The year of the snake: How my mother came to embrace her zodiac sign

“Horses are boring and gullible. Dragons are overrated, all show and no substance. Pigs are . . . well, pigs,” my mom said, referring to the different zodiac animals that each occupy a slot in the 12-year lunar calendar cycle adopted by the Chinese and other Eastern cultures.

Starting on Jan. 29 and continuing for 15 days, people around the world, particularly those of East and Southeast Asian descent, will celebrate the Lunar New Year. This time, it’s the snake – emblazoned on decorations and slithering through parade routes in the form of paper, cloth or polyester – who will enjoy its turn as the focus of celebration alongside those who were born in its year, like the woman born Linda Wang in 1965, the Year of the Wood Snake.

At first, my mother Linda took little heed of her sign and which traits it supposedly embodies. Now, after overcoming a difficult adolescence and the challenge of nurturing a neurodivergent son, she feels much more ectothermic than she did during her childhood in Benghazi, Libya.   

“I like being a snake,” Linda said. “If someone told me that my birthday was wrong and I was actually born in 1966, the Year of the Horse, I would not be able to relate. I would tell them, no, I’m definitely a snake.”

But for a shrewd trick of one mythological snake, Linda would have been born a horse. According to one popular legend, a race was held to cross a great river, and the result would determine the order of the animals in the zodiac cycle. It’s said that the snake, being a poor swimmer, curled itself around the horse’s hoof, and only at the very last moment sprang free, scaring the horse and finishing just before its unsuspecting ride. Therefore, the official order for the zodiac animals is as follows: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

Whatever the historicity of this story, it captures the perceived image of a snake in China and other East Asian countries: resourceful, audacious, cunning, alert to opportunity and conscious of the power it holds in reserve. In some contexts, those traits might describe a Lady Macbeth or even the devil himself, who took the form of the snake to tempt Eve into sin.

Linda insists she’s more like Bai Suzhen, a female snake spirit who in Chinese mythology risked everything to steal an immortal herb that could save her ailing husband. The comparison is apt. Though Linda did not steal anything nor break any rules, she too needed to channel the snake in her to find elusive healthcare for her family — and specifically for me, her autistic son.

In 1999, I really liked watching subway doors open and close, spinning around in circles, and playing the same Freddy Fish game over and over again. Linda hoped that I could expand my interests and enjoy more of the world with time and education, but her mind was dominated by more pressing concerns for a son who also couldn’t control his furious outbursts, enjoyed knocking down his classmates’ Lego sets, and refused to swallow food that wasn’t yellow, white or brown.

Treatment for autism in Hong Kong was sparse, and in a world where the internet was still young, it was hard to distinguish clinics that provided ethical care from those that, in seeking to suppress rather than adjust behavior, practiced borderline abuse. To get one doctor’s diagnosis and referral to start therapy, the stated wait time was two years.

“I just called over and over again asking for an update,” Linda recalled. “But it was not just dull persistence. I wanted them to know me so well that when there was a last-minute cancellation, I would be the first person they thought of.”

Eight months in, there was a last-minute cancellation, and Linda was the first person they thought of. “It all felt natural enough,” she said with a hint of casual pride. “When I was a girl, I was so shy and reactive. But when you have to live by yourself at age 14 in a foreign country, you have to be astute in everything, or the world will eat you up.”

Because secondary education in Libya, where she grew up in a Chinese expatriate community, ended at age 14, she moved with her sister to live with their aunt in the United States, where they could continue their education while their parents remained behind. But the aunt treated them poorly, and when she overheard the Wang sisters complain to their parents over the phone, she threw them out. Their mother came reluctantly to take care of them, but asked Linda to skip the last grade of high school so she could leave this strange foreign land and return to Libya.

That was when Linda began to think to herself: if she was born in the Year of the Snake, then it was for her benefit. What other animal would help her navigate through this challenging and occasionally depressing life as well as her own?

Linda does not believe in the predestination of zodiac signs, but there is nothing stopping her from choosing to represent her own, at her own free will. “I couldn’t just passively let the snake come to me. I had to remind myself of what my zodiac sign was, to encourage myself,” she said.

In college, Linda worked as a secretary to the vice president. When she got a transfer offer to New York University, she paid him a visit to say goodbye. “Save your money for business school,” he suggested. “I can get you a full scholarship for the rest of your time here.”

“What if you leave before my two more years in college are up?” she asked him then.

He claimed he wouldn’t. She told him it would be more reassuring if he put the promise in writing, with another dean as a witness, and he agreed. One year later, he took a post at a different university, but kept his word, and she kept getting her funding.

“For me, being a snake is not about elaborate schemes and lying or anything unscrupulous. It’s just having the presence of mind to account for everything,” my mom told me.

As soon as I began my autism therapy in 1999, Linda asked the therapists to cosign a page of notes after every session and recorded hours worth of video to present to health insurance officials. In addition to denying coverage on the grounds of treatment being “medically unnecessary,” insurance companies also liked to discontinue existing coverage if they considered the treatment to be “medically useless.” The notes and recordings were designed, she said, to “make it impossible for them to find an excuse” — and it helped that the therapy was working.

Now, I’m about as dysfunctional and self-defeating as the average adult man who occasionally enjoys life’s offerings. It’s more than could be hoped for someone whose initial prognosis was having a “moderate chance of attending, but not necessarily completing, a normal primary and secondary school system.” 

But maybe I could do even better, if I learned how to be more serpentine, like my mom. 

“Do you feel like a snake? Or do you just calculate that you are one?” I ask her. 

“The second one. I decided that it’s practical,” she responds. Of course it’s the second one — it’s the choice that any snake would make.