My mom （趙淑珍） was born one year ahead of my dad.  She is still alive.  If my feeling toward my dad is hate and sorry then my feeling toward my mom is love and regret.

When I was in my fifth year in grade school, my dad lost his manager job.  We were forced to move and rent a farmer barn by an orchard.  My dad started to sell all the furniture and appliances to feed his seven kids. Eventually there was nothing to sell, we were living by one meal a day or nothing to eat.  I remembered in one rainy day, my oldest brother and I climbed over the orchard fence to steal the fruit to eat. After about a month, my mother finally went out to borrow money from the relative.  She used the money to buy a lot of grocery from the nearby market.  Then she woke up at dawn and carried these grocery with a shoulder pole and two large baskets, and walked at least three miles to the next village to sell the grocery to the village people.  My dad also started to sell the grocery to another village people or help our village people to report their income tax. But he never held the job for longer than three months and started to drink and gamble.

When I was in my junior high and high schools, my oldest brother served in the air force and my second brother went to the city to learn photography. I would bike my mom home from the nearby village in summer vacation. So my mom and I became very close.  My dad sometimes would steal the money from my mom to gamble. If my mom resisted, my dad would beat her and I was the one to fight against my dad to protect my mom. But it always ended that I was beaten up by my dad.

When I was in the number one college of Taiwan, I was at the top of the world. I thought I knew every thing.  When the same thing happened, my dad no longer could beat me up, my family would interfere to stop the fight. I even told my dad I had a lawyer friend who could help my mom to divorce him.

From the day I could remember, my mom always told us about her dad.  She said my grand pa in law had three wives and had servant to serve the kids.  So I thought I was belong to the upper class of Chiang's regime.  But after I studied my graduate degree in US and read the prohibitted book of Chiang's regime.  I finally understood that to the real upper class people: my classmates, my on campus military officer and my army commander, I was a lower class civilian with a rebellious hart (always criticized the injustice things).  I started to blame my mom for her unrealistic influence.