We're Mona and Peter Zhang. Last Mother's Day, we began to share the secret beauty that our mother creates every day in our Highland, Maryland home.

This Mother's Day, May 13, 2018, we would like to share more of the story of our beautiful mother and her beautiful home.

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Our mother's name is Li Li. 

Li Li is an incredible woman who is many things.

By day, she is an accomplished doctor of physical medicine and rehabilitation.

By night, she is a mean cook, wonderful mother, and secret interior designer.

While we admire her professionalism from afar, we really love watching her make magic in our home. Her eyes light up whenever she explains the interior workings of her interior design. It is truly a joy to sit in these rooms when we come home.

We want to share what we are in awe of, as a homage to our mother, Li Li.

Have a look around, and see the magic for yourselves.

A dream of Li Li

Li Li was born in Hunan, China in the 1960s, to a family without much to their name. Still, she studied hard and became top of every class. She graduated from Hunan Medical University and became one of the few Chinese to move to the United States in the 1980s to become a practicing doctor.

The odds were certainly against her, and she did it. She came to the United States, and became a mother of two--a son, Peter, and a daughter, Mona. Li Li had to travel from state to state to look for work as a doctor in her field--Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, Arizona.

Li Li had the fortune to return to Maryland where she purchased a house. It was always her dream as a little girl to have a big house by a lake with water lilies.

While there is no lake, it is a beautiful home.

Photo: Peter Zhang

Narrative: Mona Zhang