Growing Up With Less Gave Me More

Back in the 1980's, the Mission was far from hip and the Tenderloin was no where close to up-and-coming. Both were the grimy, unsafe slums of San Francisco. The area became home to many minorities; my mother was one of them — a Southeast Asian refugee who escaped Vietnam during the war in the 1970's.

While my mother made this area her home, she gave birth to my sister. Three years later, I came along; and it was just the three of us. As for my father, I had not met him until 28 years later. We’ll save that for another story.

My mother worked her butt off to support us on her own, meanwhile my father never paid one cent of child support. She worked and saved, and worked and saved. A couple years later, we made it out of the slums and into the Fillmore District. Still we didn’t have much, but we did have enough — a bed to sleep, a roof over our head, warm clothes, and food on the table.

While we didn’t have much, my mother made sure we made the best with what we had.

Growing up, I remember how…

She used cooked rice to help me glue pieces of my projects together or to “staple” my papers.

Since my mom worked at a nail salon, she would bring home used bottles of nail polish to let us paint things.

I remember whenever my pencil broke, she would shave the pencil with a kitchen knife, since we didn’t have a pencil sharpener.

Then when the eraser from my pencils were almost used up, she would pull it out and stuff a small rolled up paper my in there. Put the eraser back in, so we could use up the rest of the eraser.

When my markers were running dry, she would would dip it in water to create more ink.

She would reuse old clothes to make hair scrunchies and make purses for my sister and I.

And when we wanted “new” clothes, we always went to the Goodwill on Van Ness. Goodwill was a game to her; she enjoyed hunting for quality clothing. Sometimes she would buy them and fix them up to something even better for us. #hipster

Not to mention, we didn’t have a fireplace in our apartment. So on Christmas, my sister and I would wake up to find the door of the water heater closet open. Supposedly Santa Claus came through the water heater to drop off our presents. It didn’t make sense to me.

She always had a solution to everything and anything. She taught me that there are no dead-ends to problems, and that you can always work with what you have.

All of this has helped me become the designer I am today — an optimistic one. When engineers say “no, we can’t do this” or the bosses say “this isn’t working” about a design, I am never discouraged. While they are listing out all the problems, I am typically brainstorming ideas in my head already. I’ve disciplined myself think out side the box with any limitations and constraints that comes my way. I’m not compromising on my designs; I just know there is solution that can work for all of us and possibly be even better.

As I look back, being poor wasn’t a negative experience, instead it helped me become very rich with ideas. Having less is an opportunity to exercise your creative muscles.

The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything but they make the most of everything.

P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day to my first love, My Mom.