The last time I came back to San Francisco, it was exactly two years ago, in August 2022, for a team offsite. That was a much larger team offsite, whereas this one is for a smaller and slightly different group. But I did the same type of trip, staying in San Francisco at my parents’ for the two surrounding weekends and staying at a hotel during the weeknights. This time, we’re going up to Sacramento for two days. This time, Kaia is also two years older, bigger, and very, very verbal. She takes in everything around her, sizes people up, and decides who she likes and who she doesn’t pretty quickly. She had heard my mom over speaker phone during our calls over the last couple of weeks, so when my mom called yesterday and I had her on speaker, Kaia immediately asked, “Is that Popo?” And so when I told her that we’d be seeing Popo and Gonggong, she knew who we were going to see.

We landed at SFO early. Our one checked luggage came out quickly, and we got into an Uber headed to my parents’ house. And after we arrived and unloaded, we had an uneventful and awkward lunch. Kaia ate an entire cha siu bao, a huge one. My mom went between hovering over her and kissing her when she was least expecting it to going back into the kitchen to fuss and clean over something. My dad awkwardly sat there and ate his food, chewing with his mouth open as always, and said almost nothing. I asked him what he had been up to lately, and he said, “Not much.” I asked him what he did during the day to fill his time, and he responded simply, “YouTube and yard work.” That was really the extent of our riveting conversation. My mom said that she was spending her days doing “Jehovah’s work,” and that after that, she had to rest her neck/back and do all the chores around the house.

The house is, for the most part, in worse shape than it was two years ago — more peeling paint, more drawers and cupboard doors and doors and knobs that don’t seem to work properly, and more clutter, whether that’s from Craigslist hoarding or from overbuying toilet paper. The Costco toilet paper that my parents hoarded during the pandemic had previously filled most of the sunroom space. But now, there are at least six Costco packages of toilet paper right in the damn hallway. Every table surface, whether it’s the dining room table, breakfast room table, side tables in the living room, and even the shelves in my old bedroom are covered with crap. Just to lay out a cutting board on the kitchen counter, I had to clear off so much stuff. And this would not be surprising: there is a MOUSE problem at my parents’ now. My old bedroom has at least eight mouse traps set. And of course, Kaia manages to walk right into one (which luckily, was not set properly, so it didn’t snap her), and then grab a glue trap and get it stuck to her arm.

I told my mom during our walk today to pick up a pie that they are inviting the mice with all their clutter. They have created a nice, inviting, warm home with plenty of places to hide and sleep and play for the mice with all their accumulated crap, so they can keep setting up all the mouse traps that they want. But the mice will never leave the mouse until all the clutter is gone. And she started hissing at me and saying I was causing trouble. “Why can’t you just be peaceful?” my mom whined. I told her she always wanted to assume ill intention: doesn’t she realize that I am saying all of this out of pure concern for their health and well-being? Mice in the house is not a sanitary state. It is NOT clean. And having clutter literally everywhere and on every surface and all over the floors simply creates more opportunity for my parents to fall and seriously hurt themselves. For people of their age, really severe falls and accidents happen at home more than in any other place. And at their age, their bones do not heal as quickly. Why can’t they understand something so basic?

It’s also funny how quickly Kaia picks up on how sad, miserable, and uninviting my parents’ floor is versus my aunt’s warm, welcoming home upstairs. She sees how bad it is and handles it in her own way. My aunt’s space upstairs is the exact same layout as my parents’, yet the space is decorated warmly for guests, and there’s actually clear spaces to walk and run. It’s like night and day between their two homes in the same freaking building. So Kaia loved running endlessly up and down my aunt’s hallway to her bedroom and back into the living room. She didn’t want to leave. And she kept asking to go back upstairs: ” I wanna go upstairs and see Mumu.” Little kids are so discerning, but my parents don’t seem to get this.