As I cast one final glance around my room, disappointment seeps into my heart. The unfulfilled part of me is saddened to feel nothing more than a single, temporary drop in my chest when thinking about moving away. It’s hard to miss something that has already been tainted by the notion of change, such as my floral bedding smothered with clothes, or the emerald green rug I used to lay on for hours that’s now engulfed with boxes, luggage, and mounds of trash.

I yearn for the urge to cry—for a sign of acceptance or even recognition that I will be leaving for the better half of the year. Yet nothing seems to touch me in the way that I have seen in the movies, where the graduates leaving home exchange last-minute hugs, tears, and laughs with high school best friends and precious old neighbors.

The luggage I have indecisively wrapped and unraveled and wrapped again equates to a total of five suitcases and three boxes. I wonder how much of my room and my past I intend to bring to my new home.

Peeking from the brims of one of the packing boxes is my 枕巾: a Chinese pillow cover, resting lightly atop the array of mismatched dorm decorations. I smile to myself, thinking back to eighth grade, when my mother had first delicately placed this upon my pillow. My eyes had physically hurt from the exclamation of color declared by the pillow cover, so different from my floral comforter deemed trendy for the plethora of boys I thought I would bring up to my room (zero).

Now the fabric of the cover feels flattened smooth, soft, and worn-out. I recall the months of crisis the pillow cover has gone through to reach that level of texture, carrying without complaint the entirety of my stresses, cradling my worries with ease. I’ve grown accustomed to this pillow cover over the half of my life I’ve spent asleep all these years, so on those rare nights away from home, I can no longer sleep with the rough patch of non-cotton pillowcases against my cheek.

My pillow cover is a violent red, supposedly a symbol of luck in Chinese tradition. It is a constant reminder of all the superstitious beliefs my mother has instilled in me. While some measures I can’t help but feel burdened by, her act of changing my bedsheets (oblivious to her intentions) to brown ones the night before opening my acceptance letter to Brown, has softened my heart for her little gestures. That night, I watched her from a distance with the pillow cover in my hand, puzzled and comforted at the same time, watching her care for me so strongly.

My mother is a radiant red—a fierce presence in my life. For as long as I have been breathing, she has been my guiding force: from checking my homework problems step by step through the sufferings of Kumon, to checking my temperature on nights I was so sick I couldn’t lift my head to sip her homemade chicken broth.

Like the red pillow cover, she could not stand the idea of blending in with anything or anyone, and she hopes that my presence among others is just as strong. Sometimes, the ideas of my mother and the pillow cover blend as one, overwhelming many of my true emotions and feelings:

I am a writer: I am not my brother.

I am an introvert: I cannot command a room.

I want to cut my hair short: I do not want to keep it long.

Memories of my mother’s endless obsession with finding the art of success—her constant hovering over me, waiting for me to complete the tasks she had deemed important—urge me to remove the pillow cover from the box and leave it behind.

I think about the tears the pillow cover has held, the throws and yanks, as well as the many attempts to hide it whenever friends came over because it just wasn’t “cool” enough. I think about the times I have discarded it, determined to rest peacefully without the comfort of the pillow cover, and then found myself late at night deliriously retrieving it from the depths of my closet.

Now, as I arrive on campus for the first time, I am asked an intimate question right away: “Are you going to reinvent yourself?”

Other questions that follow next:

“Will you go out to party more?”

“Who do you want to kiss?”

I shake my head to all of these existential questions of reinvention and find myself remembering all of the times I have hid the red pillow cover away from view—all of the times my mother has cried in her attempts to care for me in the best way she could.

Now, I do not keep the red pillow cover tucked away because I am ashamed. Instead, I know exactly what the pillow cover means, both as a symbol and against my cheek. She whispers and guides me to chase feverishly after my desires. She continues to carry the weight of my burdens of school, friends, and balancing this new style of life from a distance.

Now, as I am waving goodbye to my mother, tears begin to slide endlessly down my cheeks, blurring my final vision of her. Don’t be fooled: these are the good tears. The kind of overbearing, suffocating, nose-clogging tears that I can smile through, knowing that I am growing up from her and the pillow cover, but never apart.