I think everyone, once we become adults, has at some point felt embarrassed publicly by their parents. It’s inevitable, right, that they will do something, anything, that will annoy you and make you feel awkward to be seen with them in public. Well for me, that happens almost any time I’m in a place with my parents where something is “all you can eat” or “all you can grab,” and they make sure to take advantage of that to no end.
Yesterday, I took them to the hotel lounge at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, where Chris and I will be staying this week, and they were wide-eyed when they saw all the snacks, full dinner spread, and fresh cut up fruit neatly laid out for guests to take. Needless to say, they wanted to take advantage of it, even if that meant stuffing a few bags of potato chips and a handful of apples into my mom’s reusable shopping bag. My dad took the liberty of filling a plate of food with pork loin, Israeli couscous, and sautéed spinach, and eating it, even though we had dinner plans at a Vietnamese restaurant just an hour later with Chris. “Why are we going out to eat if there’s free food to eat here?” my dad mumbled between bites.
I feel bad about my embarrassment. Really, I do. I was reminded countless times growing up (and still occasionally, now) that my dad grew up in a Chinatown ghetto with barely enough food to eat, which meant he oftentimes ate leftover spoiled food and got sick. My mom grew up in rural, poor central Vietnam with mostly rice and only rice to eat — not many vegetables, and meat was a luxury item rarely seen or even smelled. I’ve never had to worry about having enough food to eat, or a variety of dishes to eat, and now, I get to stay at hotels where the food and variety overfloweth, and my parents only get to experience this when they’re with Chris and me. I get why they would want to take as much as they’d like. To them, the world could end any second, all their life savings could diminish tomorrow (that’s what happens when you don’t trust the world at all), and so they want to take as much as they can and save everything “just in case.” Granted, my parents are financially comfortable enough to travel at their leisure; they just have zero desire to do so and find travel and enjoying life’s pleasures wasteful. They live like paupers, and when they see a lot to take, they will take as much as they can get.
My mom is aware of my feelings of embarrassment. That’s why she scolded my dad when he suggested getting a few more bags of potato chips. I overheard her say, “Don’t do that. Yvonne doesn’t like it.” I feel conflicted about it, but I guess this is probably what will happen with every subsequent generation to some degree. Maybe we’ll just never understand each other, or worse, maybe they’ll never really know me the way I wish they could. I just don’t think they have the capacity to know me and what I’m really about.
And that makes me sad because then I think: what if my future kids end up feeling the exact same way about me?