Never Say Never
- Valerie Bostrom
- Palo Alto, CA
- UNITED STATES
- 17
My mother is from Taipei, Taiwan. You can tell – she still has that accent, and, although she has been here in America longer than I have, she still has some trouble with the various grammatical idiosyncrasies of the English language. Still, that has not stopped her. Currently, she works at a computer company as a senior technical writer; she writes those technical manuals that computer technicians and other computer users around the world read. Of course, that didn’t happen overnight; however, it seems that it may well have.
Dancia (the name she chose for herself as a unique variation of "Danica," upon arrival to this country) already knew some English as a result of classes in the language in high school. She first attended the National Cheng Kung University, one of the most prestigious universities in Taiwan, where she majored in Chinese Literature, with a minor in American Literature. She received a B.A. in 1977 and moved to Massachusetts in 1978 to study Comparative Literature at Clark University.
It was there that my mother first encountered the troubles of living in a country foreign to her. Perhaps the most difficult part was that Comparative Literature was not an easy major; it was generally avoided by other English majors. Because of expenses, she did not stay long and transferred to San Francisco State University to complete her studies; she received an M.A. in 1983 and a second master’s in Teaching English as a Second Language in just two years.
Perhaps what impressed me most was that my mother did not let her difficulties limit her dreams. At SF State, she began teaching and went on to teach English to both foreign and native speakers at local colleges. After receiving her first master’s, she worked as a reporter for a San Francisco Journal. She began working as a technical writer for several companies before culminating as a senior technical writer at Supermicro Computers, Inc., in San Jose. My mother’s story does not end with simply her education.
I was born in 1992, my brother in 1995. He was born with severe developmental delays. At first, doctors thought he had a deadly mitochondrial disorder, but that has been overruled in favor of possible cerebral palsy; even now, doctors are unsure what it is. Caring for him daily and arguing his case in front of doctors and legal experts are difficult tasks, but my mom must do it, even when relatives on my white father’s side are unsupportive of her, partly because of her Asian background.
Time and time again, my mother has beat the odds, from coming to America and studying what few dared to study, to teaching English to American college students, to writing and publishing technical manuals, to caring for a mentally-disabled son. I have asked myself whether, if she had a choice to take the easy way out, she would have accomplished all this. Sure, she chose to come to America to study English, but did she choose my brother? No, but she did choose to care for him, despite the difficulties inherent, gaining strength from her faith in God. Her personal philosophy is to keep fighting even when no one else will. In our household, the word "never" is forbidden; it is a sign of giving up when each of us can choose not to.