I played with dolls until I was 15. My mother encouraged it because my older sister got married when she was 15, so Mom thought that the longer I stayed with dolls, the better.
My mother and dad were big animal lovers, too. I just don't know how I would have lived without animals around me. I'm fascinated by them - both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me, and it's made such a difference in my lifetime.
My father really was not the dominant person who raised the family, it was my mother who raised the family.
But I was very, very unhappy because my mother was very charming and generous, but to me, very dominating.
Organ donation is very personal to me. My mother, before her death, was on kidney dialysis for several years.
My mother was known as the 'bird lady' of the neighborhood. Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.
If my mother knew I did this for a living, she'd kill me. She thinks I'm selling dope.
You go through those awkward, dorky, geeky stages, and growing up in the industry amplifies all that. Fortunately, I have a mother who encouraged me to build my confidence from within and embrace my imperfections.
I think that my mother, Frances Dorothy Peck, modeled her whole life on that of Scarlett O'Hara.
My father was a tailor. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until seven at night. At least when he got home, my mother always cooked him a very good dinner. Lots of potatoes, I remember; he used to knock them down like a dose of salts. He needed it, after a 12-hour day.
My family was one of the few South Asian families in my community in Illinois. Growing up in the '80s, I remember going to the K-Mart with my mom, when she was wearing her sari, and she'd get made fun of. People would ask my mother, 'Were you born with that dot on your head?'
You have doubtless heard, my dear mother, the misfortune of Madame de Chartres, whose child is born dead. But I would rather have even that, terrible as it is, than be as I am without hope of any children.
I don't think my mother and father ever had any doubts about what I was to be punished for or not. My parents come from a very strictly defined culture.
I'm the seventh child of George and Leona Douglas, and I don't ever remember a time when my father didn't work two jobs. When my mother was going to the grocery, or going to Mass, or trying to take care of seven kids in a run-down farmhouse.
The first film I ever remember - I think my mother took me to it - was called 'She Married Her Boss' with Melvyn Douglas.
Throughout most of my life, I've tried to downplay my Chinese heritage because I wanted so much to be an American. I was the only Asian kid in my elementary school, and I longed to be like everyone else. I insisted on American food; I was embarrassed by my mother's poor English.
My mother and father had so many ups and downs and stayed with each other and helped each other. My mother took in ironing and she was a waitress. My father was working in the factory and he did people's tax returns.
I was eating in a Chinese restaurant downtown. There was a dish called Mother and Child Reunion. It's chicken and eggs. And I said, I gotta use that one.
My mother was devoted to helping people - with my father's money! - who had great voices but didn't have the financial means to study music. He and my mum gave away dozens of music scholarships, and my mum opened a school in town, introduced opera to children and created fantastic programmes.
A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
