What It Was Like Growing up With a Superstitious Mother

My mother kept onions in every room and in every corner of our house. The onions, kept in plastic containers for days on end, were often close to decomposing and left a foul odour.

I was barely seven at the time when I became aware of this peculiar habit of hers. Seven is an impressionable age – one in which I still believed in Santa Clause and ghosts. When my Canadian friends visited us, they’d look at those onions amused, even a little taken aback by their sight. I would just laugh it off saying it was my mother’s thing, downplaying her strong beliefs. I knew my Canadian friends wouldn’t understand – they wouldn’t understand where her beliefs came from, because the cultural context was missing, as was the nuanced understanding required to allow space for those beliefs. They’d just think of her as eccentric. 

I was told that onions would suck out any bad energy in the house. Whenever I’d argue that that wasn’t reason enough, she’d ask me not to believe what I read on the internet. The irony was that a few of her superstitious beliefs came from what she read on the internet. I wasn’t supposed to believe what I read online, but she could! That was hypocritical.

I love my mother – about that there can be no doubt. I always have and always will. But this constant back and forth between us certainly put our relationship under strain, especially since I was the quintessential “good” boy: one who always listened, followed her beliefs, and never questioned her. As I grew older and began to question things, I was viewed as rebellious, no longer the “good” Asian kid, who abides by his parents’ rules and never talks back. 

I don’t, however, believe that the source of these beliefs was merely stemming from old-school thinking. My parents are from Cambodia and survived the genocide by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s that led to the loss of over 1.5 million Cambodian lives. You might emerge physically unscathed from a genocide, but it leaves scars that aren’t visible, it makes you doubt your own shadow and forces you to become sceptical of the world. When we moved to Canada, I believe, the shadow of the genocide followed my mother, manifesting in these beliefs.

My mother also had a Chinese heritage and most of her beliefs were rooted in feng shui — an ancient Chinese practice based on guidelines to harness the flow of Qi or energy through spaces, which includes how particular objects in the house must be positioned. She’d tell me how I shouldn’t sleep with my bed facing the mirror because the mirror ends up showing you the future, thus causing misfortune. She also discouraged me from buying second-hand clothing, as that would lead to the energy of the first wearer getting passed on to me. When I’d insist on wearing used clothes that I’d bought in the sale, she’d splash water on them.

Undoubtedly, our early, formative years impact and colour our approach to life when we grow up. For instance, my mother would spray water on me each time I left for the day, for good luck. There were times when she forgot to, and if my day didn’t go well, I’d subconsciously attribute it to her not having sprayed water on me. It’s hard for me not to think about superstitions, they follow me, as much as I try to stay away from them. I’d like to believe my mother’s beliefs have bled more into my sister than me – getting splashed with water before leaving home, not buying second-hand clothes, placing furniture in the house a certain way... But even though I’ve never explicitly held these beliefs, they crop up subconsciously.

The only superstition my father restricted himself to was purifying the house with water on full-moon nights.

When I made the short film Talisman – about a child who believes the new house they’ve moved into is haunted and is further enabled by the Chinese mother who gives him a talisman, tensions arise within the family because the sceptical father is annoyed by the whole deal. The film was born of my own disenchantment with my film school where there was hardly any space to truly experiment, dig deep, and tell a story that matters. 

I realise that there has been a welcome surge in Asian content across the world, but barely any movies get made on that most relatable of Asian experiences: superstitions. 

My mother’s superstitions haven’t resulted in irreparable trauma. But the extent of those beliefs does not take hold of me when I’m away from home, in a different city, or at a friend’s house. These beliefs subconsciously crop up only when I’m home and there is no way to contain them. It certainly impacted the way my early behaviour was shaped. As an Asian child, it’s a crushing realisation to know that not everything your parents say is correct and that they are not the superheroes you imagined them to be. My mother was not part of a cult, her superstitions did not derail my life to the extent that I’ve been unable to piece it back together again. But, as with most Asian parents, including mine, these seemingly harmless superstitions build up over a period of time, and then even the smallest ones start to annoy you, making you question everything. 

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