Monthly Archives: November 2016

Thanksgiving vs. “friendsgiving”

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Today, we’re departing for our now annual European Thanksgiving week trip, and this year, we’re headed to Spain. This is our fourth European Thanksgiving trip together: in 2013, we were in Germany; in 2014, we went to Vienna, Austria, and Budapest, Hungary; in 2015, we trekked throughout Switzerland. In our two Thanksgivings before that, we were in Ocean City, Maryland in 2011, and Puerto Rico in 2012. It’s been a trip that we both look forward to and is a new tradition we have as a family of 2.

Despite being away for the actual Thanksgiving week, I love Thanksgiving and still try to have a Thanksgiving feast with friends in the week or two before we leave. I have a lot of fond memories of having Thanksgiving dinners growing up with my family, when we were more or less altogether and somewhat cohesive. The last Thanksgiving I was home for was in November 2003, which is now over 13 years ago. It was the Thanksgiving of my last year of high school, and little did I know that I’d never come back home for Thanksgiving ever again. I’d never have a reason to. Why would you come home for Thanksgiving when your mother and your aunt are Jehovah’s Witnesses, your dad doesn’t want to participate when your mom doesn’t, your cousins and their wives don’t even want to all be in the same room together, your uncle would rather work overtime and get paid time and a half than spend a traditional family meal together, and your brother is dead because he committed suicide? Thanksgiving with family is special and matters only when the family you are going back to matters and cares about the holiday and you. If they don’t care about the holiday or you, then it’s not special and it doesn’t matter. It’s just another day on the calendar, and here in the U.S., you get at least a random Thursday off for it.

That’s why I don’t like it when people call Thanksgiving meals with friends “friendsgiving.” I completely understand why people feel a need to differentiate it; Thanksgiving is *supposed* to be with family, so you need a marker to denote that your modified Thanksgiving meal was with friends. But what if you don’t have a family, or your family doesn’t care about having a Thanksgiving meal with you either because they don’t care about Thanksgiving, you, or both, and all you have are your friends? What if you choose to have your Thanksgiving celebration with friends? Why should that be denigrated to a “friendsgiving” as opposed to a Thanksgiving? My Thanksgiving meal the last several years has been with friends; I’m not calling it “friendsgiving.” And I correct people when they say, “Oh, you had friendsgiving early.” It’s insensitive without them even realizing it.

 

New baby

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Chris’s cousin and his wife have just had their third baby boy. We received the news via email two days ago, and some photos have been shared over email and our secret family Facebook group. The outpouring of congratulations and happy sentiments were quick to be shared.

It’s always amusing to think of how family news is shared in Chris’s family vs. my family. In Chris’s family, people literally scream, shout, and burst into happy dances. In my family, people either have no reaction or when they do have some reaction, it tends to either be indifferent or negative. When I got engaged, there was very little reaction outside of my aunts and uncle – even that was quite muted. My parents barely even reacted, and my mom asked me later, “Are you sure?” Two out of four cousins didn’t even respond to my email because they didn’t care. When my cousin’s first and only baby was born four years ago, his own brother didn’t even text, call, or email to congratulate him. When confronted about it two weeks later, he said he was “busy.”

I wonder what it would be like when I get pregnant and share the news. Maybe I won’t even share it with my extended family at all and just let them know after the baby is born. It’s not like they truly care anyway, so what difference would it make?

One dimensional

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I think I’m pretty much done making friends at work. Work is for work, and that’s all it will be. This one guy I’ve been talking with over the last year — he’s basically only interested in talking to me about two things: 1) food (where to eat and what to eat) and 2) his terrible dating life. Any time I’ve tried to divert the conversation into anything outside of these two topics, it hasn’t been met well. I asked him about his thoughts around the election. Since Trump won, he said, he hasn’t been reading the news at all; he just refuses and doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. “When I don’t like something, I just ignore it and shut down,” he said. “I’m a complete loser. I just don’t care. I can’t stomach it.”

You’re a brown person in America and you don’t care about the future that a Trump presidency can create? You’re right. You are a complete loser as you’ve called yourself. That lack of care is what got Trump into the White House. I cannot stand apathy when it comes to important issues like this.

I’m not recommending any more restaurants to this guy, nor will I listen to pathetic stories of his sad dating life. It’s no wonder to me he’s having such a miserable time dating because he doesn’t have balls to make the first move. He is happy to sit there and complain when a woman doesn’t give “clear signals” about what she wants, but he doesn’t want to help the world tomorrow.

Thanksgiving gatherings at a difficult time

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Since the election, I’ve heard so many stories from colleagues regarding their Thanksgiving plans. A lot of their plans or their friends’/partners’ plans are being revised because they do not want to spend them with their families for Thanksgiving. These are people who come from politically divided families where they don’t believe the same things as the majority of their families do, and they know if they go home, the topic of the election will come up, and they will get attacked.

I honestly don’t know when it became the “right” thing to do to support a presidential candidate with no actual policies and who is constantly spewing lies, but like so many news commentators have been saying lately, we now live in a world where facts no longer matter to the average American – we’re so smart. Well, “lies” only matter in this case when we are scrutinizing a woman, since as during biblical times, Eve was supposedly responsible for conning Adam. In this world we live in now, we have to penalize dishonesty in women but admire it in men. Oh, progress.

I’m saddened to hear the news of these families, though. I really am. People are cancelling plane and train trips and just not spending family holidays with families. “It’s not that I cannot disagree,” my colleague said to me, nearly in tears while we caught up during our one-on-one. “It’s that they don’t even want to listen to anything I have to say and immediately say I am stupid and I am supporting a crook. They won’t even listen!” I jokingly asked if she was referring to Trump as a crook (since that’s what he is), and she laughed in response.

I mentioned this during our early Thanksgiving meal at home this past weekend, and my friend’s boyfriend said he thought it was so “lame” (I guess it’s easy to say that when you have no connection to your family at all and your parents are dead, though). I don’t think it is at all. If you fundamentally have different opinions from the family and “friends” you think you are closest to and love most, how can you actually “look forward” to spending time together? In your heart of hearts, if you believe that Asians or Muslims or brown-skinned or black-skinned people are lesser than white people, if you believe that women are inherently less intelligent and capable than men, if you believe that your heterosexual identity gives you the right to oppress the lives of people who do not identify as you do, then I don’t believe that we can have a functional relationship. I mean, I already struggle with this in my own family: my uncle thinks all the black people getting shot and killed by police officers are better off dead than alive, that the “Black Lives Matter” movement is ridiculous and anti-police. “The world can always use one less thug,” he said. I was so shocked when he said this to me over dinner one night that I didn’t even respond and changed the subject. Then, there’s my parents, who basically think everyone who is not white or Chinese is bad in some way. My mom blamed the recession in 2008 and my 2009 layoff on “that black president.” Funny how she forgot that the recession actually happened during a white man’s presidency, but she, like so many other people, forget the things they want to forget and only remember what they want to remember that is convenient for their deluded story.

It’s hard to have political debates with people who don’t want to listen just as my colleague said. But when I say “listen,” I mean actually listen to people who have substantive arguments and views, not ideas that are based on lies like “Obama was born in Kenya” or racist desires like “America would be better off with less black people.” I think I’ve spent enough time “listening” to those people.

Gullible

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So, I just spent the last couple of days pondering how stupid people can be to believe headlines and articles like the ones I posted about yesterday. Now, I’m finding out that my parents are the ones who actually believe these things.

Granted, I had a feeling my dad may not have been on the Hillary band wagon in this election, but I also knew he thought Trump was “insane” as he said himself this past September. Why did I have this feeling? Well, when he was taking a break from his computer when I was home in September, I saw several open tabs on his web browser that had the label “Killary.” Gee, I wonder what positive things those videos were discussing and factually reporting.

Today, my mom says to me on the phone: “You know, if you want to know why Hillary didn’t win the election, I’m sure if you go on the internet or YouTube, you can find out all the awful things she has done.” She goes on to insinuate that the Clintons have murdered hundreds of people.

I insisted to her that she cannot believe everything she reads, and it’s important to have sources when citing things. I don’t know why I even bothered saying this to my mother, who has no idea what that statement even means. She got frustrated and said I don’t believe these bad things about her because I lack wisdom (yep), and it’s not like the government does anything for her, anyway, so why should she care about them?

I told her that if she really felt that way, that she gets zero benefit out of the government, maybe she should just leave this country. I mean, hey, the government doesn’t do anything for her here, right, doesn’t provide her Medicare, doesn’t give her social security benefits that she is happy to collect every single month until she dies, didn’t enforce her disability payments all those years? The government also didn’t give her two children free education from preschool through 12th grade, right? If I recall correctly, she had zero years of formal schooling in Vietnam, and if she did have it, her mother would have had to pay for it. And because my maternal grandmother was cheap and sexist, she refused to send my mom to school.

Sometimes, it’s like my mother has completely forgotten what she fled to come here for, and now, she’s just one of these same ungrateful Americans who thinks that government is all bad and doesn’t benefit people like her. She didn’t respond very well to what I said, but I don’t really care. She really shouldn’t try to act like she can have a conversation about politics when she knows zero about our political system or any political system for that matter.

Biased news.. and fake news

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Someone suggested in my Facebook feed that in order to get more “balanced” news and see things that I may not agree with, I should start “Liking” and joining Facebook groups that are for the opposite political party. I tried this today, and I didn’t even last a full 24 hours before I had to UN-like and leave all these groups.

This is a sampling of what I saw in my feed:

REPORT: Hillary Clinton Became PHYSICALLY VIOLENT on Election Night and Tore Into Robby Mook and John Podesta

Michelle Obama was born a man (video explaining that her real name was Michael Robinson at birth on YouTube)

AWFUL! Videos Show Hillary Clinton Supporters Attacking Homeless Black Woman Guarding Trump Hollywood Star

I need a break from all media — perhaps for the next four years.

This makes me very sad to think that people actually believe the above headlines — they think the ACTUAL facts are made up by biased liberal news sources. We say the same about them, so why can’t they say the same about us? Back in 2008 when Obama was running for president and won, people burned American flags, saying he was not their president. They believed the lies that awful and factually incorrect media sources kept spouting, like the “facts” that he was born in Kenya, that he was Muslim, and that he had Muslim extremist ties. In today’s situation with Trump’s win, he actually said all the racist things that have been replayed across both left and right-leaning media sources all along. How are the things right out of his mouth not “facts,” yet Barack Obama being a Kenyan born Muslim extremist and Michelle Obama a male ape “facts”?

Wellesley everywhere

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Contrary to all the jerks out there who want to categorize my alma mater as a lesbian school or a rich white girls’ school (it’s one of the most diverse colleges in this entire country) or a “bougie” school, Wellesley College’s reputation stands on its own. I wouldn’t have gone 3,000 miles away for college if I wasn’t going to a school that was reputed for its world-class education and having a diversity of women representing the entire globe, not to mention coming from all walks of life. Although I have a love-hate relationship with my time there, I have found that when I run into Wellesley alums after graduation that the reception has always been warm and comforting.

Yesterday, I was on the train going home from the gym, wearing my Wellesley sweatshirt, when someone tapped me on my shoulder. It was a Korean woman with a smiling face. “Hi. Did you by any chance go to Wellesley?”

She was a Class of ’07 student, and she had spent the election night at Wellesley for the election results party. Women from all over the country and even some parts of the world drove, trained, bused, and flew to Wellesley to witness what we were hoping would be a historic night not just for the Wellesley community, but also for women all over the world. Over 3,000 women came back to their beloved alma mater that night in great anticipation of Hillary’s win. And they were crushed when, as the night progressed, they slowly and painfully realized she wasn’t going to win. Our accomplished and ambitious Hillary would lose to the biggest anti-woman person in America. Candice told me it was powerful and painful, but she wouldn’t have missed it for the world — to be around so many proud Wellesley alums during that historic night.

“I think we’re all in pain and will be for a long time, but we’ll get through this,” Candice said to me, reassuringly after I told her how I was so upset and still not over this yet.

All I could envision in my mind was a crowded Wellesley Field House, packed with throngs of sobbing women everywhere, with balloons and confetti that were meant for a celebration but instead would be used for a very gaudy funeral. It would be like the bad dream that would just never end for me. All of our hopes and dreams were shattered in just one night, and instead of just being shattered, they were stomped and shat on by a scary and stupid man who wanted to obliterate anyone who didn’t look like him — or resemble a European model.

 

Changing times

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Every day, the world is changing. Today, people like my parents are resisting owning smart phones (my uncle did until earlier this year when he purchased his iPhone 6 Plus, and my aunt, the most antiquated person on earth, in her whiny tone yelled at him and said, “You said you’d never get a smart phone! Now you have a smart phone! You’ve sold out!”). Last spring, I was resisting downloading the Snapchat app (I finally downloaded it in June). During the rise of the internet, many households refused to buy a computer and thought e-mail was the rudest and most impersonal form of communication possible. After reading Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle a couple of weeks ago, I decided to start reading her follow-up semi-fiction novel Half Broke Horses about her grandmother, who grew up during the 1910s and 1920s. Her parents resisted buying an automobile, saying that these freaks going around in cars would go nowhere, that automobiles were just a fad that would soon die out, that they would be putting innocent people selling horses out of business. Yes, those were real economic problems to consider for families who sold horses and carriages as a means of transportation. But where do we draw the line at resisting change and progress and giving in to it?

It’s one thing to resist a smart phone or an app because you don’t want to “get with the times.” You’re not oppressing someone’s life by doing this. It’s another to actively fight against things like the right to an abortion over 43 years after it was supposed to have been fully made legal due to the Supreme Court Roe V. Wade decision. It’s different to not accept the fact that all people regardless of color or sex should be equal, to call innocent public servants like Michelle Obama an “ape in heels” the way this West Virginia mayor did over Twitter. In other words, this mayor wanted a black First Lady out because she saw her as a disgusting animal, and she wanted a “refreshing” white woman back in the seat of the First Lady of the United States – Melania Trump. And then to outright deny the fact that there was any racist connotation is to live in a world without seeing clearly, to be blind to your own subconscious or conscious prejudices. Oh, and we can’t forget about this jerk Dan Johnson who just won his Kentucky state legislative seat in spite of the fact that he depicted both the Obamas as chimpanzees in some hate-filled commercials for his campaign. He also denied he was racist and that his imagery had anything to do with race. It’s really amazing that you can use such blatantly racist images and then deny that they are racist at all. Only an ignorant white person would do that who has never experienced any racism in his life.

As someone who has lived one either the West or the East Coast all her life, I have often been accused either in person or via articles I’ve read of living in a blue “bubble,” of not being aware of what people in rural middle America are facing. I’ve been accused of being a “Coastal elite” who thinks she is better than those who live in the middle of America, in the South, or in the rust belt. But this is my response to that: On the coasts, you’d never have someone bigoted like that WV mayor or Dan Johnson be openly racist and win an election because we don’t tolerate blatant racism here. I do not accept the idea that if you are a racist or sexist person that you are a “good” person. Maybe the people who get mad at individuals like me who live on the coasts should face the fact that America is changing very quickly, and we’re a melting pot that is supposed to be accepting of all people of all colors, ethnicities, nationalities, and genders, and just because they aren’t white, that doesn’t make them dangerous or lesser as a human being than you. Maybe they need to expose themselves to people who look different than them. They should accept the progress that is being made where America is not just all white people who accept dated gender roles and stereotypes, that not all career women are anti-family, that people who accept gay marriage don’t necessarily want “everyone else” to be gay.

It is so hard to accept change in society, isn’t it.

Election results with mom

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Sometimes, I really don’t know why I bother. Maybe it’s because I wish sometimes that I could actually have intelligent, intellectually stimulating conversations with my uneducated parents (yes, and as my good friend’s proud-working-class-wannabe-hipster boyfriend who is 48 years old just pointed out to me, “And with that, you just lost the blue collar vote.” Well, fuck you, too. Now I need to apologize for being educated and understanding how to differentiate facts from fiction?!). We just cannot have an intelligent argument. It’s never going to happen, ever. But this is what happened on Friday night over the phone:

Mom: Are there riots going on in New York?

Me (playing dumb): Why would there be riots? What are you talking about?

Mom: Well, because that white man won the election and Hillary lost. There are riots happening all over San Francisco. So dangerous.

Me: That “white man” – you mean Donald Trump?

Mom: Yeah, him.

Me: Well, can you blame them for being angry? Now, we have a racist, sexist, bigoted fascist running this country with no experience at all.

Mom: Did you vote for Hillary?

Me: Yes, because I’m not stupid.

Mom: I don’t know why you are so upset. What has Hillary ever done for you? Has she ever put a roof over your head or put food on the table for you? What has she done?

Me: That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. WHEN HAS TRUMP PUT FOOD ON MY TABLE OR GIVEN ME A PLACE TO LIVE?!

Mom: Okay, okay. I don’t want to talk about this anymore – there’s no point in arguing about this.

(She also made sure to add somewhere in this ridiculous conversation while laughing: “Well, he couldn’t be all bad. Otherwise, why would so many people have voted for him?” Ummm, millions of people think that people of color are inherently less intelligent than white anglo-saxons, and that women are innately inferior to men — does that make it right?!!!!).

There’s no point in explaining that Hillary as a woman would be a symbol of change and progression for our backwards country. I’m 30 years old; I still have not seen a female commander in chief of this stupid country. There’s no point in telling her that many of the policies that Hillary has advocated for have very likely benefited my mom either directly or indirectly. She could never understand that.

And as Chris aptly pointed out, “Hehe, now your mother is jealous of Hillary. That is hilarious.”

 

“So, what I’ve learned is…”

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Despite winning the popular vote, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first female presidential candidate of a major political party, the most qualified presidential candidate in the history of our country, the most prepared person on earth, lost the presidency to Donald Trump. I have never been more emotional in my life about politics, but I sobbed when it was all said and done. In the moment I found out, this country did not feel welcoming of me, of my husband, of my family, any of my friends of color, of any of my female friends.

I don’t know what hurt more — the fact that a woman as accomplished as Hillary Clinton could not break the highest glass ceiling in the land in the year of 2016, or that a bigoted, racist, inexperienced white supremacy supporter could actually be leading the most powerful nation on earth. It’s two days later, and I am still broken. When I think of the future, I think, could I possibly have my first child during a Trump administration? What kind of hope is this child going to be imbued with in that case?!

On Wednesday night, I attended the first session of a mentoring program I’m starting for high school-age children that are in foster care. It’s a small group of children living in the Bronx and in Brooklyn, all of African, Trinidadian, Puerto Rican, or Dominican descent. After some ice breakers and group activities, one of the more outgoing kids spoke up and asked if we could all talk about the election. We went back and forth and talked about Hillary’s qualifications, Trump’s qualifications (none, other than being rich), and all the scandals behind the both of them. The resounding theme among these kids was that they were shocked Hillary had lost and they had all hoped she would have won. They did not understand why Trump won, and sadly, as the adults in the room, none of us mentors could explain to them why. It was all just too near and raw. The outgoing boy pipes in again: “So, what I’ve learned from this election is that as long as you are a rich white man, you can say or do whatever you want, even the worst things, and you can still become President of the United States.”

I had to hold back tears in my eyes and keep a straight face as he said this to our group. All the mentors looked dejected as we exchanged looks with each other and uselessly looked down at the floor. We all felt so useless in that moment; it was so obvious. We were rendered speechless. How were we supposed to explain this to these kids, kids who have endured so much difficulty so young, who have come from broken homes, and who constantly have to battle with issues of poverty and inequality every single day of their lives?

What I’d really love to know is… how are Trump supporters who actually voted for him discussing his victory to their kids? How are these parents and grandparents explaining to their children that this man is actually good and empathetic, that he could actually be an example to children around the world despite parading around and treating women like pleasure objects, saying all blacks live in the disgusting inner cities, that Mexicans are all rapists and that we need to build a wall to protect America from those rapists? How do we teach our children to abide by the law via the “law and order” that he loves to yell about when this man won’t even pay his taxes that the rest of us have to do?

I feel broken. Just broken.