Category Archives: Contemplation

“They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us”

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Since getting pregnant with Kaia, I’ve thought a lot about the concept of intergenerational trauma or inherited trauma. I suppose my generation is the first to acknowledge that such a thing even exists and how toxic it can be. In previous generations, it was all about survival. Now, my generation is being more introspective about why we are the way we are, and how the way we are is largely shaped by how we were raised and what we were told was expected or “normal.”

I’ve read more books in the last several years about complicated parent-adult child relationships, dysfunctional ethnic family dynamics, and child-rearing in general. In the last year, I came across a book recommendation, a memoir entitled, “They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies that Raised Us” by Prachi Gupta, an Indian-American journalist who is my age. In her memoir, she details her parents’ journey to the U.S., their path to the “American dream,” and how the model minority myth fractured her family and even potentially even led to her brother’s premature, untimely death.

Prachi is exactly 18 months older than her brother. Her parents told her they had intended always to have two children, and for them to be close in age, because they wanted the two of them to be each other’s best friend; their mom said that they wanted them to take care of each other once they both passed. Prachi and Yush were basically like best friends up until their late teen/early adult years, when their relationship became unsteady due to their diverging views on men vs. women’s roles in society, as well as their family’s dysfunctions.

I really felt for Prachi reading this book; I finished the book within just a few sittings. Even though she specifically discusses the Indian American / desi experience, I could relate a lot to the complexities of the dysfunctions of her family, the verbal and psychological abuse she, her brother, and their mother endured. I could hear the same echoes and pressures of keeping things a secret or “having/losing face” in my own family. And I could especially feel for her in the moment she found out that her little brother was dead. All the things she so eloquently writes about in detailing her emotions around her brother’s life and death feel so eerily familiar, so similar to how I felt with Ed. The only difference was that Yush was a high achieving, outwardly “successful” Asian American, and well, Ed was not. Both were depressed and suffered from different psychological disorders; both felt that they were less than human beings in their on-earth-bodily states. This is a pretty good quote to summarize how she felt about her family in the world:

“I had once thought that I came from a line of Gods, and I had punished myself for failing to be Godlike. But we were not Gods, and I was not the avatar for our family’s unraveling. I was just another product of inherited trauma, unresolved grief, and reactive survival mechanisms, like everyone else who came before me. We were mortals who felt ashamed when we failed to appear omnipotent. Now I see that my job was to release my ancestors from this burden, to allow those who come next the freedom to be ordinary.”

The book ends with her having little to no contact with her parents. The memoir is written as a letter addressing her mother throughout, saying all the things she wish she could say to her, but her mom refuses to listen to. While she yearns to have a close relationship with her mom as she did when she was a child, it cannot happen without the meddling of her abusive, controlling, and mentally ill father.

Even though it’s been a few days since I finished reading the book, I’m still thinking about it a lot. The emotional rawness of it felt so real, so scarily relatable. As a review in The Atlantic wrote, “She explains better than any writer I’ve ever encountered how conflicts that may appear low-stakes—such as an argument over grades or extracurriculars—can tear open an unnavigable gulf.” People always say that certain arguments don’t matter or don’t mean anything — but my general thought is, well, actually, these seemingly little arguments can expose larger fractures that should very likely be addressed before they blow up. I’m happy to see people of color in my generation writing books like this, and also addressing exactly how complex and unpredictable “dysfunction” can look like.

Why people who read books are the best kind of people

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Ever since I started learning to read as a child, I have loved it. I read voraciously as a child, and throughout my life, I’ve always enjoyed reading and have done it for leisure. Sometimes as a kid, I read because I had nothing else to do; when I was young, my parents never enrolled me in any activities, so I’d just be stuck at home during school breaks and summers. I’d end up reading whatever I could get my hands on. Sometimes, that included home remedy and house repair books. Other times, it included gardening and cookbooks. But even when I did start getting out of the house more, I always, always enjoyed my quiet time reading. When we read, we are able to whisk ourselves away from our current place and time and fully immerse ourselves in the stories, times, and lands where the book’s story takes place. We are able to learn and see through another person’s eyes, and thus, are likely to be more empathetic and understanding of different people’s experiences. Reading broadens our scope of knowledge and exposes us to different aspects of the human experience that we may never have the opportunity to get exposed to, for better or worse. I’d like to think this makes us more capable of deeper feelings. While reading the very best and complex novels, it can feel like a bit of time travel. As the physician/novelist Abraham Verghese says, “You suspend disbelief, and you live through centuries, sometimes, or at least decades, (…) births and deaths, and you put the book down and it’s still Tuesday.”

On top of adding to one’s knowledge of the world, increasing empathy, and just being a form of entertainment and even “time travel,” in its most basic sense, reading helps to improve critical thinking, vocabulary, grammar/sentence structure, and can even help with stress relief. It’s also been linked to helping with preventing dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease. So given this, it’s been really strange and unsettling to hear that to this day, Chris’s dad thinks reading books is not a good use of time, and even mocks his mother for being an avid reader. Apparently, he “learned” this disdain from his own mother, Chris’s Nana, who always thought that a woman’s place was in the home to take care of the household and children, and to never do anything else. She used to mock Chris’s mom’s love of books and tell Chris’s dad to get her to stop. They both failed in this endeavor (thankfully). Chris’s dad has often times made disparaging comments about Chris’s mom’s love of reading, saying things like, “She must get these crazy ideas through the stories she reads!”

Given we’re in the year 2025, Chris’s parents are in their late 60s/early 70s, and Chris’s mom is a medical doctor, this disdain for reading books is quite a primeval and unenlightened idea to have. I never would have thought I would meet someone in my lifetime who would disparage reading books of all things, but alas, the person ended up coming right under my nose in my own father-in-law, someone who has grown up in great wealth, comfort, and access to education and knowledge. I was reminded of this negative opinion while finishing The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese this week. It’s a long, long book (over 700 pages) that spans three generations of a family and two continents, but along with Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, it’s likely one of my all-time favorite books I’ve ever read. I love the character development, the interwoven stories of multiple families across countries, and how they all came together. I love the imagery of water and how it brings us together yet divides us, and I even loved all the medical details and how they came to life for me right on the page. Every time I picked up the book, I knew I was in love with it because it would literally feel like I was escaping reality and being transported to another place while I was reading it. While both of Verghese’s novels are rumored to be in film production, like pretty much every time I have seen any book I have read become a movie, it’s never the same. The richness of character development and locations is never quite there. The subtlety of speech and body language always falls far short in a movie than on a page. I have rarely rooted for any character in a movie the way I have rooted for a character in a book.

Coincidentally, and it’s really no shock, most of the people I’ve liked and have enjoyed company with in my adult life are readers. They read fiction and nonfiction, and they love sharing what books they are enjoying (or not enjoying). Readers are the very best kind of people. I don’t think that’s really a debatable point.

Uniquely female burdens

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Last year when I was in Denver for work, I got an unexpected message from a friend’s friend saying that she and her family had actually moved here from New York, and that she’d like to catch up if possible. Unfortunately at that time, all my evenings were packed with pre-booked work events, so I wasn’t able to get away. It was a bit unexpected, to be frank, that she reached out. While I’d never really considered her a friend while in New York, I did see her from time to time at mutual friends’ events, and we did get along. We’d tried hanging out once before with our partners, but we never did much more than that. So when she reached out, I figured she was having a difficult time transitioning from urban to suburban life, coupled with transitioning into motherhood (her daughter is about six months younger than Kaia). She probably wanted to see a familiar face.

So this time ahead of this trip, I reached out to see if she could meet. We did have a decent amount in common on paper: we both love food, desserts, travel, and now we’re both mothers, so we’d have that to bond over. She immediately accepted and we made plans for dinner, which ended up happening last night. I was really touched; she actually drove almost an hour to see me (Denver traffic can be crazy during rush hour), and we spent three hours discussing marriage, motherhood, work, travel, moving, and life in general. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her, but it felt really good to have a deep chat… and to get away from colleagues for a night.

Sometimes, I think about all the trials and tribulations that women have to go through just to procreate, and I cannot believe that women still want to bear children. This friend had three miscarriages: two happened before her daughter was conceived; the third happened last year, before her current pregnancy. Miscarriages are more common than they are not, but her first one was particularly traumatic. At around 11 weeks of pregnancy, she started bleeding profusely. She drove herself to the hospital, where they confirmed she had miscarried. She was given the option of having a dilation and curettage (D&C) to remove the dead fetal tissue from her uterus, or letting it expel itself naturally. Her father, who is a doctor, advised her against the D&C, and suggested she just go home and let it happen naturally. Well, it just got worse from there: the next two days, everything she sat or lied on was soaked with pools of blood, and she basically laid on her bathroom floor most of that time, experiencing painful contractions for almost 48 hours. These are one of those scary miscarriage stories that no one warns you about, that for some women when they have miscarriages, regardless of whether it’s first trimester or not, they can actually go into labor.

The thought is just beyond sad and excruciating — to go through labor without seeing a living, breathing baby at the end. I think of all the women who have had stillbirths, where they know their fetus is dead, but they still have to go through the labor and “give birth” to a dead baby. The mere thought brings me to tears. And somehow, even after this horrible and painful experience, this friend kept trekking along to try to conceive. She went on to experience a second miscarriage, a viable pregnancy and birth and baby, and then a THIRD miscarriage, and finally a second viable pregnancy, and she’s still here and excited to be pregnant. It just shows how much burden women have to bear, literally on their own, and how resilient we all are. It takes a lot emotionally, mentally, physically, to go through all this stress and loss. It likely raises cortisol levels and puts you on the defensive for everything. In the end, we vacillate between surviving and thriving.

But it sounds like since she’s moved down to the southern suburbs of Denver, she’s been mostly in survival mode. She has no friends here. She works fully remotely. She has a sister and their family who live in a nearby suburb, but that’s it. She misses walking (people drive everywhere here, like in most of the U.S.) and going from store to store to restaurant by foot. She feels isolated and like she does 90 percent-plus of all the child rearing. When she saw me for dinner last night, it was the only time since they’d moved here that she’d actually gone out to dinner, alone without her daughter, to catch up with a friend. While she’s excited for her second baby, she’s terrified what it will mean for the division of labor at home, her marriage, and the effect it will have on her daughter, who is extremely attached to her and who has had an assortment of frustrating health issues since birth.

I hear these stories, and I realize even more how lucky I am. Although IVF was certainly no walk on the beach, I went through just one stimulation cycle. I’ve never had a physically painful miscarriage experience (though I do still mourn my “vanishing twin”). I had a straightforward pregnancy and child birth. I was lucky and privileged to have a healthy, easy-going baby in Kaia Pookie. Kaia Pookie, knock on wood, is still thriving and impressing (while simultaneously infuriating) Chris and me every single day with all she learns and knows. I’m also lucky to have a partner who has done his share and tries to make sure I’m not carrying all the burden of child rearing. At the same time, it makes me sad and angry that women who are as smart, accomplished, well educated, and confident like this friend still allow themselves to be put into situations where they have to bear the brunt of all stereotypical gender roles, such as child rearing and the mental load of maintaining a functional household – much against their own wishes. Are men really that ill equipped for the current century, or are women just so desperate to have heterosexual partners to procreate with that we “settle” in that regard?

Travel insurance with credit card – the debacle comes to a conclusion

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It’s been almost two months since I was at the Mount Sinai West emergency room, on the day I was actually supposed to leave for our Thanksgiving European trip. Chris had to cancel and rebook train tickets. He also had to cancel hotel reservations, make new ones, and also change our outbound flight to Paris. It wasn’t fun for him, and just the flight change itself was extremely costly. But he realized that the credit card we used to book the original flight had travel insurance on it for trip cancellation/interruption, so I took photos of all my ER and Urgent Care forms and sent them in for consideration for our itinerary change costs due to my sudden illness.

You would think that given I was not only in the emergency room, but I also had extremely detailed documentation, that this would have been a smooth process that would have gotten approved relatively swiftly. Unfortunately, it was anything but. First, the contact details to file the travel insurance claim were not clear, likely by design. It’s not on Mastercard’s website. You have to call Mastercard, then get re-routed to a specific agent, who can then share the secret website you have to login to in order to submit all your claim details and proof forms. Then once you submit all of that, you wait. And wait. And then, for the first 8-10 days, I got no feedback. I simply saw “pending” as the status of my claim every time I logged into the portal. When I finally got in contact with the claims agent (a third party works for Mastercard to handle travel insurance), she grilled me about the time we left the apartment, when we would have needed to leave for the airport, what time I was admitted into Urgent Care and then ER, when I started having symptoms, etc. It felt extremely unempathetic, like she was simply looking for reasons to deny my claim. Chris copied and pasted literal paragraphs from their travel insurance policy stating why this was, in fact, applicable. I was shocked: wasn’t it clear that this was a very serious case, especially given all the details in the Urgent Care and ER forms? All of the forms had time stamps on them, so I wasn’t even sure why she was further grilling me. Did she even read any of the forms I submitted at all??

The claim was initially denied, as they originally said that my trip wasn’t cancelled, that we still went, so there was “nothing to claim” or get reimbursed for. I had to call them nearly every business day we were away in Australia, have at least 6-8 email back and forth communications with them, endless voice messages playing phone tag, and then finally a very annoying and painful phone call in the middle of the night, Australia time, to explain to them: what the hell else did they need to understand that I was genuinely sick, that I was in the ER for something that could have easily resulted in pneumonia or death, and that as a result of all that chaos, my outbound flight needed to be changed…?! It was clear that the claims agent barely read any of the documentation I sent. She may not have even opened them as far as I was concerned. I had to literally open each document, one by one, and point out to her where the time stamps or remarks around my illness were (e.g. “On the ER form, page 1, in the bottom left hand corner. do you see the time stamp that says ‘3:49pm’?”). It felt like I was instructing a small child instead of an adult. She finally realized after having her hand held by me that yes, this was a legitimate claim, and yes, it should be reimbursed. She reopened the claim for me as a “claim determination dispute,” then told me that at this point, the only reason it would be denied is if the manager thought I had some “pre-existing condition” back when the flight was booked. The flight was booked in July. You cannot have a pre-existing condition for a peritonsillar abscess; that’s just medically impossible and could easily be disproven. Plus, no one would have an abscess in their throat from July all the way to November!

I finally got an email notification last week that the claim dispute was accepted. I got my requested payment back today. While it was closure (and some much needed money back), it made me angry to think about how insurance works in this country. Insurance feels like it exists simply to exist and get money out of you. Then when you actually do need to use it, the insurance companies will do everything in their power to withhold money from you or even make you pay.

Not everyone would be as persistent as I was to get my money back. I made sure to call and email almost every day for over a month. Most people just let these things go. I’m sure they count on that happening. But no, I’m not getting screwed by all these stupid insurance companies as long as I can help it.

HK vs. NY: independence always threatened, plus the case for more public restrooms

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While wandering around the streets of Hong Kong and using its fast, efficient, and super clean metro, I thought about how similar New York City is to Hong Kong. Both cities are densely populated. Both have subway systems that the majority of its citizens rely on. Both have a fast paced nature. People in both cities live in relatively small and expensive spaces. It’s not uncommon in either city to hear that people rarely, if ever, cook, and most eat almost every single meal out. Both also are notorious for having very intense, grueling work hours yet exciting and late night party scenes. People also love to say that the people of New York and Hong Kong are rude (as a New York resident, I do not believe this is true. As a former New York tourist, I never thought it was true. And as someone who has visited Hong Kong twice, I do not find people ruder there than anywhere else at all. In fact, I think people are generally kind in Hong Kong, and they are far more kind to those who have young children/are pushing a stroller and who are elderly).

There are obvious differences, though, other than culture and language: wages and salaries are far lower overall in Hong Kong despite sky-high costs of living, for one. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, which means that its independence, or perception of, is constantly in threat. Hong Kongers want to stay separate from China, but China sees them as part of “One China.” Some hawker on the street who tried to sell Chris and me some lame shoe cleaner made some small talk with me while in Guangzhou. He asked where we were from and where we had been during our travels. I told him we had come from Hong Kong, and his response was, “Oh, so you were in China. You know Hong Kong is China, right?” Of course, a Guangzhou resident would say that, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who lives in Hong Kong who would say the same thing. Being in Hong Kong, it’s like you’re in one country, yet also in another. And the rules can change just like that, and you as an individual would have zero control over it.

The other difference that more immediately sticks out to me as a visitor is this: Hong Kong has endless clean and glorious public restrooms. It felt like every few blocks we’d run into one. I never had to worry about cleanliness or availability of toilet paper or whether there was enough soap. In New York, public restrooms are so sorely lacking that it’s an embarrassment. And when you are able to find one, it’s unlikely to be a desirable or even mildly pleasant experience. And how funny that in the last few weeks, The New York Times published an op-ed to make the case for more public restrooms in New York City; how timely!

The Vietnam (American) War from the eyes of a Vietnamese person

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In my adulthood, I’ve tried to find more books to read that would educate me about China and Vietnam, my father and mother lands, that are written from the perspective of people who are actually Chinese and Vietnamese. It’s been a pretty big mix of movies, documentaries, fiction, non-fiction, and perhaps one of my favorite book genres — historical fiction. It’s been easier to find books on Chinese culture and the Cultural Revolution. It’s been more of a challenge to find books that are written on Vietnam’s rich history (especially the French colonial period and the Vietnam War) that are NOT told from an American or European perspective, but rather that of a native Vietnamese person. Then I finally stumbled across a book recommendation in my Modern Asian Moms (MAMs) group called The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai. From the first page, I knew it would be an easy read, a real page turner of a book. And oddly enough, it was just published in 2020, so it’s a relatively recent book. Some people criticize the book and say the language is too simple since the book was written in English, which is the author’s second language after Vietnamese (someone on Good Reads actually complained that he had to look up words in a dictionary only a handful of times as a person who knows English as a second language… because apparently, that should be the barometer of “complex language”).

When I say the book was an “easy” read, I meant that it took no time to get into the story. It’s actually a really hard book to read when you think of all the brutal portrayals of hardship, death, rape, hunger, and exposure to Agent Orange and its effects on not just the people it physically touched, but future generations; one baby born in the book (this was a time pre ultrasounds) was born without any arms or legs; she had a forehead that was three times the size of her body, and she died within seconds of being born. But it made me realize even more how flawed the western portrayal of the Vietnam War was, as it was nowhere as simplistic as it was taught to me in school. There were people in the North who were recruited to the Southern Army and vice versa. There were many people who were pro French and actually reaped plenty of benefits of French colonialism. And there was a mass re-education camp that was like a prison after the war, which pretty much everyone on the Southern Army was forced into. The land reform of the 1950s created immediate violence and destruction across all of Vietnam; people who were wealthy were stripped of everything they owned and many were executed publicly and brutally.

I thought about what my mom said about growing up poor and the contradictions of the stories she shared. Her dad, my paternal grandma, died when she was only 6, from choking on his own mucus. But he was a highly educated man who was fluent and literate in both Vietnamese and Chinese. She said in her younger days, her dad was a respected “high official” in government. What that meant for her family once the war started, I’ll never know because my mom doesn’t like to talk about it. I don’t even think she’d like to know I’m reading books on Vietnam or the war at all. She seems to want to wipe all that out of her memory, which is not unlike many others who lived through that difficult period in Vietnamese history.

There are two protagonists we shift point of view from in the book: the grandma in the 1950s and her granddaughter in the 1970s. The grandma says, “Do you understand why I’ve decided to tell you about our family? If our stories survive, we will not die, even when are bodies are no longer here on earth.”

It’s the stories of our families, of our lives that keep people alive. And though I’ll probably never fully know my mom’s stories of Vietnam, I’ll have sources like this historical fiction book for me to lean on for at least a glimpse of what she experienced.

Meyers Iowa Pine Scented soap

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The soap in our main bathroom had just run out, so I was excited to open and use the new Meyers Iowa pine-scented soap. As I dispensed the soap and started scrubbing my hands, the bathroom was filled with this rich, refreshing scent of… CHRISTMAS TREES. Our bathroom smelled like a Christmas village, or like that amazing scent I look forward to every time we walk on the streets of New York in the month of December, and there’s a corner guy selling tightly wrapped and coiled Christmas trees!

It seems a little silly that this scent excited me so much when I washed my hands, but I really do believe that it’s these little moments in life that we need to embrace and enjoy because all of life is made up of teeny tiny moments that quickly happen… and then quickly pass us by and end.

This perfume-like experience also reminded me that pretty much *no one* I’ve ever been alongside in a public bathroom washes their hands for 20+ seconds, as was recommended during the COVID-area of life in 2020-2021. I’m always the only person who scrubs her hands for over 15 seconds and still standing at the sink. That’s kind of gross, but alas, people can be pretty gross! This pine scented soap makes me want to scrub for even longer!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold – time traveling to see the deceased

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I just started reading the book Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It’s the first book in a series of of novels that was originally an award-winning play. The idea behind the story is a simple premise: time travel in a nondescript cafe. The customers of the cafe Funiculi Funicula can travel back in time, to any time they like and to see whomever they choose, but there is one basic rule they must all follow, above all: they must return before their cup of coffee gets cold. A few other caveats are thrown in, too, to make things a bit more challenging: you can only time travel when sitting in a designated seat in the cafe. You cannot get up from the seat at any point of this time travel session. And lastly, whatever is said and done when you go back to the present time, nothing will be able to change the future. The present will still be the present, and all will be unchanged.

The beginning is painfully slow. I wasn’t actually sure I would continue reading because of how slow and annoying the descriptions were in the beginning. It also is extremely annoying to read about all the cultural stereotypes of how Japanese men vs. women are. Japanese society, like most Asian cultures, does not like to express emotions openly. They are sexually repressed and can never fully say what they think to others out loud, even people who are supposed to be their closest friends or family. So that repeatedly happens throughout the stories in the book. But my general rule with all books is that I have to read to page 100 to decide whether I really want to continue or not. Some books are just slower than others, and that’s how stories can build.

But then I got to the second story in the book about two sisters. One runs a bar and runs a pretty casual life, but we later learn that she left home and got cut off from her parents because as the oldest, she was expected to take over their family business of running an inn, which she didn’t want for herself. Her younger sister is left to to take over the inn. The sisters got along as children, but as they get older, they drift. The older sister is constantly pushing the younger sister away when all the younger sister wants is to be close to her big sister. The younger sister dies in a tragic head-on car collision. The older sister finds out and is struck with so much grief. After over a decade of never going home, she finally goes back to the family house, where she finds her parents mourning her sister’s dead body, lying in an altar-like state. Her parents ignore her and pretend she isn’t there. Later, she goes to the cafe in an attempt to see her late little sister one more time. Another caveat is introduced: when you time travel back to see someone who is deceased, a little alarm goes off at your table to warn you it’s almost time to leave… because the cafe knows from experience that in tragic reunions like these, the person time traveling never wants to leave their deceased loved one.

When there is a person who comes to the cafe to time travel, they need to pinpoint a specific point in time they want to go back to, and who they want to see. And usually, they have a purpose: they want to re-phrase something they said. They want to share a letter that they failed to give. They want to take back something they said. This particular sisters story was particularly touching to me because I think about what it would be like to time travel to the past to see Ed again, and which moment I would have chosen. Of course, this is a bit different: this younger sister did not die by suicide; her death was 100 percent accidental. At first, I was unsure when I would have chosen. But then, I thought… I would time travel to March 2013, when I was home for a long and painful two weeks on my own, without Chris. Endless arguments and snips from my parents happened that trip. But I would time travel to the day I suggested to Ed that we take a walk and get bubble tea at 23rd St and Clement in San Francisco. I would have had a different conversation with him. I still remember the conversation we had: I shared with him that I was worried and wanted him to get therapy. I would have come with a better plan to help. I would have reassured him with stronger words how much I loved him and wanted him to get better. I would also have reiterated to him that he needed to get the hell out of our parents’ house and move out on his own. I would have asked him to commit to a plan and reassured him that he had so much more potential.

Like in the Funiculi Funicula cafe, the present would not change. He’d still be gone. But maybe if I’d had a firmer, more reassuring conversation with him about how deeply concerned I was and how much I loved him, maybe I’d feel a tiny bit better about what I did. I suppose I will never stop regretting what I did and didn’t do with him. But regardless, the world keeps turning and we must go on. I wonder if I had had the conversation I really wanted to have if that would have elicited different words from him. Maybe he would have shared something with me during that conversation that would give me more closure today. Even though it would hurt a lot to see him again, I would jump at the chance to time travel back to see and talk to him again.

The life of Gen-Zers / Zoomers portrayed in Maame

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“We grow up fast. Not by force, but because we are needed.” – Maddie Wright in Maame

I recently finished reading Jessica George’s debut novel called Maame. I had it on my bookmarked reading list for a while, but a friend told me she recently read it, and that it was one of her favorite books she’s read in the last year. So I finally decided to read it and am so glad I did: from the very first page, the writing grabs you because it’s so approachable, and I found myself staying up late at night because the writing pulled me into the life of Maddie Wright, the protagonist, so much. When I’d read the description of the book being about a 25-year old British Ghanaian woman navigating career, complex family dynamics, and caregiving for her dad who has Parkinson’s, I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to empathize given the generational difference – would I find her point of view relatable given I’m 13 years older than her? I did want to read it since it’s unusual to read stories of any 20-something-year-old caregivers of their parents, especially from the point of view of women of color. Given I stayed up late three nights to read it, I’d say it’s likely one of the best books I’ve read this year.

The story is touching, heartbreaking, light-hearted, and funny all at the same time. I really feel for her being the only one in her family burdened with taking care of her father (other than the primary hired caregiver), as she has a useless mother who is having an affair all the way in Ghana with her high school sweetheart, and an equally useless and selfish brother who spends as much time as he can working and avoiding all family members despite being in the same city as his ill father and stressed sister. I loved the frantic Google searches and Reddit rabbit holes that she went on, as that is what pretty much all of us do in this day and age, regardless of age, when we have a question or are worried about something where we don’t know how it will end. I enjoyed how she handled the topics of mental health, depression, racism in the workplace, and family dynamics. I also loved the scene towards the end of the book when she starts screaming at her mother and brother after her father died, as these monologues finally made it crystal clear to the mother and brother exactly how much they hurt her and ultimately abandoned her and their father in a true time of need. I found her sexual encounters funny, as they highlighted that even with Gen Z, men of younger generations still prioritize their own sexual satisfaction over women’s — when the hell is this ever going to change?! Talk about sexism in literally every form…

But I am also a sucker for happy endings. I love the end when her dad’s will is shared, and the cheating mother just assumes that any money the father had would be left to her. The sum that he had been investing was a huge shock to all, especially the end amount. Her father made it explicitly clear in the will that all the money, every last cent of it, should go to Maddie, and only to Maddie. It would make logical sense, right, given his wife and son abandoned him when they found out he had Parkinson’s disease?

I suppose I also related to Maddie because despite being the youngest, she was the most responsible, the one everyone relied on to get things done and to make sure things were taken care of properly. Like her, I was always told from a young age that I was “wiser beyond her years.” Frankly, that’s a heavy burden to carry on your shoulders, and it gets tiring. It gets tiring when everyone assumes you will always be the strong one, the “put together” one. Through this book, I also got to learn a bit about Ghanaian culture, which I’d previously had zero exposure to (though I was familiar with a lot of the foods being cooked, especially cassava, groundnut, and jollof rice). “Maame” in Twi means “woman,” and it is often used as a playful or loving term when given to a daughter. But at the same time, it can be a burden because of all the responsibility it can entail, especially when people in your family start calling you that at a very young age, like in the case of Maddie.

Maame is the 15th book I’ve read this year. Reading in the evenings has been a nice escape and quiet time for my mind to not think about everyday life and instead, to enjoy (what is hopefully) good writing and complex character development.

A growing awareness of mortality

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I’m almost done reading the book I am currently on, Matrescence. While I am not totally sure I would recommend the book, as it does tend to get on a number of tangents that are hard to follow at times, and it seems a bit like rambling at others as opposed to cohesively strung together thoughts, it does bring up a number of thoughts I’ve had about becoming a mother and about life in general. One thought that I was ruminating on after Kaia was born was that becoming a parent really does force you to think about your own mortality quite a bit. As a parent, you bring life into the world with the awareness that your goal, as ironic as it may be, is to raise that tiny blob into an independent adult who will one day not need you. And at some point, assuming all goes well and nothing tragic happens, is that that adult will one day live in a world without you in it; your child will outlive you, and you will die before they will. They will die after you (hopefully…. please). So becoming a parent makes you even more painfully cognizant of the fact that you will one day die, that your life on this earth is finite. It will come to an end. And so with that thought and fact is another thought: how are you going to make this life and all the moments that make it up worth it?

But that’s also another reason that it’s important for us as parents to have passions outside of our children, as all-consuming as parenting can be. One day, soon enough, Kaia will not want to spend that much time with us, and we should not expect her to fulfill all our needs and spend all her free time with us. I think that’s something that’s lost amongst many parents of our parents generation… like my own mom. In my early twenties, my mom used to get angry if she knew I was taking time off work to do anything other than go home and spend time with her. She used to call me selfish and threaten to make me pay her back for my college tuition (oftentimes used as a threat, as always). She said that all my vacation time should be spent with her. When I’d come home and spend time with friends, she would get angry and say that it wasn’t necessary and that I should be with her (you know, at home doing nothing). And at that time, I could not coherently verbalize why I thought that was wrong. But now, it makes perfect sense to me why all that talk did not sit well with me. As a parent, you are not just a parent. You are (potentially) a spouse, a sibling, a friend, a colleague, a citizen of the world. You also play other roles. And as your kids grow up, spread their wings, and fly away, you should also grow up and get back in contact with your own self and what you like to do and spend time on.