I sent my parents a dinner gift a couple days before Christmas to acknowledge the holiday indirectly since my mom cannot celebrate Christmas. If I sent her a gift on the day of Christmas, she’d be really mad at me and feel guilty to Jehovah. But December 23? Bring it.

I didn’t realize how spicy the food would be since the restaurant was labeled “Beijing cuisine” until I talked to my parents on the phone. My mom started her sentence with, “I’m grateful for the thought and appreciate you thinking about us, but…” That’s never a good way to start a sentence. She proceeded to go on for about a whole two minutes, telling me that the food was so spicy that it was nearly inedible, that my dad got worried his blood pressure would go up and something bad would happen to his heart. He got so paranoid about it that he kept checking his blood pressure with his at-home monitor. Ever since the heart surgery two years ago, the blood pressure and heart have been an easy method for both of them to use to try to make me feel guilty for anything.

This is always why Ed dreaded giving my parents gifts even though he always wanted to give them gifts – well, more our mom. He sporadically gave our dad gifts out of guilt but never really wanted to after he became an adult because he knew he was never grateful for them, and at times, he’d never even open them until literally years later. They’d always show their annoyance about something about the gift that would eventually cause us to get frustrated. Sometimes, our mom would make us return the gift (Ed fumed over that one). And for me, sometimes, the gifts I’d give would not be enough, as she’d expect more. I’ve never heard of any other culture other than Asian cultures acting this way when receiving gifts, even from their own families.