“Daddy is SO mad at you!”

My mom called the other day to tell me that while she and my dad enjoy the videos I send of Kaia, my dad was apparently very mad at me regarding one specific video.

“Your Daddy is SO mad at you!” my mom exclaimed on the phone the other day. “What in the world are you doing giving Kaia a knife to use? She could seriously hurt herself!”

My mom was referring to the video I took of Kaia on Sunday while we were cooking together. I had laid out king oyster mushrooms on my cutting board and was getting ready to cut them. She saw that I was about to start cutting and got really excited, so she dragged out her stepping stool so that she could “help” me. I relented, and I took out her plastic toddler training knives (key word is PLASTIC) and let her cut some of them. She loves being mummy’s little kitchen helper. Yes, she does slow me down a lot, and yes, she doesn’t cut the way I’d like her to cut, but I love watching her focus, and I love seeing her face when she does a decent cut. She has to learn at some point, so I think this is a good time when she actually does want to help and shows interest. She enjoyed it, constantly looking back at me for my approval and response, and continued cutting.

I told my mom that they were both being ridiculous, that the knife was meant to be a toddler training knife and was made of plastic, so no matter what she did, there was zero chance Kaia would get hurt.

“It doesn’t matter!” my mom insisted. “She could still hurt herself!”

Of course it doesn’t matter… because she doesn’t realize that she’s being called out for being wrong in her assumption, and she’s never wrong in her head, even in senseless moments like this. I told Chris this anecdote, to which he replied, “I’m not going to take advice from someone who has a dead kid and who only has a 50% success rate at raising kids.”

Conversations with mom = empty, nothing exchanges with no substance

The handful of times I’ve had really interesting, thought-provoking conversations with friends’ parents, Chris’s parents, and even a friend’s grandparents, I have often thought back to the bland, boring conversations I have with my own parents. Sadly, I have become one of those adult children who has parents who barely know her. They don’t understand me or know the “real” me, and I don’t really think they care to really know who I really am. I’ve tried to share and be more open with them, but this has only backfired. So, I’ve stopped doing any substantive sharing. We go about our obligatory relationship where I check in on them, and they check in on me, but we have nothing else that really bonds us other than blood, familial love, and history.

My mom called late last night when I was about to sleep, so I called her back after work today to see how she was doing. The usual inane conversation ensued: she asked whether Chris and my cousin had found new jobs (negative to both, but also, Chris isn’t looking as I’ve said many times before, so why is she still asking this?). She asked if all my closer friends were employed and what jobs they did. I asked her why she felt the need to ask about any of their jobs, as their employment statuses had zero impact on her own life. She responded, “I just want to make sure they all have money to support themselves!” Then, she proceeded to ask about friends who have “only” one child and ask whether another one was on the way (again, not her business). I told her that if any of my friends were pregnant again, I’d eventually learn this, and then she would eventually learn this, but again, it’s none of her business. Her response: “Two is better than one!” She then inquired about another cousin and randomly said, your father thinks he’s arrogant. I plainly said that this cousin absolutely was NOT arrogant, and I had no idea why he’d even think something so stupid. “Well, he could be arrogant because he has a good job!” she said. “What do you know about his job?” I retorted. “You know nothing about his job or company!”

It was just a pointless conversation of meaningless questions that had no answers that she’d deem satisfactory. For my mom, people seem to only be deserving of “status” or “respect” if they are gainfully employed, which is funny to think about since she hasn’t worked since I was in high school. She constantly wants to know what people do for a living, then takes it upon herself to make huge, baseless assumptions about how “good” or “stable” their jobs are and what kind of money they make. It sounds like a pointless, empty exercise, a sign of how superficially she sees the world and judges people in this world.

The truth is that I have no idea what brings “meaning” or “happiness” to my parents’ life. I think about this a lot, especially after every similarly annoying conversation we have like the above. They have empty relationships with the few people they associate with. My mom loves to put on a guise when she’s around her JW friends and acquaintances. She also loves to state that her health is poor when in fact, she’s actually in pretty good shape… but perhaps not in mentally good shape. They only seem to think the world is getting worse and more dangerous and scary. They don’t really do anything that would qualify as a “hobby” to keep their minds and bodies active or occupied. As far as I am concerned, they are an example of how not to be when in my 60s and 70s.

To my mom, “work travel” = free meals

Ever since I first started working, my mom always gets excited whenever she hears I go on business trips. For her, all she seems to hear is “free hotel and food,” and so she thinks it’s extremely luxurious to have the privilege of free lodging and meals. While yes, it is very nice and convenient to have your temporary housing and food paid for, it’s not like it’s just a “you take” situation. You are getting free food and housing in exchange for your professional services that you are offering on behalf of your company. It’s very much a transactional expectation.

It has not always been that luxurious, though: at one company I worked at, I only had a $75 per diem, so that was challenging when I went to larger, more expensive cities, especially once you factor in tax and tip. Today at my current company, I have $125/day, which is the highest I’ve had anywhere. It’s a nice and reasonably generous allotment, but again, dinner time tends to be challenging to stay within guidelines if you’re in a larger city.

Sometimes, I feel sad that my mom doesn’t know what it’s like to travel for work. She worked hard her entire life in a white-collar setting, but she never had the opportunity to “move up” out of the equivalent of an admin role. She looks at me going on work trips, and she thinks it’s all fun and games, wining and dining. She doesn’t quite see the “work” part about it; she focuses on the “trip” part of it. At the same time, I also get a little annoyed that all she focuses on is the “free” stuff I get. My mom grew up quite poor, as did my dad. Today, they have far more than they will ever be able to spend on themselves. Yet somehow, they are still obsessive about anything that is either extremely cheap or free; they are like the millionaires who jump at free stuff and hoard everything they humanly can. I can see how that’s the poor person’s mentality, especially with immigrants like my mom, people who had to work very hard to get to their comfortable standard of living today. But in my parents’ situation, they erroneously believe they are still poor or are at risk of being poor any day, so they try to take anything they possibly can that is free or cheap to make their money last even longer. I grapple with what to make of it. I would like for them to be comfortable, to enjoy life, to acknowledge that they have far more than enough and are quite privileged with all that they have (and have earned), but I doubt they ever will.

Family judgments and passive aggression

At Chris’s and Chris’s cousin’s urging, Chris’s brother offered to host the wider family over at his place today for our fourth and final day of family festivities before everyone goes off and does their own thing until next year. The logic Chris’s cousin used was: it would be easy because we’d mostly be eating leftover food, and given we’d have a much later start (he asked everyone to come over at 5pm onward, as opposed to around 1pm onward for Christmas Day), he “wouldn’t need to do much” because we’d be playing games and chatting mostly. What no one actually did say in terms of effort, though, when it comes to hosting anyone over, is: you still need to… host. That means doing things like, doing what you can (in the leftover food situation) to tally and ensure there actually *will* be enough food); making sure you get everyone fed and hydrated, having adequate stocks of drinks, alcoholic and nonalcoholic; preparing and heating up the food; cleaning up surfaces and areas where leftover food could be; ensuring you have enough plates, cups, and cutlery for everyone attending. Chris’s mom panicked a little when she heard that her youngest offered to host: “He’s never hosted before. He doesn’t know what to do!” and when she asked him what he planned to serve, he responded, “Leftover food… and I can make everyone espresso martinis!”

It kind of panned out the way I thought it would: While Chris’s brother did deliver on making an espresso martini for everyone who asked for one, and he did provide enough plates, cutlery, and cups, he… didn’t do much else. As I expected, his mom took charge of things like reheating the food, laying out all the placemats and foods and ensuring people ate and drank, cleaning, loading the dishwasher, and helping people empty out their rubbish into rubbish bags. She spent most of her time looking preoccupied cleaning or rinsing or wiping something down that I came over a few times to remind her that she should sit down, relax, and eat, that this wasn’t her place. And she gave me this helpless look. “Poor Ben! He’s just all about his espresso martinis and just doesn’t know…” she said, with this sadness in her voice.

I refrained from saying this, but, no, he’s not poor. He’s so far from poor that he has no idea what the word “poor” actually means, in any sense of the word.

So, it was an interesting night at Chris’s mom’s house… I mean, Chris’s brother’s. And what made it more comical were some of the comments I heard Chris’s aunt make to me. Right before we started talking, I heard her ask one of her grandchildren to pass around the snack bowls that Chris’s mom had put together, because, “No one is passing out any food for anyone to eat. Can you go around and offer this to everyone?”

“Oh, just look at him,” Chris’s aunt said to me, with this half look of pity, half look of mockery. “He must not have ever hosted this many people in his life! You think he will ever find someone to marry? What do you think?”

I wasn’t sure if that was a rhetorical question, but I simply responded and said I wasn’t sure. Realistically speaking, how could anyone be sure who anyone would partner up with or marry or divorce or what? But it certainly felt like a jab not just at Chris’s brother, but also at their parents… for raising someone like Chris’s brother, who Chris’s aunt clearly was not very impressed with tonight.

Last full day in Paris: beautiful food and floral displays, La Biblioteque Sainte Genevieve, and Place Vendome

I don’t know how it seems like even the littlest displays of fruit and food are always so gorgeous here. There can simply be a florist shop on a street, and it will look like someone with a keen artistic eye spent a lot of time arranging all the flowers, pots, and accessories so that every object is just so to make the scene look perfect. Today, we ate at a cute little bistro called Le Petit Cler on Rue Cler, and on the same street there were endless little grocers, shops specializing in specific types of meats, seafoods, and other epicurean delights; each simple display looked like it could be photographed for a magazine. But all those foods, whether it was a display of fruit or a very earthy setup of mushrooms in baskets, all were edible and ready to be purchased, cooked with, and eaten.

There was also an architectural wonder I had on my list for a while that I never got around to: The Sainte Geneiveve Library just a block away from the Pantheon. The library is known to be a beautiful place to read and study and houses about two million historic documents that date back to the 9th century. What is crazy about this place is that as a student, you have to book a time slot and an actual assigned seat in the library, showing proof of your student status via a university ID. And any old visitors are not welcome at any time, as you cannot simply walk in. You have to book designated (and very limited) tours at specific hours, and the areas where you are allowed to stand/look are very small.

I didn’t do my research on this beforehand and thought we could just walk in. Alas, my timing was fortuitous because as I poked my head in to ask the security guard if we could enter, a library employee had just come back from her break. Without hesitation, she ushered me in, telling me in French that they usually don’t do this, but she’d make an exception for us given we were tourists from out of town. We got to stand in the same limited standing area overlooking the reading rows. And I looked up and snapped a few photos of the big windows, reading rows, and interior. And I remembered how I first learned about this library: the Boston Public Library, very well respected for its architecture both on the exterior and interior, was modeled after La Biblioteque Sainte Genevieve.

In the evening, after a last stop at the Paris Christmas markets, we walked through Place Vendome on our way back to the hotel for the night. Paris is one of those global cities that really takes Christmas seriously: all the department store facades were decked out in holiday cheer, and the plaza of Place Vendome and the shops that lined it were the definition of Christmas’s “merry and bright.” The lights twinkled all along the plaza, and it even had this beautiful children’s carousel with endless surrounding yellow and white twinkling lights, wreaths, and glittering Christmas trees.

While walking through the plaza, I actually thought about my mom and how even before she became a Jehovah’s Witness, she never enjoyed Christmas. She used to find the entire holiday a chore, from buying and wrapping gifts to making food to even having a Christmas tree with lights on in the living room. She used to insist that if she were sitting or lying down in the living room that the Christmas tree lights had to be turned off. She would complain and say, “They hurt my eyes! Shut them off!” So when she started studying to become a JW, it was an easy argument for her to completely nix any Christmas tree and lights. And while walking through Place Vendome, I just felt a little sad for her. Had she experienced so much trauma and hate in her life that she couldn’t find it in her heart to embrace this one “merry and bright” season of the year, especially since she knew her kids loved it so much?

But that’s why we learn from the past and try to create better experiences for our future. It’s why I’m so happy that I can create new family traditions for the own family I’ve chosen and formed and move away from all that inherited negativity of the past.

The internal family relations continue to deteriorate

My cousin has spent the last several days texting me constantly to complain about our Trump supporting uncle and how consumed with disinformation and conspiracy theories he is. While my cousin is obviously angry and in strong disagreement with our uncle’s political (and well, intellectual) stances), the part he is most consumed by is how he believes our uncle talks to all of us like we’re imbeciles and don’t understand anything about the world. He’s stopped responding to my uncle’s political rants talking down to him and my other cousin. He said he’s likely going to cut him off completely. It’s a fair thing to be upset by, and for the most part, I’ve chosen to ignore it and avoid topics pertaining to politics as a result of it with my uncle. Because like with most of my family, while I love him, I do not like him as a person. Any unbiased bystander who knew what my uncle has done in his life would say that he’s not a good person, as unfortunate as that may sound.

His sexism stems back to his hatred of his mother. He’s made many generalizations about the intelligence of women over the years. For some reason, this is one that stood out to me as the stupidest and most inaccurate: He once said that when a car crash happens, a man and a woman will never have even remotely the same account of the events that led to the crash. A man will tell you how the accident happened, who hit who, from which lane/side, approximate speed. A woman will focus on what the person was wearing, what kind of makeup or hairdo they had, and all the superficial details that don’t have anything to do with the crash. I remember making the comment that I had never heard of anything like that, and he brushed me off, saying I hadn’t experienced enough of these situations.

My uncle has also repeatedly made comments about how much I shop at stores and malls, even though I’ve repeatedly told him that I actually detest shopping and trying on clothes. If you know my shopping habits even remotely, you will know that I hate in person shopping for clothes. And he has repeatedly laughed me off and said, “Suuure, you don’t! All women love to shop!”

As for how he treats other women? He once intentionally poured boiling hot oil over a sewing job that my grandma had worked on for weeks, simply to spite her. He once threw a knife at my grandma. While my grandma spent six months laying on her death bed, he declined all our invitations to visit her. He claimed he went to see her alone just one time in that six months. She was paralyzed on the left side of her body, and he said that when he tried to hold her hand, she barely responded (maybe that’s because she was… paralyzed and could not speak???!). He has accused my mom of stealing with little proof. And the one girlfriend we know lived with him around the time of my grandma’s funeral confided in my aunt and told her that he was verbally abusive to her. He constantly belittled her, told her what to do, and eventually, as everyone saw coming, the relationship ended and she moved out. When I was an adult, I asked my uncle why their relationship didn’t work out. He told me that she was an illicit drug user, and while he tried to get her to quit, she refused. Who knows – that may have been true, but I am sure that the part his ex told my aunt was also true, as well.

My cousin is 17 years older than me, so this year, he is 55. While I’ve always looked at him as a kind, generous, good-hearted person, I have not always looked at him as a particularly deep, introspective person who can see nuance. I saw all these flaws about my uncle ages ago, yet it took all this time for my near-retirement cousin to see all of this just now. I suppose late is better than never.

Family and politics: The nasty gets nastier

People oftentimes wonder why politics divide families. I think it’s quite simple as to why: politics cannot simply be separated from the rest of life unless you identify with an extremely privileged and wealthy class. You may consider your politics personal, but are they? Your political stances reveal what matter to you as a person and how you see yourself in the midst of a society of people. That is telling of your psychology, your sociology, and ultimately how you treat other people in your life and other people you work with and pass by, and in the world. And in many ways, your political stances reveal your life view and your morals.

So when I think about my paternal grandma’s three living children, as in my dad and his younger sister and brother, while they are all very different personalities, they do have these elements in common:

  1. They always assume they know everything and are the smartest person in the room and want to assume you know far less. They can be pretty condescending and make it seem like you have the intelligence of a rock.
  2. They are all wealthy and are extremely cheap, yet all in their own ways.
  3. They are racist and really look down on Black and Brown people in general. My uncle is likely the most racist since he’s extremely anti-immigrants and has spent part of his career oppressing immigrants coming into this country, something he has truly relished and happily shared awful count-by-count anecdotes of during awkward family dinners.
  4. They are all right-leaning/far-right on the political spectrum.
  5. They all had a far less than ideal relationship with their mother.

My aunt and uncle voted for Trump in 2024. My aunt explicitly told my cousin she voted for him for her financial portfolio. I think she is planning to be buried in her coffin with her millions. I am uncertain whether my dad voted since he’s sat out the last couple elections, but if he did vote, it also would have been for Trump since he used to audibly complain about Kamala Harris as San Francisco district attorney.

When you do enough therapy, read about therapy, and interact with enough people who have done therapy, you find out that the majority of people’s ills can be traced back to one thing: their childhood and upbringing. My aunt and uncle hated their mother so much that they decided that they would hate immigrants and people of *other* color than Asian as much as possible. They grew up poor, barely had enough food to eat, and had to take care of themselves because my grandma and grandpa were always working during the day. They are deathly afraid of losing all their money, so that’s why they barely spend any of it and are all sitting on massive cash piles. So, once you combine the woes of a traumatic childhood with a poor education and even worser media literacy, it’s a disastrous equation when it comes to future politics. They will always want less for others than they have for themselves. They see the world as a zero sum game: if others thrive, that must mean I will starve? If others gain, I will have to lose.

My aunt told me many times, over email and in person, “One day, when you have accrued enough wealth and earn enough income, you will also come to your senses and vote Republican.” She admonished me on this topic many times, and I insisted to her that was unlikely to happen. While it may be easy for me or anyone else to simply vote in my own self interest, I recognize that as a citizen of this country and world that the world and this country do not fucking revolve around me or my family. We cannot simply vote for our own self interests, as we all coexist in one world. We all have to contribute to the world to make it a better, kinder, healthier, cleaner place. We have to care about our neighbors, those around us who are different and have less than we do. Because if we do not, then what kind of world are we bringing our children into – a place where everyone simply fends for themselves and we can no longer trust anyone? Who the hell wants to live in a world like that?

I keep seeing people saying that it’s hard to care about the world when you are living paycheck to paycheck and barely able to afford your rent and mortgage. Do these people think that Trump will make them wealthier? Really?!

When your mother decides she has an opinion on politics

I hadn’t called my mom in several weeks. The truth is that I really dislike calling her because we never have anything that is truly substantive to say to each other. We check in on things like health, my work, Kaia, and then… that’s it. The conversation rarely lasts more than five minutes. But it’s five minutes of inanity that I always feel either bored or annoyed by.

When I think back to all the conversations I’ve had and enjoyed with friends’ parents who I respect, with former teachers who I keep in touch with, with people who are a generation or so ahead of me, the conversations were always so fun and thought provoking because there was some semblance of an intellectual exchange, a discussion of ideas. On their part, they always treated me like my opinions mattered, like the things I was learning about and sharing with them were fascinating to them. They made it seem like they also had something they could learn — from me. I never felt like I was being spoken down to, as though my thoughts, opinions, or knowledge were lesser than simply because I was younger. But that’s generally how my parents, and especially my mom, make me feel on the majority of conversation topics. And the most ridiculous thing is: my mom is not educated, worldly, well traveled, or well read. If you gave her a copy of a world map and asked her to identify where the continent of Europe was or even where her home country of Vietnam was, she wouldn’t be able to answer the question. Yet somehow, she always insists she knows more about pretty much *everything* than me simply because she is older and “has wisdom.”

My mom is a Vietnamese American woman, born into a family as the youngest of ten children who was never wanted because she was the youngest and a girl. Because she was a girl, she was seen as worthless. Her mom (her dad died when she was 6) refused to pay for an education for her. She experienced the terrors and pains of the American (Vietnam War), married into a Chinese American family where the matriarch oppressed her and made her feel ashamed for being Vietnamese, and then experienced endless racism, sexism, and classism at her office job, which gave no opportunity for growth, for 26 years. So, while I do not agree with my mom’s internalized sexism and racism, I see where it all stems from. She has experienced so much hatred and oppression from White people who are “above” her on this so-called race ladder that she eagerly delights in putting down anyone “below her” on said ladder who is Black or Brown.

After talking about a bunch of nothing on Tuesday when I called her, she asked me, point blank, if I voted for Trump. “Why would I vote for an incompetent, racist convicted felon?” I responded.

“Why would you vote for that idiot Black lady and not Trump?” she retorted back. My mom doesn’t vote and has never cast a single vote in her entire time being American. And frankly, given how little she knows, it may actually be better she does not vote.

“You know, she’s not an idiot. And why do you have to be so racist and call her an ‘idiot Black lady’?” I said back, as calmly as I could.

“Why can’t I call the Black lady an ‘idiot Black lady?” my mom cackled back. “She’s an idiot Black. She’s stupid. She does no good! She has no face now. NO FACE! What is she going to do now? Nothing! Trump won because he’s better than her! Who wants a Black running this country?”

I have oftentimes thought about the things I would say to my parents if I truly, truly wanted to cut off all contact with them and go nuclear. And in this context, what I would have loved to have said, but refrained from and simply told her that this conversation was done and hung up, was this:

“At least ‘that Black lady’ never drove any of her (step)children to suicide like you did. You are really the one with no face.”

I may not have said it, but I mean every word of that statement.

“Take good care of Kaia”

I can’t remember how long it was after Ed died, but I remember being in a room just with my mom in San Francisco, and she murmured about him and finally admitted some level of regret or remorse about how she treated him when he was alive. I remember her voice quieted down, and she said, “I didn’t take good enough care of him. I should have. I didn’t take good enough care of him. I should have taken better care of him.” And she left it at that. I was pretty silent. And she was, too, after she said, that. And moments later, she changed the topic. I didn’t say much in response because… what was I supposed to say? There would have been nothing I could have said to make her feel better. Plus, to be frank, I agreed with her: No, she and my dad did not take good enough care of their son. They did not treat him well. That’s a very succinct summary of how their relationship was.

On the day before and the day we left San Francisco last month, I remember my mom taking a lighter tone and voice with me and saying repeatedly, “Take good care of Kaia.” She also said, “She’s all you have. Take very, very good care of Kaia. Don’t forget.” And while I know she was trying to be loving and caring when she said this to me, something about it just felt eerie, as though her message to me was echoing what she had said just years ago about not taking “good enough care” of her own son. It wasn’t what she said; it was her tone and how it felt like the same message she told herself about Ed. But instead here, she was directing it to me about my own daughter, her granddaughter, and warning me that if I didn’t take “good enough care” of my own daughter, that my own daughter would fall into a depression and want or attempt to end her own life.

That felt jarring to me. Kaia is turning three this December. She’s my sweet baby, even if she’s no longer really a baby anymore. She will always be my baby. I’m trying my very best to keep her safe, healthy, and happy. I want nothing more than to be her safe space for life. I want that as her mother, but I also want it because Ed and I never had that with our parents, and I want to do everything in my power to do good by Ed’s memory and give Kaia the love and support he never had. I am trying my very best. The thought of Kaia Pookie falling into a depression is enough to kill me. But we can control only what we can control, and I’m not going to obsess or worry about what is not present.

Family reminders and life savers

Every time I come back from my parents’ house, I always feel like I need to give my mind and body at least several days to detoxify and de-clutter. The whole Marie Kondo idea of having a clean, tidy, uncluttered space to have a clean, tidy, and uncluttered mind is a thousand percent true. I never feel comfortable or free in my parents’ home, and it’s not just because of who they are and how they treat me; it’s also due to how much junk is everywhere in the space they call home.

I’d already tried over the last ten-plus years to suggest to my parents to de-clutter and give away things. While it did look like some random things were gone (like a tall broken floor clock that my mom took, BROKEN, from my aunt’s house up the hill), it somehow got replaced by even more crap. There really is no light way to tell them that they cannot take all this stuff to the grave with them. My mom says to just be peaceful. My dad has repeatedly agreed out loud to me that they need to throw out stuff… but instead, he ends up collecting more junk and piling it all on top of each other.

So I thought about maybe having my aunt or uncle suggest it in some way to my dad. I texted my uncle. Unfortunately, he also knows my dad way too well given they are brothers, and he told me that there’s pretty much no one who can tell my dad what to do or how to live his life: wanting to un-clutter his life will have to come from himself.

He did remind me that this conversation brought up the one, single time that my dad actually was not stubborn: it was almost exactly 10 years ago, in the fall of 2014, when my uncle emailed him to get himself checked out and insist on a stress test from his cardiologist. My uncle said, “He could’ve stuck to his stubborn ways and emailed me back and said there was nothing wrong with him. He never replied but went and did what I strongly suggested. A month had gone by when I emailed him again if he ever did what I suggested. That’s when he replied that his main coronary artery was also plugged and his two auxiliaries were barely passing blood to his brain and that he was going to have a double bypass on that Thursday.”

His bypass was in November 2014. I came back home for two weeks to be with them. It’s one of those times when I really thought, maybe, just maybe my dad and uncle could mend their relationship. My uncle’s suggestion is ultimately why my dad is still around and humming ten years later. But unfortunately, the romantic thought I had in my head was just that: a thought. My dad never truly expressed any gratitude or emotion to my uncle in insisting he move forward with that procedure. It always made me sad and angry for my uncle, but as my uncle and I both know: my dad is beyond stubborn and will always do whatever he wants regardless of the situation.

I am still not sure what my dad has done that has either been productive or made his life happier or better in the last ten years outside of that bypass surgery. But, given that he’s still here and seemingly healthy, I think he owes quite a bit to my uncle. I don’t think he will ever acknowledge it, though.