Living in a multi-family, multi-generational household certainly has its pros and cons. The pros are that even if you have zero or only one sibling, if there are other cousins in the house, it will feel like you have multiple siblings; you have more of a “village” when it comes to child-rearing, getting chores/errands done; you, by default, will have larger family celebrations and gatherings because no one has the excuse of cost/time for travel to see each other. Just based on proximity, you will be close to your aunts/uncles/grandparents without even trying. You don’t have to make an effort to see anyone if they’re already there living with or just steps away from you.

As for the cons? This will vary by family, but I think the annoying things that can happen include: jealousy amongst in-laws, unequal treatment of in-laws to their daughters/sons-in-law, constant comparison of the youngest generation (who has more As, gets into what schools, etc.), and endless gossip.

One of the biggest pros of being raised this way, with my dad’s older brother, his wife (my mumu), and their three sons was that I was very close to my aunt growing up. I also saw my three cousins like another set of siblings; two of them doted on me quite a lot. Even though she is not my aunt by blood, my mumu definitely treated me as such. She always wanted a daughter, never had one, so I got showered with a lot of the love she wanted to shower on a little girl of her own. We did lots of baking and cooking together growing up. She always indulged me with endless toys, clothes and gifts, some of which she even made by hand.

She eventually ran away to escape her abusive husband, my uncle, and she left for about 2.5 years. She moved to Boston to be with her mother, who ended up passing away at the end of her stay there. As much as I loved her when I was young, I didn’t quite realize how incompatible we were until she came back to San Francisco. Shortly after she moved back, my pet parakeet Willie was dying. We found out he had developed a tumor from all the lead he had ingested that was stuck in his stomach. It likely came from the terrible lamps he used to play near and lick in the house (what does that say for what Ed and I were exposed to…?). I cried endlessly because I was so devastated that my pet of seven-plus years was going to die. And within earshot of me, she repeatedly told my parents, “Just buy her another bird.” I felt so hurt and misunderstood; how could she just think another pet parakeet could replace my Willie? That’s like saying that if one of her sons died, she should just have another child or adopt, and all her woes would be gone!

Years later, in 2013, Ed died from suicide. He jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was in so much pain that he thought if he ended his life, he could also end his pain. My aunt mourned with us. But she also told my mom multiple times that Ed was selfish for turning to suicide because he didn’t realize how much pain he would cause others by ending his life. I remember feeling infuriated when my mom told me this because I realized that as sad as it was, my aunt just lacked depth to truly understand pain. How could Ed care about others’ suffering when he was suffering so much himself? You can’t see the light when you are trapped in the darkness. How could she not understand something so basic, especially knowing Ed and knowing he was such a selfless person who always put others ahead of himself? Was it because she converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses that she became so shallow, or was she just always like this, and as a young child, I just wasn’t able to see it?

Another time, a few years after that, I had a difficult visit home. My aunt knew it wasn’t good. My mom had made several passive aggressive remarks to my aunt in my presence, and so I knew they were not getting along well at the time. When I went upstairs to see her, she sat on the couch and opened her arms to me, signaling that I should come over so she could hold me in her arms. I went over to her, and without even realizing it, I burst into tears. She didn’t even have to ask why I was crying. She simply rubbed my back and kissed my forehead while holding me close.

“I always know when your mom is upset with me,” Mumu murmured into my ear. “I’ve known her even longer than you. She’s not an easy person to get along with, but she’s had a hard life. I know it’s hard for you. You’re a good girl. You treat your parents well. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

So while sometimes I think my aunt has been very shallow, other times, I wonder if it’s all just a facade. Maybe she just doesn’t want to deal with big feelings or huge life problems and tries to let them all go. Because if you pretend that everything is okay or happy in your life, maybe everything actually will be okay and happy?

The way this trip has been set up, I really won’t have much, if any, alone time with my mom at all. It’s usually the times when Chris would go to the office or leave early to go back to New York when she’d corner me and chew me out about something she didn’t like or got mad about that I did. But we don’t have those windows this time because a) Chris isn’t working and b) Chris and Kaia will be with me the whole time. The little bit of alone time we got yesterday was during our walk to the pie shop in the Outer Richmond. I was getting annoyed at how cluttered, dirty, and dangerous the house has become. When I look back at my childhood, our home, for the most part, wasn’t very cluttered at all. My dad was anal retentive with organization back then; he always knew where everything was, and everything had its place. In his older age now, he is dirtier, more cluttered, and hoarding like never before: multiple toaster ovens (“in case ours breaks”) are stacked on top of each other in the basement. A dresser is sitting in the corner of the dining room table. An exercise bike is positioned blocking a dining room chair in the dining room. Piles of boxes, cans, and who-knows-what completely cover the breakfast room table. You can barely see any of the dining room table surface. The amount of hoarding has really gotten out of control. It’s almost like some switch got turned on in my dad’s brain when he hit his 60s, and he just wants to hoard everything humanly possible. My parents could not conceivably enjoy living in their own home. And if you cannot be comfortable in your own home, then where are you going to be comfortable?

I made this case to my mom, and she insisted that she “is disabled,” and she doesn’t make the decisions of the house. I pointed out to my dad that the kitchen floor was buckling and bubbling; he stepped on it to confirm it, then had no reaction. I pointed out all the spider webs growing on the ceilings of both bathrooms and all over the kitchen. My dad nodded to acknowledge he heard me, but he did nothing to change it. In some way, the amount of dirt, dust, and cob webs that have accumulated everywhere is like a sign of death and decay of the house.

Ten years ago if I noticed this stuff, I would have immediately been all over it and vacuumed up the cob webs, dusted and wiped down all the surfaces, and cleaned up all the clutter. But I wouldn’t have been able to throw it away; I would only have been able to toss it into some bin or box. So once I’d leave, it would all become a mess again. I did this cleanup once before, years ago, and my dad was completely up in arms and hissed at me, even though all his little screws and tools were scattered all over the sun room floor. I don’t do it anymore because I know it will be a temporary fix, and once I leave, it will all be in a disarray again. Plus, I don’t have that much time here anymore. I also have a toddler to care for, and she’s my priority while visiting in that house, not the nastiness of the state of my parents’ living situation.

In the short time we’ve been here thus far, Kaia has already managed to get her foot stuck in a snap mouse trap (which luckily was weak and did NOT snap on her), got her hand glued to a mouse glue trap, and also taken out almost all the detergents and cleaners within reach in both the toilet room and the main bathroom. She’s taken my mom’s vitamin/pills mini plate, stolen my dad’s pill containers, and grabbed endless of my mom’s little trinkets at her sitting area. She’s also tried to open bottles of Lysol, Pine Sol, and other harsh surface spray cleaners. I told my mom that Kaia was grabbing everything, and why didn’t they clean up before we arrived (she claims they did)? And her response was, “You have to watch her!” Ummmm, yeah. We cannot watch her every second. We’ll be lucky if we leave this house once this trip is over and don’t have to call the Poison Control Center.

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.

It’s like my subconscious is awakened when it knows I’m heading back home to San Francisco soon. For the first time in ages, I dreamt about Ed again. And this dream was not a pleasant one. It was like the dreams I had for the months after he died 11 years ago where he kept dying and killing himself in different ways.

I dreamt I was back at my parents’ house, and I thought I was home by myself. I went into the bathroom, and there was a large baby bathtub suspended above the regular bathtub. But it was weird because I could see a pair of legs under the baby tub. I moved the baby bathtub to reveal my brother, face up, eyes closed, half drenched in water and unconscious. He was wearing the Ed Uniform: long white-sleeved shirt, beige khakis, and black zip-up jacket, no socks. I screamed, grabbed and shook him, and asked him to wake up. He was completely unresponsive. I ran to grab my phone and call 911.

I woke up abruptly at about 3am. I felt sweaty and extremely irritable. Just a few hours before, I had woken up, asked Kaia if she needed to pee while she was still asleep. She clearly was fast asleep. But within seconds, I heard “ssssssssssss” — the sound of her peeing right onto her waterproof hospitable blanket mat. Great. I ran to soak up as much pee as possible. When I asked if she wanted to pee, I meant… pee in the potty.

I hate those dreams so much. It always is a reminder to me of how powerless I was in Ed’s desperate situation, how powerless I will continue to be in the constant miserable state of my parents’ lives. It’s like the theme of my family life with my parents and Ed: powerless, always, with nothing humanly possible to do to help.

My aunt, who was my mom’s only current living sibling, her older sister, passed away three days ago. She wasn’t feeling well, got hospitalized, and died from a stroke. My mom got a text message very early this morning and a call from one of her nephews, who informed her. Of course, my mom was completely distraught. She left Vietnam in 1971 during the Vietnam (American) War. She didn’t see her sister or any of her family until January 2008. That’s 37 years of not seeing your blood family. It was an emotional reunion, and one that was short lived since we only stayed there for about 2.5 weeks. My parents never went back to Vietnam after that visit. And so, that was the last time we saw my aunt.

It’s strange to call my mom’s sister my aunt because I didn’t really know her or anything about her until I went to Vietnam in 2008. My mom always said that her sister was why she had everything she had. My aunt was the one who helped her learn English when their mother refused to let my mom go to school, saying school was wasted on a girl, especially the youngest in the family. My aunt was the one who encouraged my mom to apply for the U.S. Army position, which eventually led to her meeting my dad at work. My aunt was the one who housed her in Quy Nhon while my mom worked. She was also the one who convinced my mom to reconsider the marriage proposal my dad had made, after my mom first rejected my dad, saying she couldn’t go to the U.S. and leave her family behind. My mom always said that she owed her life first to her sister, and then to my dad. When I first met her, she ran to me, cried, pulled me into her arms, and held me tightly. I held her back, but it felt strange since I knew nothing about her. I still remember how skinny, bony, and frail she was, yet her grip and hold were so strong. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry because I didn’t really know her. And given our mom never taught Ed and me Vietnamese, I could never communicate with her the whole time I was in Vietnam. My mom was the perpetual (and exhausted) translator.

I got food poisoning for the first only real time in my life on that trip to Vietnam in 2008. And I could see her worry; that’s one thing that she and my mom shared: constant worry about literally everything imaginable. My aunt made me ginger tea every day. She boiled me a special chicken broth. She took care of me like I was her own child. And all I could say back to her was, “cam on” (thank you) in my perfectly accented Vietnamese that only knew how to say just a handful of Vietnamese words. I guess my ear picked up my mom’s accent over all the years listening to her speak in her central Vietnamese accent, and I was told that even though I knew only a few words, I spoke them as though I was a native speaker.

I know my mom is hurting now. I am sure she feels deep regret for only having visited her sister once the entire time she’s been in the U.S. She probably regrets not sending her more money. I’m sure she’s full of complicated feelings and deep sadness now that her only living sibling is now gone. But on my side, I’m not sure what to do to help make her feel better. It’s a hard place to be when you want to help someone, but there’s literally nothing you can do to comfort them. Losing an aunt is a loss for me, too, given she is my blood-related aunt. But it’s such a distant loss that I don’t really feel anything, as sad as that may be. It’s like hearing that a friend’s friend passed. It’s sad, but there’s not much else there to feel.