Category Archives: Family dysfunction

The moment I wanted to bash my mother’s face in

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Before I became a mother and would tell older colleagues and friends that I’d never trust my parents with my future children alone, many of them scoffed at me and said I was just saying that. They insisted that once the reality of how expensive daycare, nannies, and babysitters are had hit me that I’d relent and give in — to allow my parents the pleasure of having “quality” time with their grandchild, and also to relieve my bank account from paying exorbitant sums for mediocre childcare.

Kaia is over 3.5 years old now, and I still have not relented. And the few moments I do, I regret it because she gets exposed to all kinds of dangerous things just in my parents’ house. Their pills, both vitamin supplements AND prescription medications (who the hell can keep track of which is what?) are scattered all over random surfaces and tables and benches. My mom leaves sharp knives and scissors in her reach. My dad has razor blades and high blood pressure medication just inches from her little hands as though it’s no big deal. And the place is just filthy with mouse droppings everywhere. She got her hand and foot snapped in mouse traps. And to make things even worse, my mom refuses to listen to me when I tell her not to give her any candy. My parents’ house has so much candy in endless forms in every nook and cranny of the house that I cannot even keep track of it all!

I got so mad at the cob webs all over the walls and ceilings of the bathroom — these have been there likely since the pandemic and no one has made any attempt to clean them up. So, this morning just before 8am, I took out my dad’s old vacuum, climbed up on top of the sink, and started vacuuming. Both my mom and Kaia were confused as to why I was vacuuming. I looked at my mom and said, “Do you think these cob webs are clean? A spider will come bite and kill you!”

Shortly after my vacuuming stint, my mom said she was leaving for her JW Sunday morning. So I figured we’d have some quiet time in the house before we left to meet my friends and their kids for a morning at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. But then Chris came over and asked, “Why is Hoj outside with your mom?” Confused and annoyed, I went outside to see that my mom was standing in the driveway, and Kaia had already run up half the block on her own, completely unattended. I could actually feel the blood rushing to my face to see her just standing there, looking down at me. I ran up to her, grabbed her hand, and walked her down with me. The driveways are small and narrow on this block, and the visibility is low when cars are backing out. A driver could easily miss someone of Kaia’s size when backing out. Not to mention that at the top of the block is Fulton, one of the busiest, high traffic, and high speed streets in the Richmond District. What if she had run all the way up there on her own and gotten hit by a car? So many awful, deadly incidents could have played out if the timing were all wrong.

My mom stood there, looking at me helplessly when I brought Kaia back down to the house. “My leg hurts!” She cried in defense of herself. “I have a dislocated disc! If I ran after her, that would be it for me and I’d be dead!”

I could barely contain myself. It was like fire was coming out of my mouth. “Anger” didn’t even describe exactly how infuriated I was. “WHY DID YOU TAKE HER OUT OF THE HOUSE?” I screamed at her, knowing full well that this was in public in the early morning and could easily wake up the neighbors, but I truly did not care. She needed to hear how stupid and irresponsible she was. “SHE COULD HAVE GOTTEN HIT BY A CAR COMING OUT OF A DRIVEWAY AND DIED! SHE COULD HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF YOU! HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHAT YOU DID WAS WRONG?! YOU WERE JUST GOING TO STAND HERE AND LET HER GET HURT? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?”

My mom proceeded to protest, but nothing mattered at that point. If I got any closer to her, I would have wanted to bash her face in and inflict serious bodily harm on her. The idea of my little daughter, my only baby, dying on the watch of my mom was far too much for me to bear or think about. All I could think was, first, you let Ed die, and then, you want to let your only grandchild die, too?! I slammed the gate and then the front door so she would realize how badly she fucked up.

Well, that was naive of me. After 39-plus years of dealing with her twisted logic, her lack of rationale, her constant victimhood, her holier-than-thou attitude, apparently I refuse to accept that she will never admit wrongdoing in any situation where she was, point blank, in the wrong. Of course, my mom wouldn’t acknowledge she did anything wrong. When has she ever admitted fault in her life with Ed or me even once? Instead, she spent the rest of the day thinking… how dare her daughter raise her voice and yell at her, her mother. How dare she be so cruel to me. When Chris brought Kaia back to the house before I came home from my spa afternoon, my mom confronted him about the situation to try to “explain” what happened — all defensive, zero remorse. Regardless, he wasn’t going to deal with her; that was my job since she’s my mother. He simply told her to keep Kaia in the house and walked away.

Then when I did laundry this evening, once again, she tried to defend herself, saying she would have died if she tried to run after Kaia (the cripple sob story because she just let her 3.5 year old grandchild out of the house, completely unattended where cars could potentially hit and kill her — no big deal, right? If she ran, she’d push her disc further out of alignment, and thus her back would be ruined and she’d die, etc.). My mom said she was upset because the real problem was that I actually had the guts to yell at her. “What kind of child speaks to their mother this way? What kind?!” Refusing to admit wrongdoing is a theme in my family – and something I want to break the cycle of.

“You can talk to your husband or your mother-in-law like that, but never to me! I will not accept it!” she hissed.

I insisted she was wrong, that she put my child in danger, that I could never trust her to care for Kaia, that neither of them could ever be trusted with her unattended; and how insane that she would ever suggest I leave Kaia with her at home while I went out with my friends. “She would be dead by the time I got back!” I yelled at her.

I ended the conversation by walking away. I refuse to normalize stupidity and irresponsibility. I refuse to accept child negligence and constant verbal abuse and gaslighting — even of adult children. I will not.

Coming “home” and the “why” behind it

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“Are you looking forward to going back home… or, is that even an appropriate question?” my friend asked me over dinner on Wednesday.

“I’m… not really looking forward to it,” I said honestly. “It’s just something I do. There are parts I look forward to, but the idea of going home does not excite me at all.”

That sounds like a terrible thing to admit out loud, but it’s the truth. It’s like what a lot of people say about their family: they love their family, but they do not necessarily like them as people. Their bonds are due to blood, obligation, and history, as opposed to shared or aligned values or respect for each others’ respective lives. I want to see my parents in person, but for limited amounts of time to protect my sanity and mental health. I also want them to see Kaia, and for Kaia to know who they are and that they are her maternal grandparents. But I know the reality of them “spending” time together is very limited in terms of the type of interactions they will have — regardless of what age Kaia is.

After a bleary eyed 6am flight from JFK to SFO, we arrived in San Francisco just past 8:30am local time. After a car ride to my parents’ place, our driver stopped in front of the house, to which I looked up at and got really annoyed. “What the heck is all this scaffolding in front?!” The scaffolding looked precarious, as though it was so unstable that someone would fall to their death from it. Plus, there was this hideous sheer black tarp covering 80 percent of the house’s facade. And then when I opened the front gate… it would not open all the way because that wretched scaffolding was preventing me from doing so.

I hadn’t even entered my parents’ house yet, and I was already in a pissy mood.

Then we got into the house, and of course, it’s clutter central. There are so many rolls of toilet paper in the hallway that I cannot walk in a straight line to turn the corner and get to my bedroom. Frustrated, I took several bags of them and pushed them into the sun room. The door to the breakfast room is still removed, leaning against a large framed photograph of Hong Kong Harbour in the dining room. It’s been like that since pre-pandemic. All the cabinet doors are pulled out of the bathroom; the lighting has no covering, with the light bulbs exposed. There are so many cob webs hanging from the ceiling of the bathroom that I felt compelled to take out the vacuum and clean it all up — cob webs of a size that usually only exist in abandoned buildings or attics that haven’t seen life in ages. There are over ten dozen eggs in the fridge — for what purpose, who knows. And then there is a bunch of rotting fruit on the dining room table with fruit flies swarming it all. I looked out the window at my parents’ yard, and it looks like the same awful weed fest from last year. Nothing has changed. If anything, there is more garbage in the house and the backyard.

That’s not even the worst of it. At lunch, my dad barely says anything to us at the dining table. He’s mostly on his phone once again while Kaia attempts but mostly fails to get reactions out of him. My mom keeps telling my dad to talk to Kaia, as though my dad is a baby, but my dad doesn’t really listen and continues looking at his phone. Once he’s done eating, he gets up and leaves the table. Kaia then asks him why he’s not sitting with us. It’s funny and also tragic that Kaia not only notices this but calls it out. Children say things exactly as they are whether adults like it or not. My mom fusses around in the kitchen, sits for less than five minutes to eat, and then gets up and fusses around Kaia and the kitchen some more.

After some playground time and wandering along Clement Street this afternoon, we came back home. I had a shower after dinner, and it was, by far, the worst shower I can remember ever having. The water barely drips out of the low-flow shower head that my dad has installed; it’s no wonder Kaia hated her shower so much earlier in the evening. It was so atrocious that I ended up “showering” under the bathtub faucet. If that sounds awkward, it was, but it was necessary. Otherwise, I would have had a light drip down on me all night to get clean.

Sometimes, I wonder why I even go to the trouble of dealing with all this. I don’t really enjoy it. I hate the shower, the clutter, the broken things that will never get repaired, the garbage, the mouse traps everywhere. “Why do I even bother?” I even said this out loud to Chris this afternoon while Kaia was playing in the sandbox at my childhood playground. But the “why” is always a complicated, not-straightforward answer.

“Sumi and Topey” leave New York, and Kaia gets sad and wants to go with them

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After a few weeks of on and off grandparents time, it’s time for “Suma” and “Topa,” also known as “Sumi and Topey,” also known as Chris’s parents, to leave. They are leaving for the Europe leg of their round-the-world trip. I told Kaia this morning that they would be leaving, and she immediately grew pensive. She then declared, as she pointed to our bed, “That means you’ll be sleeping in that bed because they aren’t here!”

As we got closer to the time they had to leave, Kaia became visibly sad. She kept insisting she didn’t want them to go, and that she wanted to go with them. She said she wanted to go to Italy (where they are going next) and Melbourne with them. She even tried to put on her jacket and shoes to go with them. As the cab got packed up and they left, Kaia cried for a long time. Chris tried to comfort her and hold her, but she just kept crying. Finally, he consoled her with some Peppa Pig screen time, which of course, got her to immediately stop crying. She was fixated on the Peppa and George fight, apparently. Later on, she still kept saying she wanted to go to Melbourne with them.

My heart always aches in these situations. I really love seeing Chris’s parents get along so well with Kaia, and I love that she has a deep attachment to both of them. I myself also feel pretty sad when Chris’s parents leave. Even though I always get questions about how crowded and packed our apartment must feel, I genuinely don’t mind it at all. I do not say that to seem like a good sport or to create some facade of a perfect in-laws relationship; I truly mean it. I always look forward to their visits every year, and I look forward to seeing them when we go back to Melbourne in December. I don’t really care about giving up my bed for them since our sofa bed is actually quite comfortable. We have two bathrooms now, which makes the whole morning/evening routine a lot smoother. Unlike what Chris says about his parents, I think they are very “go-with-the-flow.” Even when we lived in our shoebox apartment on the Upper East Side and shared the space with them, I found it fun and enjoyable. They never once complained and always made the best of the experiences; they made it seem like an adventure since they’re so used to having a lot of space. At the end of the day, neither of them really came all this way to be a tourist in New York City; they came to spend time with their son and his wife, and now their granddaughter. I’ve always loved preparing food for them, and they are always happy to eat it (with the occasional complaint about being “stuffed to the gills” from his mom…) and make it very clear that they appreciate my efforts and skills. If there is one thing you cannot fault, it’s someone’s ability to always show appreciation for others. Chris’s parents never fail in this regard, even in the simplest things done for them (e.g…. when you place in the bathroom… a NEW SOAP BAR). It’s also nice to change up our usual routine and have other family and loved ones in our home. It’s more lively and more fun.

I also am briefly reminded in recent years of how my parents never visit, but it’s not like I romanticize what their visits could be like. They are not adaptable. They are absolutely not “go with the flow.” They complain about almost everything, see fault in everything, and rarely show outward appreciation for anything done for them. They zero in on the things they do for me and how I apparently have not shown appreciation towards them. It’s a game of, “How can we gaslight our child the most?” That’s not the kind of game I enjoy.

In the back of my mind, though, I still wish I had a better relationship with my parents. I wish I could be more open and honest with them. I wish I had their emotional support. I wish they could be close to Kaia the way that Chris’s parents are to her. But it’s a wish that will never be granted. They don’t want to make the effort, and well, I cannot sacrifice my sense of self and sanity and give them that much more time with her. “It is what it is,” as Chris always says. And lots of truths are sad and hurt.

“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.

“Daddy is SO mad at you!”

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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 was enjoying being my kitchen helper, constantly looking back up at me for my approval and response, and continued cutting. It’s hard to say “no” to such eager eyes.

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 Kaia did, there was zero chance she could get hurt.

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

You could hear the logic in that response. 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.