Prompt: Describe the voice of a loved one.


When asked to describe my mother’s voice, I'm actually describing my mother. If there’s one thing to pinpoint my mother it's her voice. When she speaks English, people tend to think that my mother’s actually shouting, but that’s because they haven’t heard her shout, yet. Two steps away from being shrill, my mother’s voice will always be that of a saleswoman—loud, confidant, exuberant, demanding, and playful. It grows with her excitement, and it should be known that she gets excited by talking. Frequently overlapping, or overpowering, someone else’s, my mother’s voice is looking for a fight but won’t take no for an answer. Her English is a living record for the places she’s been: vowels from Sheffield mixed in with a pleasant Midwestern drawl and an underlying Chinese accent.


But it’s her Chinese that epitomizes her the best. When my mother speaks Cantonese, her voice does become shrill. It sounds as if nothing else in the world is happening because my mother stopped it with her voice. Or like a little boy just discovered a twelve-piece drumset and he really really likes the cymbals. Every syllable is bursting with energy that is then transposed into hand gestures and pacing.


And yet, I’ve never heard anyone else speak Mandarin so beautifully. Like poetry, or music, every word is clean and crisp, while maintaining a certain softness. She has a perfect Beijing dialect, meaning she doesn’t have one, making her Mandarin universal. Hearing her speak Mandarin makes me wish I remembered more.


My mother’s voice is painted red; alive with passion, full of fighting love.