Category Archives: Family dysfunction

The “family dinner” saga continues

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And, it did not end with my request to not have M come over. This is what she replied with:

“Sorry, I forgot about that. Can I come with my sister (not actual sister because in the Jehovah’s Witness cultish world, every person in the congregation is a sibling) because I am staying at her house?”

This desire to invite other people to all her meals will never, ever die, even when it’s to my house. Even when the house is owned by someone else, she still wants this random extra person to come. I don’t care that this person is housing my aunt in her place; I asked for my aunt to come over to my house for dinner. Why does this have to be so hard?!

I let the text sit for a day because I was having an irritating day at work, and I really didn’t want my pissy work temperament to transfer over to my aunt. Then, I did what most seemingly logical circa-2026 people do: I told ChatGPT Pro my situation and asked it to come up with a measured, firm, direct response that wasn’t passive aggressive or mad. And this is what it came up with, which I sent:

“Hi (Auntie) – I’m really looking forward to having you over on Sunday. I planned this dinner as a family-only gathering, so I’m not able to include additional guests this time. I hope you understand, and I’d still really love for you to come.”

A day later, she sent me a text saying that she is old, needs someone with her, and since I am coming to San Francisco at the end of the month, she will see me then.

To be honest, I was expecting this. She just needs to have a JW crutch with her at all times. She’s very capable of navigating the subway at her age. It would be an early dinner, and there would still be plenty of light out by the time she left here. So, as a last ditch effort, I told her that I would pay for her Uber ride to and from my house.

She still declined.

Now, we know what this was really about.

As Kaia said when she was an early toddler learning to speak, “ALL DONE!”

A family dinner that cannot ever just be a family dinner

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It doesn’t seem to matter who it is in my family, but everyone does something that truly, deeply drives me crazy. It reminds me of that Leo Tolstoy quote that you always see when it comes to families that was the first line of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Dysfunction stems from a unique mix of human flaws, generational patterns, and unhealed wounds.

My aunt, my dad’s older brother’s wife, is currently in town, and she asked if we could get together while she was in New York. Of course I said yes, and several weeks ago, I asked her to come over for dinner this Sunday. She confirmed, and that was that. Well, that was not over, because out of nowhere today, she asks if instead of dinner at my place this Sunday that I go down to Manhattan Chinatown to meet her for dim sum with Chris and Kaia. I told her that wouldn’t be possible because of Kaia’s pre-scheduled extra-curricular activities. She then texts to see if Saturday dim sum would work; I replied back and said we already made plans.

I was getting more and more irritated with each response given we had already confirmed dinner at my place weeks in advance, and suddenly, she just wanted to change it. I know why she wants to change it: my aunt has this really frustrating habit of constantly inviting her random Jehovah’s Witnesses friends to almost all of our family dinners. It doesn’t matter if it’s just her son and family and me or all of the cousins and my parents, but she feels this urgent need to invite at least one to FOUR non-family people to any family meal. They are not part of our family, and they are people I will see once and completely forget about. Why does she constantly do this all the time? Even when I have explicitly asked her in the past when meeting for lunch in New York if it could just be us, lo and behold, she shows up with her New Jersey based friend I cannot stand called M, or one or two other random people I will have nothing to talk about with. M is a terrible person; she is a free loader. She makes sweeping, racist generalizations about groups of people she knows little to nothing about. And perhaps worst of all, M once explicitly said that “something was not right in the head” with Ed just years before he died. I truly wanted to punch her face in. And even after I confronted my aunt about how inappropriate and hurtful those comments were, she brushed me off, saying that M didn’t mean it that way and that I shouldn’t take it too seriously. My aunt has a true penchant for always ignoring serious issues and living a seemingly shallow life with no deep conversations ever possible. I told her I didn’t want M coming to any of our meals again. But of course, she ignored me and invited her anyway once against my wishes. We barely talked at that meal; I was PISSED. Part of the reason I wanted her to come over for dinner is to thwart any possibility of some random person showing up at my house because of her incessant “outside” invites.

So lo and behold, my aunt finally agrees over text to come for dinner at 5pm this Sunday. But the story’s not over because she has to text back: “Can I bring M with me, she wants to see Kaia.”

It’s like she’s deaf or suffering from amnesia that I strongly dislike this person. I simply responded back, “No, she is not invited. I have told you that I dislike her.” And I left it at that.

In the end, if she chooses not to come because of this, I truly don’t care. I’ve tried to be amenable and the “middle man” in too many of my family situations, and this is not a battle that I really feel strongly about. The level of delusion here is just beyond ridiculous. I do not want disrespectful, ignorant people in my house, and I am entitled to invite only who I want to my own house.

The psychology of parenting

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A friend linked me this podcast, The Psychology of Parenting with Dan Siegel, and said she thought I’d like it. It’s essentially about how parenting isn’t really about the child, but about learning about oneself. I immediately recognized Dan Siegel’s name. About two years ago, I read a book he co-authored called The Whole Brain Child, and I really liked the overall takeaways of the book; it resonated with me at the time because it discussed what I already believed, which is that who we are is shaped by our past and past experience; based on those past experiences, we can improve ourselves for our children. I was even more intrigued when I later found out that Dan Siegel went into this area of research driven by his own mercurial childhood, with a raging father and and an emotionally avoidant mother. He is on a long, never-ending journey to understanding his past, present, and future!

I listened to the podcast in full today. During the podcast, he goes through high level points of what drives healthy child development, which has been summed up (pretty smartly!) as the “4 S’s,” which I still remember from reading his book:

  • Safe: The child feels protected from physical and emotional harm. This includes caregivers avoiding frightening behavior and repairing the relationship after mistakes.
  • Seen: The caregiver looks beneath the child’s behavior and tries to understand their feelings, thoughts, and inner experience.
  • Soothed: When the child is distressed, the caregiver helps them through it. Over time, this repeated “inter-soothing” helps the child learn to soothe themselves.
  • Secure: This develops from consistently feeling safe, seen, and soothed. The child learns, “I can rely on my caregiver, I am worthy of care, and I can handle difficult feelings.” 

His takeaway: the key idea is not perfect parenting, but reliably showing up and repairing when things go wrong. In Siegel’s framework, secure attachment grows from the repeated overall pattern—not from preventing every disappointment, conflict, or tantrum.

What I did not write about two years ago but thought a lot about after reading The Whole Brain Child was how the 4 S’s noted here are a summary of everything Ed lacked. He never felt safe from physical or emotional harm, as my parents repeatedly screamed and yelled at him. My mom used to hit him as a child, sometimes for things that weren’t even “wrong.” My dad would roar like a lion in the house and constantly criticize and name call him. There was never any semblance of “repair”: they’d just go about their day as though nothing happened after. Ed frequently told me he felt invisible to our dad. He’d be right in the room and not hear anything he said. Our dad preferred talking to himself than talking to us. To “understand feelings” of one’s own child is a pretty impossible task when our dad could not even understand his own feelings. Our parents rarely “soothed” us; instead when they saw us down, they’d double down and add more doubt, making us feel even worse. Ed never felt like he could rely on my parents to share anything, so even when he got abused by a teacher in elementary school, my parents didn’t find out about it until after he died, when they went through his belongings and read about it in a college essay he wrote.

The truth is that I don’t really think I experienced any of the four S’s with our parents, either, yet I turned out completely differently. And I still think a huge part of this is because I found mentors in my middle and high school teachers who really looked after me, nurtured me, and made me feel “seen” and truly understood.

We can’t bring Ed back. We can’t change my parents. But we can use all this past history to inform how we move forward, and how I choose to parent Kaia. I hope I am always able to make her feel safe, seen, soothed, and secure. And when I am not, that I am able to be a fucking adult about it and admit my wrongs, apologize, take ownership, and move forward with her.

Impromptu friend catch-up and play date turns family dysfunction contemplation time

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The weather was so nice today that I wanted to make sure that Kaia and I got some outdoors time this afternoon. So I took her to Little Engine Playground at Riverside Park and let her blow bubbles and get wet in the sprinklers. While there, my building friend texted to let me know she was going to join us with her son (Chris told her we’d be there). So I had an unexpected friend catch-up this afternoon at the park and at Pier I after. I really enjoyed getting this spontaneous message because I almost never have any impromptu meetups with anyone — ever. In New York, I’ve just never made friends who are that spontaneous. Everything always feels like it needs to be planned in advance. And while I am a planner and do like having meetups on the calendar to look forward to, I also love just randomly deciding to meet someone with zero plans out of nowhere. It seems to be harder to do as people get older, as sad as that is.

I’ve enjoyed getting to know this friend over the last year. In the last several months, she’s definitely become more open in sharing more personal details and opinions she’s had, and I’ve done the same with her. One area we’ve never really talked much about is regarding our parents. I know a lot about her sister, and she knows about Ed and how he passed. But just today, we started talking about my parents because she knows about our upcoming trip to San Francisco to see them. She asked me if I looked at going home as a “vacation.” I probably paused for too long of a time as she immediately knew what the answer was.

As a 40-year-old adult child to my parents, I am clearly no longer a little kid. I have since grown up, had a career, gotten married, and given birth and am raising my own child, and so I’ve had enough life experience of my own to formulate my own world view — and also see exactly how different it is versus my parents’. I recognize they both had hard lives, and the life I have is extremely luxurious compared to anything they had. Their hard lives inform their world views. They both experienced varying degrees of trauma that shaped how they raised Ed and me. I recognize all of that. But my hope and goal is that I do not continue their intergenerational trauma, that it stops with them. I want Kaia to have a very different relationship with me than the one I have with my own mother. I can acknowledge all those things are true, that I love them, but that I have no intention of ever trying harder than I already have to have a better relationship with them. As I learned over the course of multiple years of therapy, it is not my job to fix my parents, to change their disposition, or even to make them happy. They will not change; they are who they are. If they want to wallow in their own misery and legitimate mess of their house, they can do that. I told my friend I go and stay with them for about two weekends and stay at a hotel the rest of the time because their house just is not livable, not enjoyable, not comfortable; this is all done out of obligation. It’s worse than the clutter; it’s just flat out dirty. And they are perfectly fine with that and think that I am the problem when I come.

I still remember the first time I was in therapy, from 2013-2016, and my then-therapist asked me a really simple question: “Do you like your parents?”

I wrinkled my brow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s very clear that you love your parents,” she explained. “But do you like them? Like if they were not your parents, could you see yourself willingly going out to have dinner with them and chat? Hang out together? Do you share the same interests, hobbies? Do you enjoy their company?”

This, I did not hesitate to answer. “Oh god, no!” I exclaimed. “Not at all! They are not even remotely fun to be around! We have nothing to talk about! We share none of the same views about anything!”

I didn’t want to freak out my friend and start going on about my parents; it’s probably too much information, too much negativity. I also don’t like going into detail about this sort of thing with Kaia around because she seems to be understanding way more than I want her to at this age now.

“I don’t want to sound terrible,” I said to my friend. “But they’re just… very unpleasant to be around. I hate to say it, but it’s the truth. I just go out of obligation, because I want Kaia to know her maternal grandparents at least a little.”

She looked back at me with sad eyes. “You sound like you try really hard,” she said softly.

Little does she know that as time has gone on, I definitely know I am trying less and less. As I get older, I honestly just care less and less. My patience in dealing with them has worn so thin — after Ed’s death, then after Kaia’s birth and the stupid ways they acted after she was born, and especially when we visited in 2022. I tolerate them in tiny bursts, and then I let them go and lead their own separate abysmal lives. It’s the only way we can feasibly coexist. I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never have the relationship I want with either of them, and it’s definitely not due to lack of previous effort on my part. We can’t always control everything or have every part of our life be the way we want it to be. And growing older makes you come to terms with all of that.

When part of your family thinks that doctors are the “persecuted class”

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I think it can be universally stated no matter what country you are in that doctors, as a group of people, can be considered a “prestigious” profession or class of people. They are known to earn good money regardless of where in the world they live. There’s pretty much no one you would meet, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, race, or gender, who would say that to be a doctor is not a ‘high class’ profession. And there is no one who would say that nurses are equal to doctors in prestige and/or pay.

But then, I met my in-laws and listened to a very big and loud debate they had with Chris tonight, and I realized that they are actually the only two people I have met on planet earth who actually do believe that doctors have the same level of “prestige” or “status” as nurses, and would even argue that nurses get paid the same — at least, in Australia. And I also heard my mother-in-law say that she thinks that doctors are a “persecuted class” of people in Australia.

I asked my good friend Claude (AI) what the average salaries are in Australia for nurses versus doctors. Claude informed us that on average for the last available year of data, doctors as a group make about double what nurses make there. Both in-laws refuted the data and insisted the stats were inaccurate. My mother-in-law kept insisting her own personal experiences were representative of all doctors in the country, and that her own anecdotes held more weight than national statistics.

I love my in-laws and think they are generally good people. But this doubting of real statistics feels like the spread of fake news. Now I understand why Chris and his brother always say they’d never take real career advice from their parents.

The colander and pictures of JiuJiu around the house

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When we got back to my parents’ house last Friday evening, I saw that my mom had washed and begun cutting a bunch of yu choy. I told her to leave them there and that I’d cook them for us for Saturday dinner. I proceeded to cut the stalks and leaves the way I always do, then blanch in a pot of boiling water with a drizzle of oil, a few shakes of salt. After about a minute, I drained them in the largest stainless steel colander I could find in their kitchen. And even though I have three of my own stainless steel colanders in my kitchen back in New York, there was something about the construction of this deep, rounded colander, the size, quantity, and placement of all the little round holes, that made draining the yu choy almost instant. I watched the water speedily drain out, and there I was left with perfectly cooked yu choy, almost fully drained with a few shakes.

This colander is probably around 25 years old. I still remember it: Ed purchased this piece in the housing wares department at Stonestown Macy’s just shortly after he started working there. Once he began his job at Macy’s in the “domestics” (bedding) section, he basically went through the house to see what could be improved upon, and he chose this colander as one of the first things to buy for the kitchen. To this day, the colander is still in excellent condition, and it functions just as well as I remember it when it was brand new. Our parents’ kitchen still has a number of things Ed bought that they continue to use. Every time I see another one of those pieces, I feel a little more sad that he’s no longer with us. There’s even a set of Lenox Butterfly Meadow crystal flutes that are still sitting in their original box, unused, on a dining room shelf. They match the dessert plates and tea cups that Ed got me for my birthday in January 2012.

On Saturday morning, Kaia kept asking about the pictures on display in the dining room, so I took a lot of the framed photos and after dusting them off, I pointed to the faces and named the people for her. Some of them needed no naming: of course, she immediately recognized Chris’s face and mine, as well as both my parents’. With the younger baby photos, she did need some help. But after a few photos of Ed, she started picking up on him. And when I’d show her subsequent photos of Ed, within a second, she’d say it was her JiuJiu.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over 12 years since Ed died. It’s been 12 years of coming back to this house, knowing that he will never be here to greet me or see me ever again. And even though it’s been that long, I still have that feeling in the back of my mind he will just surprise me and show up. I say that every time I come home, but since Kaia has been around, it’s almost like I feel it even more deeply — maybe because it’s on behalf of both Kaia and me. He never knew what it was like to be an uncle, to have a niece as sweet and cheeky as Kaia Pookie. It’s not just about me anymore. I know he would love to meet her.

But it will never be.

Clams, “bivalves,” smaller portions, and the love language of food in Asian families

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During our last two nights in San Francisco, I purposely didn’t make any plans because I figured we should spend those meals with my parents. After the fiasco of the previous Saturday lunch in the Sunset when my dad was scrolling his phone most of the time, my mom joining him and started scrolling her phone, their complaining that the food was taking too long (as they always do when it’s a place I pick), and then my mom refusing to pose for a quick selfie Chris wanted to take (Chris said this was the true cherry on top), neither Chris nor I wanted another meal out with them. They are most comfortable in their own home for them to come and go as they wish, for my dad to leave the table the second he’s done, for my mom to fuss about every five minutes on something unimportant. When we got back to the house on Friday late afternoon and my mom suggested we eat dinner out at a specific (and unnamed because she rarely knows the names of any place) restaurant, multiple times I declined and said we’d just order out. I suggested a neighborhood pizza spot, Gaspare’s, where we could order online and pick up, and so we did that. We got a pizza for us (half mushroom/sausage, half mushroom/pesto), and an order of clams and linguine for Pookster.

I didn’t think much of getting a separate order for Kaia since we know she’s not really into pizza, but I didn’t think that my parents would be so impressed that she likes bivalves. They marveled over her pulling out each individual clam from the shell and shoving it into her mouth. She also picked at the endless little clams that were dotted throughout the pasta between bites of the linguine noodles. And my mom couldn’t believe someone so young was into clams (while she also freaked out in the beginning, insisting that the clam shells could be dangerous with potentially sharp edges). In the process of ordering the clams with linguine, I had also forgotten my dad loves clams, so he also enjoyed this dish while pretend-fighting with Kaia to eat some of her clams.

My parents clearly made a mental note about Kaia and her love of mollusks, so when they ordered takeout tonight from a local Cantonese spot, they ordered one fish dish and one scallop dish. I was surprised when they unveiled the food to see that the scallops were actually presented directly on their shells, and under a bed of vermicelli noodles seasoned with a generous amount of garlic and scallions. Unfortunately, Kaia is not as interested in scallops, but they wouldn’t have known that when they chose this food. In the end, she mostly ate the noodles that were elegantly placed on top of the scallop shells. While the flavor of the dish was very good, I was a bit disappointed with how teeny tiny the scallops were. I didn’t want to say anything to make it seem like I was critical, but overall, the quantity of scallops and the size were a true letdown.

The next day, my dad asked me how much we paid for the clams and linguine. When I told him, he exclaimed what good value it was because that scallop dish he got was four dollars less, but had barely any food to eat. I always smile a little to myself every time my dad inadvertently compliments me (or anyone, really) because compliments do not come naturally to him. He is 100 times more likely to poo poo on anything than to praise.

One thing I noticed they did differently during this visit is that not only was there far less food in the fridge (though somehow, there were over a hundred eggs in the fridge, for reasons I have zero visibility into…), but they also ordered far less food for our meals together, which meant they’d have far less food left over. I was really happy about this. No one enjoys eating leftovers for days on end, and given it’s just the two of them, they really shouldn’t have too much food around, anyway. Maybe it’s my parents finally coming to terms with the fact that they are actually getting older and can’t just keep eating the same or keep storing food forever (though I did have to throw a lot of rotted cantaloupe and plums out because they had way too much fruit they couldn’t get through in time).

My parents and I do not have the best relationship — it’s quite far from it. But I do see and acknowledge the times when they do try. One of the few love languages they both share is food. It’s one of the oldest and most classic ways for Asian parents to show love and affection. I was really touched when I saw the scallops they got for Kaia (even if she didn’t like them). I like that they finally listened to me when I said not to order too much food, or when I insisted that we just eat at home.

I’m grateful that the second weekend at my parents’ place fared much better than the first weekend, and that in general, my dad seemed more engaged with Kaia and talked more, and that my mom seemed a tiny bit less controlling and more willing to relent than the prior weekend. We only see each other once a year, and it always makes me feel better when we end on a positive note.

Under mom’s control

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Sometimes, certain objects, images, conversations, or current moments remind me of things from the past that I thought I’d forgotten, but were just buried deep into the back of my psyche that it’s almost like I chose to forget them. And there’s probably a reason I might have subconsciously chosen to forget: they were not healthy and likely did not serve me well at all.

In the few weekend days I’ve been at my parents’ house, I was reminded of how controlling my mom was even with the most basic things. If she knew that Ed or I was home and even when she and our dad had their keys (which is… always), she’d ring the bell multiple times and demand that we open the door. If we didn’t come within seconds, she’d ring the bell multiple times at once, indicating her impatience. And by the time we got to the door to buzz her in, she’d lash out at us and asked what took so long, as though we were just standing by the door idly, simply waiting at her beck and call to let her in right away. If she needed help with anything, whether it was with something that went wrong with an appliance, clearing dishes from the dish rack, or even locating a missing Tupperware lid, she’d yell one of our names and expect us to come to her immediately and do exactly as she said. It wouldn’t matter if we were on the toilet, in the bathroom, studying, reading, or really anything — she always expected us to drop everything that very second and do exactly as she wanted. And if we didn’t, she’d rush us, yell at us to come right away, and then get angry that we didn’t come fast enough. “I called you several times,” she’d say in her icy tone. “Didn’t you hear me?” It was infuriating as a child into my teen years, and I really started resenting it in my college and then post-college years. And this time, Chris noticed it. “Why is she ringing the bell when they have their keys?” he asked, annoyed, as I was helping out with Kaia as he was washing her up. “We’re in the middle of something. She has a key and can let herself in!”

That’s the thing, though. Nothing we ever did mattered, and she didn’t care if we were in the “middle” of anything. Everything we did had to revolve around her and what she did and wanted. And it seems that she operates like that now with her Jehovah’s Witness “brothers and sisters.” She doesn’t have any kids under her roof to control anymore, so I guess she had to move onto another group, which is her JW crew, all of whom have no spine to stand up to her. A JW friend of mine in her congregation revealed that my mom is even controlling about which seats people sit in when she’s in one of their cars, which is one of the stupidest and most senseless things ever.

It’s okay, though. Oftentimes in the last ten years to be passive aggressive back, I just ignore her when she calls me and expects me to come right away. Depending on what I am doing, I let her call my name anywhere from six to ten times before I actually come. She can wait until I am done with what I am doing. I am not in a rush for her. And when she gets mad now at this, I am just indifferent to her face.

My mom also loves leaving bedroom doors locked, but she gets angry when we lock the doors. She constantly would lock her bedroom door while I was in the house. She insisted it was because Kaia kept coming in to mess up things, to take their candy (why are there bowls of candy in their room, anyway…?!), but I think it’s because she just didn’t want to expose all the crap she stores and hoards in there. But if we locked the door because we were changing clothes, she’d get mad and passively aggressively say in yet another cold tone, “There’s no reason to lock the door.” Actually, there is, since she and my dad have zero sense of what the word “boundaries” mean, and they constantly open bedroom and bathroom doors without ever knocking or asking. I think we’ve lost count of the number of times both of them have walked in on Chris. I don’t believe in bedroom door locks (they seem very excessive to me: once you have broken into someone’s home, what’s stopping them from breaking your bedroom door lock?!), but I use them in my parents’ house because I know if I don’t, they will walk in on us at the most inopportune times.

My mom has always liked to pack me food when I go back to the East Coast even when I’ve told her I don’t need anything or I don’t have luggage space. I know food is a big love language for her, so usually I try to humor her and take what I can. But sometimes, she legitimately just buys too much stuff, and I have to be honest and say I don’t have the space. She called me while we were at the playground on Saturday to tell me she bought six zongzi (THAT IS A LOT) and wanted me to take them back to New York. I told her I didn’t think I’d have the space for all of them, but I could maybe fit two or three. She got really angry at this and responded, “Okay, okay, fine! You do what you want! I am not the troublemaker here, so you just do what you want!” and then hung up. The irony of this statement is that in more cases than not, my mom is most definitely the “troublemaker,” but she not only refuses to see it, but almost no one in her life is willing to call her out on it. It’s only in the extreme cases, like when she tried to endanger my daughter’s life, that I have to yell at her and call her out on her genuine bullshit. And even then, it still doesn’t get into her head.

It’s okay, though. Once I leave their house and go back to my new and adopted home of New York, I get back to my own calm and slowly forget all that stupid and unnecessary trauma from the past… and then get reminded of it once I step foot in that house again the next time. And then again, I feel grateful I was able to escape and live my own life free of their control and toxicity.

The things that give my dad joy: his compost pile and worms

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Years ago, my therapist asked me if I’d ever thought that maybe my parents actually are happy, that they might just define “happiness” or “joy” or even “fun” differently than me. I agreed with her and said that yes, they most definitely define all those things differently than me. But I did not think that living in spaces that are cluttered with literal trash and junk up to the ceiling was hygienic, healthy, or joyful.

My mom tries her best to clean what she can. But I know her fatigue and spine misalignment do prevent her from doing as much comfortably, so she has let go of caring of a lot of cleaning that she used to be obsessive about (and constantly yell at Ed and me about growing up). My dad isn’t a very clean person sadly. It’s almost like he doesn’t see the thick layers of dust accumulating on the shelves or the gunk accumulating in his soap dishes. But while he fails to keep clean and tidy, he seems to be very into his compost pile in the backyard. Right now, it seems to be his mini source of pride. He was talking about it when we got home today, and I suggested that maybe he could show it to Kaia. My dad, almost like a kid lighting up at the mention of “candy,” immediately agreed and offered to take us to the backyard to show us. We bundled Kaia up and brought her down to the yard.

My dad showed us the black bins where he stored fruit, veggie, and shredded paper scraps. And in it was mixed dirt which had been turned into very rich, dark, (and stinky) soil. He used a shovel to see if he could show Kaia some worms, and he found three of varying sizes, all wiggling around excitedly at being moved. Kaia was extremely intrigued, looking at all the worms squirming around just inches from her face. And like last year, her eyes were glimmering with fascination at the extremely messy, weed-strewn yard, with endless piles of dirt, overgrowth, potted plants, and zero sense of order. It’s almost as though lack of order, untidiness, and piles of junk are a young toddler’s paradise for treasure hunting. She ran around it a few times, poking and peering at random plants and pots. She seemed to find the chaos and mess fun — that’s youthful “ignorance is bliss,” isn’t it?

Even though the yard is a total mess, and has continued to be a weed fest since my grandmother died in 2005 with signs of only getting worse and more cluttered, my dad seems to have his own blissful ignorance about it. My parents have both propagated and bought new potted plants that do seem to be faring well, even in the last year. But there is zero chance that any of these plants will be properly planted into the ground with any real landscaping work to be done to make the yard into a welcoming garden or a place of pride. My dad was happily explaining the way compost works and how the worms help the soil get richer to Kaia. It was likely the happiest I’d seen him during this entire visit. I asked him if he was planning to use this enriched soil for his plants, to which he responded… No, because he just wanted it to keep regenerating and feeding!

I thought the whole point of having a compost pile was to a) reduce waste by recycling food scraps and b) create rich soil to help other plants grow. The rhyme and reason never quite makes sense to me in this house.

So, maybe I do think it’s a bit senseless to create compost soil and not do anything with it to help other plants or with up-soiling the yard. But it seems to make my dad happy and give him some purpose. Maybe in that sense, I should just accept that as something that brings him joy. And if it partially keeps him occupied in a way he finds productive, then that’s all that matters. It’s ultimately his life and what makes him happy.

The day you would have turned 46.

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Dear Ed,

Happy birthday – today if you were still part of this world, you would have turned 46. How crazy it is that you will eternally be stuck at 33 years of age in my mind. I turned 39 this year. How did I actually become older than you? Is it even possible to get older than your older sibling?

I’m back in our home city with Chris and Kaia. On Sunday, our mother let Kaia out of the house unattended, and Kaia almost ran up the entire block by herself. I ran out to get her just in time and brought her back down to the house, but all I could think of during that time was… first, they let Ed die, and now, they want to let their grandchild die, too? How could they possibly be this irresponsible and stupid? Or, maybe I am really the irresponsible and stupid one. I was the one who allowed Kaia into their dungeon of a house. I was the one who left her unattended with our mother to lure her out of the house without Chris and me in the first place. Maybe I’m the real problem here for allowing this situation to even happen. Maybe I just cannot accept that this house could not be more “normal” and welcoming than it actually is.

I get told by my friends who knew our parents that ultimately, I allow this emotional exhaustion to happen. I need to set better boundaries — everyone seems to tell me this, including both therapists I saw. Ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, we didn’t really have the verbiage to describe things like mental load, emotional load, emotional exhaustion. But now, we do. Now, I know that the feeling of exhaustion and heaviness was real whenever I’d go home and then leave home to go back to New York. I know now that when Chris would say I’d come back to New York really tense and seemingly uptight from San Francisco that it was all just the residual effects of dealing with our parents — emotional load. And it really took a toll on me. It still does.

“Why do you even bother?” a friend asked me yesterday. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. This is all on you.” I feel sad that our parents won’t ever be proper grandparents to Kaia. I want them to have a relationship. But I know it really won’t happen. You can’t really have people be real grandparents when they didn’t even figure out how to be decent parents. It’s just a pipe dream that I am still struggling to come to terms with. There’s what you rationally and academically know, and that always seems to conflict with the feelings and desires of your heart.

I think I’m out of words. You’re the only one who knows how bad it can be in that house with them. And you’re gone. No one else has first hand experience of it. And sometimes when I think about it, it makes me feel even more alone. I’m not saying you should still be here just to shoulder the burden of this knowledge. But it would be nice if we could still be together to empathize with each other… and just be. There is a hollow in my heart that will never be filled because you left this world far too soon.

Did you know that Kaia knows who her JiuJiu is? I told her it was your birthday today. She even recognizes your face sometimes when I show her photos of you. She’s over three and a half now, and she’s constantly surprising me with all the things she’s learning and absorbing, and all that she remembers that we’ve told her. I know you’d be so happy and proud of her if you were here. My sweet little Kaia Pookie will never meet her JiuJiu in real life. And that loss is not just a loss for her and you — it’s a loss for me, too.

I’m trying to do what I can to be a good mama to her and not perpetuate intergenerational trauma. I say that almost every week to myself, if not every year to you when I write you. I’m almost like a broken record about this in my head. I’m just trying my best. I hope you know and can see this.

I really miss you, Ed. It’s strange. Even twelve years after your death, when I am in that house, I still have this weird feeling of anticipation that out of nowhere, the front door will open, and in you will come. It’s 100 percent irrational, but I still have the feeling in the back of my mind and in my body that it will happen. It is depressing to have a feeling of anticipation for something… that you know in reality will never actually happen.

I love you. Take good care of yourself wherever you are out there. I am always thinking of you — I hope you don’t ever forget that.

With all my love, and with the deepest desire to see you again,

your little sister Yvonne