Thi and Travis’s Son Character Analysis

But if I surrender, I’m afraid I’ll want a full retreat—
to go all the way back. To be the baby and not the mother.

FAMILY is now something I have created—
—and not just something I was born into.
The responsibility is immense.
A wave of empathy for my mother washes over me.

Though my world was small,
I would sometimes dream of being free in it.
This was my favorite dream.

That first week of parenting was the hardest week of my life, and the only time I ever felt called upon to be HEROIC.

I’m no longer a kid…am I?
Having a child taught me, certainly,
that I am not the center of the universe.
But being a child, even a grown-up one, seems to me to be a lifetime pass for selfishness.
We hang resentment onto the things our parents did to us, or the things they DIDN’T do for us…
…and in my case—
—call them by the wrong name.
To accidentally call myself Mẹ
was to slip myself into her shoes
just for a moment.
To let her be not what I want her to be
but someone independent, self-determining, and free,
means letting go of that picture of her in my head.

What has worried me since having my own child
was whether I would pass along some gene for sorrow
or unintentionally inflict damage I could never undo.
But when I look at my son, now ten years old,
I don’t see war and loss
or even Travis and me.
I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence,
and I think maybe he can be free.

But if I surrender, I’m afraid I’ll want a full retreat—
to go all the way back. To be the baby and not the mother.

FAMILY is now something I have created—
—and not just something I was born into.
The responsibility is immense.
A wave of empathy for my mother washes over me.

Though my world was small,
I would sometimes dream of being free in it.
This was my favorite dream.

That first week of parenting was the hardest week of my life, and the only time I ever felt called upon to be HEROIC.

I’m no longer a kid…am I?
Having a child taught me, certainly,
that I am not the center of the universe.
But being a child, even a grown-up one, seems to me to be a lifetime pass for selfishness.
We hang resentment onto the things our parents did to us, or the things they DIDN’T do for us…
…and in my case—
—call them by the wrong name.
To accidentally call myself Mẹ
was to slip myself into her shoes
just for a moment.
To let her be not what I want her to be
but someone independent, self-determining, and free,
means letting go of that picture of her in my head.

What has worried me since having my own child
was whether I would pass along some gene for sorrow
or unintentionally inflict damage I could never undo.
But when I look at my son, now ten years old,
I don’t see war and loss
or even Travis and me.
I see a new life, bound with mine quite by coincidence,
and I think maybe he can be free.