I think that to live a "small life" is to be conservative and penurious with how one spends money, where as living a "big life" is all about the huge expenditure of your earnings.
If the narrator's mother is comfortable with a reserved and laid-back lifestyle, then that could make the narrator's mother happy.
The narrator is so critical of the way her mother lives her life be cause she isn't used to the shift that her mother had made from extravaganza to parsimony.
From the story, "Safety of Numbers", we can actually deduce that to be "small" in the living of life means to be conservative and meticulous in the way one lives and spends. While to be "big" in the living of life refers to be extravagant and luxurious in living.
We can infer that the way the narrator's mother lived actually made her happy.
One can deduce that the narrator is so critical of the way her mother lives her life because she sees her as one who doesn't give her such freedom and who doesn't like to take risk.
A narrator actually refers to an individual who is known to explain or narrate the events taking place in a story or in a play.
We can see that from "Safety of Numbers" by Lucy Tan, the narrator shares the events happening in her family.
Learn more about narrator on https://brainly.com/question/860877
#SPJ9
