Superwoman Returns? Part II

She grew up poor. She was the second oldest of the ten children and my oldest aunt passed away at her youth year. To support her family, my mother dropped out of high school; she fought hard to provide care for her five nieces left without a mother, then provided guidance to her eight siblings. This was a harsh reality for her. It was the year of 1984. By then, my mother had two of her own children, and a third one was on her way to the world. Lest you consider her being a single mother, life without any substantive skills wasn't going to spark any major change to her own family's fate. She made the decision to leave her work (the companies in Taiwan at that time didn't appreciate a working mom) and started her own company. She concluded that she must be an entrepreneur to allow her to see her children grow. A company was founded with that principle in mind.

Her hard work paid off. She lavished her children with the kind of luxury that she was left incomplete during her teenager years. Each of us learned literature, piano, abacus. We were so much drowned in love and care. And my brother and I, the only ones in the family who found a passion for business, were looked upon to inherit her business.

Let's fast forward to my college year, where I was educated about business and was excited about the prospect of contributing my skills to the company that nurtured me all this time. But my brother, ten years senior of me, was an ambitious sort. He was one of those speculators who watched the company gaining prosperity without sharing the stress and tears behind that mask. During his tenure as a manager for my mother's company in China, he made devastating decision in the name of bringing more business; his reasoning and attitude led him, and the company, at the brink of bankruptcy. Things didn't get better since. The employees lost morale and respect for the company that once shared its glory in China. Left with a cripple management, my mother sank deeper into depression. Where were her children at the time of her desperation? She was not a super woman; she was just a mother who wished to sit down to have a warm dinner with her children. Her now grown-up children lived in a separate places. I assumed, this must not what she had in mind ten years ago, fighting so hard for a broken family.