When I was young, I would sit in my mother's "CEO's" seat and pretended that I was managing the accounting for her firm. This was the pre-computer, pre-Internet era where the only piece of technology you had to manage a company's account was well, a calculator.
Often now, my mom would reminisced back to this time where I "worked" along side with her- whether to balance company book or to test the conductivity of computer wires (this was her business). Her work fascinated me, so did her persistence and diligence.
A few many years passed by and a few million dollars made, she was left with a dysfunctional family. This was not meant as disparaging, for that the children had enjoyed fruits of my mother's success. The children lived in the life she could only dream of; she had no high school degree but we attained our education in America, one of the us is even on her path to reach a PhD degree. My mother emphasized greatly on education so much that she sent her three daughters to a "better place" for education when they were only 14 years old. Some of us are grateful for her sacrifices- most of her life was without her children but with her company; some took them for granted. They rationalized that: Isn't it natural for parents to foot the kids' bill? My mother's wealth came at a huge expense- a bill that I probably couldn't make sense with any calculator.
My mother is almost 60 years old and one of her children is still a sophomore in college. Her fortune amounts to nothing but the diploma we hold (or will hold), the pride of a kid's Doctorate degree, and a reality of a broken family. Oh, and our grand house that is currently a collateral to an ongoing litigation. To make sense of all these events in the past ten years, one must understand of the struggles and ambitions she experienced.
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