Jing-mei feels that she disappointed her mother many times. She describes her mother's disappointed face when she would test Jing-mei over and over, attempting to figure out if Jing-mei had any special skills. Jing-mei's genius never did emerge. She feels that her mother must have been disappointed often throughout her life, such as whenever she became willful, fell short of her mother's expectations, did not get all A's or get elected class president, didn't get into Stanford, and eventually dropped out of college.

However, she never reports that her mother expressed such disappointment; in fact, before her mother's death, the two of them avoided discussion of the disastrous piano recital and the horrible fight that happened after it. Jing-mei never asked her mother, "Why had she given up hope?" and she seemed to believe that her mother had, in fact, lost hope in her because she never forced Jing-mei to resume the piano. However, when her mother offered her the piano years later, Jing-mei felt forgiven, and her mother told her, simply,

You have natural talent. You could be a genius if you want to [....]. You just not trying.

Whether or not her mother was disappointed or did give up hope is never answered certainly, though it seems that Jing-mei was wrong for all those years. Likely, this is left resolved because that is how real life is sometimes. Often, we don't get resolution to such questions, and that's just something we have to live with.