated language highway system that permeates through their personalities and daily interactions with me. Without their potholes, I could not have developed my own complex and ever-changing highways in life.