Growing up with less gave me more

Back in the 1980s, the Mission was far from hip, and the Tenderloin was nowhere close to up-and-coming.

Both were the grimy, unsafe corners 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 1970s.

While she made this area her home, she gave birth to my sister. Three years later, I came along. It was just the three of us.

As for my father, I didn’t meet him until twenty-eight 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. Worked and saved.

A couple of years later, we made it out of the slums and into the Fillmore District. Still, we didn’t have much — but we had enough. A bed to sleep in. A roof over our heads. Warm clothes. Food on the table.

And while we didn’t have much, my mother made sure we made the best of 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 so we could paint things.

Whenever my pencil broke, she would shave it with a kitchen knife. We didn’t have a pencil sharpener.

When the eraser on my pencil was almost used up, she would pull it out, stuff a small rolled-up paper behind it, and put the eraser back in — so we could use up the rest.

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

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

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’d buy something and fix it up into something even better for us. (#hipster, before that was a thing.)

We didn’t have a fireplace in our apartment either. 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 — 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 bosses say “this isn’t working,” I’m never discouraged. While they’re listing out all the problems, I’m usually already brainstorming ideas in my head.

I’ve disciplined myself to think outside the box with whatever limitations and constraints come my way. I’m not compromising on my designs. I just know there’s a solution that can work for all of us — and possibly be even better.

As I look back, being poor wasn’t a negative experience. 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.

They make the most of everything.

P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day to my first love — my mom.