My aunt started our short family dinner tonight by asking that question. And I knew it wasn’t going to go well. Chris and I were overlapping for one day for our San Francisco travels, and since we never really have any real conversation, we both knew this meal was just out of obligation so that he could see my parents for a short time.. because well, that’s all the time he can really tolerate being around them. To this day, they won’t really talk openly with him. My dad has stopped trying to engage. In fact, when we arrived this afternoon, he half-heartedly greeted us and said he had to go “pick something up” and would be back in 20 minutes.

My aunt said she thought it had only been two years. We corrected her and told her it was four. And then my aunt marveled at how quickly time passes.

To which my mom interjects loudly, “Well then, what are you waiting for!”

It’s always fun when your family feels like they have to either directly or indirectly imply that you need to be doing things on the timeline they want for you vs. the timeline that you want to live your life. And it’s even more fun when your family members collude in this and gang up on you all at once.

So Chris, thinking he would be cute and cheeky, said, “Yeah, what are we waiting for, Yvonne?”

My mom doesn’t really understand most jokes, and she especially did not understand this. She later pulled me aside to confront me about this comment Chris made.

“It sounds like Chris wants to have kids and you do not,” she said to me gravely. “What is wrong with you?”

I told her she knew nothing about what we were trying or not trying to do, and that he was joking.

When is she going to learn that her nagging and meddling is never going to help any situation? Never?

I called my mom today on my way back home from work. I can tell she is getting antsy about my visit. About this time every year, she tells me that her health is going downhill, that she doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, and that she thinks she needs to have her head X-rayed because she’s constantly getting headaches and her head feels like it’s spinning. She also tends to catch colds around this time of year, so that doesn’t help her mood either. She does the same thing — interrogates me to see which of my family members may have contacted me, or who I may have told that I am coming home. She hates it when I tell my cousins, aunt, or uncle that I am coming home. She thinks when they want to see me, they suggest a meal, and they “expect” her to pay for the meal. “They just sit there, looking! It’s so embarrassing! They are just waiting for me to pay the bill!” she says time after time after time. She says this, yet she or my dad always feel the need to secretly pay the bill in advance, allowing no one the chance to pay. Or, when my cousin or aunt actually does this, they feel guilty and bad, so they feel the need to immediately take them out, or buy them too many excessive gifts. It’s lose-lose no matter what.

This time, when I told her that my cousin was driving up from San Jose to have dinner on my last Saturday in town, she got angry and demanded to know why he was coming. I said it was for dinner with me. She raised her voice, saying she refused to go and she should not be expected to pay since she’s no longer working, she’s disabled, and she cannot pay for everyone anymore. I told her to calm down — no one said she has to pay for anyone. It’s the same stupid conversation every single time. Her main point? She wants me to have no contact with any relatives. Why? This would mean no one pays for anyone, which is her dream… Even though she constantly is asking about each of them every single call.

I always wish I could just see my cousin alone with his wife, but he has to insist his mom or my uncle come. And that’s really when it gets annoying. It can’t just be a regular family get-together because my mom insists that everyone is out to get her. She then accused me of being sullen and said that I should be positive when I call her and not be negative.

Really? I am the negative one? I am not the one making up paranoid, baseless stories in my head about people being out for every dollar she has.

I came back late last night from New York and was groggy this morning when I woke up, thinking about all the events of the last week with work and family and feeling even more irritable. It’s as though every time I come back from San Francisco, I need to go through a few days of decompression to rid myself of all the tension and angst that has built up in me with all my family dysfunction. And with the work dramas of the last several days, that just adds to the overall angst.

Is it really going to be like this every single time I go home? Are my parents always going to be their same miserable selves, constantly complaining about every person, every event, every restaurant they go to? Are they always going to view themselves as victims in every situation where there isn’t a victim? Are they always going to focus on the worst parts of the news, on the worst memories attached to places? When I mentioned I was going to MacLaren Park with my friend, my dad exclaimed, “I know that place! That’s the place where a woman was sun-bathing and then completely got mowed down by a truck who didn’t even see her lying on the grass!” That’s a typical interjection of my dad: something negative, tragic, or just completely awful. With the new Vietnamese restaurant we went to on Saturday, my dad said two days later to my mom, “I don’t think it’s going to last. What a ripoff!” That is yet another favorite outburst of my dad — it certainly does not bring joy into the house when these statements are made.

The house is full of clutter, and as a result of that, filth. It smells like mold downstairs. Even the backseat of his truck is just piles and piles of mess. I asked him when he was planning to clean this up, and he responded he just cleaned it a week before and that there used to be 10 times as much stuff back there. What am I supposed to do with all this?! One day, this is all going to be on me…

And their health is in decent shape, knock on wood. They’re able bodied, able to get around on their own and be self sufficient with each other. It’s terrifying to think what it would be like once they are not mobile and need more help, and what that is going to mean for me.

I was sitting at lunch today with my mom, aunt, and their miserable and depressing Jehovah’s Witness friend, who now, unfortunately, is living and paying rent for a bedroom upstairs with my aunt. Every time I see her, I get a little miserable myself, wondering how someone can be this outwardly morose every single time I see her. What exactly causes this to happen to someone?

I think I realized that I was definitely ready to head back to New York (tonight is my last night in San Francisco) when my aunt, who is originally from Toisan in Guangdong, China, who also lived in Hong Kong for 8-9 years, started complaining about the protesting happening in Hong Kong now. She has Hong Kong residency since she lived there for a good chunk of time, and because of that, she usually likes to go back a few times a year. Given the protests, she is not planning to go back until things calm down.

“All this protesting is so terrible,” my aunt said. “These people are ruining the country and causing so much destruction! It’s so selfish!”

My aunt is a sweet, kind, well-meaning person. At the same time, she’s uneducated, delusional, brainwashed, naive, and not particularly deep. Her mentor, a Jehovah’s Witness, was imprisoned in mainland China for over 20 years because she tried to spread the word of Jehovah, which is illegal in communist China. She looked up to this person, respected her and even wanted to emulate her (and actually does now by keeping her house as a hotel for all visiting JWs who pass through San Francisco from around the world). Yet, she is saying that these protestors are being selfish and their efforts are pointless? How can she possibly not see the connection here? The values she has are the same values that these protestors have; they want a free and separate Hong Kong.

Since President Dipshit got elected, it’s hard for me to listen to people who complain about protesters without feeling my blood pressure soar. The people who protest around the world, particularly in places like Hong Kong, are willing to sacrifice their lives so that future people and generations can have a better life; that is the complete opposite of selfish. I have nothing but respect and admiration for these individuals who are truly fighting for what they believe in.

I haven’t even been at my parents’ house for three full days until I realized my mom’s hatred and jealousy for my aunt has really reached an all-time high, or maybe she’s just being even more open with me about it than ever. My aunt had a difficult marriage; she was verbally (and maybe physically, unsure of this second part) abused by her husband, my late uncle. Their relationship got so violent that he started threatening to kill her, and finally one day, she truly feared for her life and called the police to report him. They arrested him and put him in jail… until my parents bailed him out. My aunt ran away, eventually relocating to Boston, where her mother lived. She stayed with her until she passed away about 3-4 years later. She moved back after her mother’s passing, and then about a year later, my uncle passed away suddenly from a heart attack in his bed one morning. That basically marked her complete freedom from treachery and abuse.

My mom has always been jealous of my aunt. My aunt was always the favored daughter-in-law of both my grandparents because she was Chinese from China and had lived in Hong Kong; she knew the culture better than my Vietnamese mother from Vietnam. The rest of my family also had racist tendencies toward my mom, so in general, everyone always preferred my aunt whether they explicitly said so or not. It wasn’t fair, but what in life is? It was terrible and racist, but that’s the world we live in. My aunt has been known for her generosity and kindness, which somehow lent itself to a random elderly woman up our block in San Francisco leaving her entire inheritance, including her three-unit San Francisco home, to her. This old woman had no children and no next of kin she really cared about, so she bequeathed everything to my aunt. And so, that adds to the list of endless reasons for my mom’s jealousy; why did she and my dad have to work so hard for their money and comfort whereas my aunt just had it “handed over” to her? That house marked constant future rental incomes that were essentially “free” until the present day.

My mom complained no less than three times in three days about this. “She got that house for nothing!” she fumed. “Your father and I worked for everything we had, and she just gets it for free! And she used to give food we gave her to that woman!” I always assumed she was implying that she believed my aunt should have shared some of that inherited wealth with my parents, but that idea is completely ludicrous to me.

“What kind of wife throws her own husband in jail?” she continued on. “She’s a terrible, selfish person! Only someone terrible would do something like that!”

Once we touched upon the domestic violence, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore. I was literally just having this discussion with a friend a few weeks ago about exactly how prevalent domestic violence is in homes across this country, and now my mom is saying it is no big deal?! “He threatened to kill her!” I raised my voice back to her. “That’s illegal and wrong! What is wrong with you? Do you think that is okay?!”

My mom laughed. Truly, it was a cackle. It sounded so evil that it actually shocked me. “He just threatened with words,” she responded. “That’s nothing. It doesn’t mean anything! He didn’t kill her, so what is she complaining about?”

Wow. I couldn’t even say anything for a moment. I just stared at her, suddenly realizing the exact depth of her hatred and jealousy of my aunt. She truly has brainwashed herself into believing my aunt is a horrible human being who does zero good in the world, and she’s resorted to this type of thought and talk. I told her she was wrong for saying all this and that I refused to hear anymore.

And if he killed her, she couldn’t complain anymore, could she?

How can hatred and jealousy be this deep? I’ve certainly had moments and periods of anger against old friends and of course, members of my own family, but I don’t think it has ever been this ongoing, this lingering, this deep. After Ed passed away, I realized I had to start re-examining a lot of things about myself, including the things that bother me about the world and realizing what I had to let go, and what was actually worth keeping my life, whether that’s people or feelings about certain things. I find it nearly impossible to hold a grudge. Holding a grudge means you are holding onto anger, and holding onto anger means you have to hold on to so much negative energy and resentment, and it just isn’t worth it mentally or emotionally. I still find myself getting ticked off by things that friends repeatedly do that I think are stupid and senseless, but I forget them much more easily now than I used to. It’s a tiny improvement, but it’s still something.

I suppose what worries me the most in my parents’ case is that whether it’s my mom’s hatred and jealousy of my aunt or my dad’s resentment against both of his living siblings, I am most fearful that their hatred of others will worsen their overall health and life outcomes, and possibly even cause a premature death. Therapy will never be an option for them.

I’ll be back home in a week, and oddly enough, I think that the time outside of the weekend is probably when I’ll be more relaxed and feel like myself. I told my cousin who lives in San Jose that I’d be back, so he suggested he drive up to the city with his wife to have dinner with me, which would include my anti-immigrant uncle, my cousin’s Jehovah’s Witness mom, and inevitably my parents. Because my parents generally dislike everyone in the family, they hate these gatherings and for whatever reason, feel like everyone else is “cheap” and “fake” and won’t pay the bill, so they always end up paying the bill before anyone even sees it. This has been a decades-long source of tension and resentment, which they’ve pretty much caused themselves. So the last time we all got together when I was home in February, my mom told me not to tell anyone else in the family I was coming home because she didn’t want to see them. “Things are not the same,” she insists. “We’ve changed.”

No, my parents haven’t changed. They love to make themselves to be the victims of every situation (where there are really no victims), and to blame everyone else for any “problems” that exist.

Well, I did. And a family dinner is happening. She just doesn’t know about it yet. And when she does, she’s going to be pretty angry about it and say endless passive aggressive things.

She’ll also add, “And you aren’t pregnant yet!” to the list of things she’s mad about.

In the last couple of months, my mom has been doing far more than just hinting that she wants me to get pregnant. She has out right asked me “What are you waiting for?” “When are you finally going to have a baby?” “When will you get pregnant?” “Where is your big belly?” and many variations of the above. She’s even had her friends ask me when she sees me. Whether that was deliberately planned or not doesn’t really matter, but it is clear that it’s a topic she discusses with them — you know, my fertility and baby making abilities. All that is, as you can guess, totally all of their business.

When my mom is in ultra guilt mode, she loves to say that all she looks forward to in life and lives for is to see grandchildren, that once she sees them that only then, she can peacefully leave this world and be okay. Before the wedding, it used to be that all she looked forward to was seeing me get married. Now that we’ve already passed that 3.5 years ago, she’s checked that off her list and moved on to the next major milestone she wants me to hit for her.

It’s frustrating to constantly be bombarded with these questions all the time. I get them from Chris’s mom, too, but it’s far more subtle. Either way, it’s annoying. Isn’t that news for me to share with them rather than vice versa? With my mom, I wish she lived a happier and more fulfilling life than she does because if she did, she wouldn’t be waiting around every day to hear news about some upcoming grandchild. Rather, if and when that happened, it would be like an added bonus in life as opposed to her end-all, be-all. She could live a happier and more fulfilling life if she wanted, but she just chooses not to. It’s almost like she’s in a prison of her own mind.

We had dinner with two friends tonight who are married and have been living here in New York for about two years. They were eagerly anticipating leaving New York to head back to Hong Kong, where they lived for about eight years. They are both originally from Melbourne and had fantasized about a glamorous expat life in Hong Kong, but it didn’t seem to work out job wise. That, plus they got pregnant, and now our female friend is five months pregnant. They both rationalized that despite the job opportunity not being in Hong Kong that it probably made more sense for them to move back to Melbourne to be close to family, anyway, especially in light of the little one on the way.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I don’t think I’d really love to have my parents “nearby” when I would have a baby. If anything, I think it would add to the stress, especially with my parents’ constant (wrong) belief that they are always right about everything. Not to mention the fact that despite my mom being a JW, she definitely has still kept a lot of her superstitious beliefs, so she’d probably tell me ridiculous things like, I can’t wash my hair for X number of days after the baby is born, or I can’t do Y activity until Z number of days after the baby has been born. Or, I need to drink all these Chinese tonics to cleanse my body (I’ve warmed up to some Chinese medicine ideas, but not all of them). I really could not handle any of that. I’m an adult now, and I don’t need to be told what to do. And when my mom is around, I’m no longer an adult and am of course treated as an eternal child.

Everyone comes from a different family. I accept that. Yes, it’s attractive to have family help nearby because well, it would be free. Childcare is expensive. You don’t have to worry so much about your parents killing your child as you would a total stranger you’ve paid. But still, the idea does not sit very well with me.

Ed died on Monday, July 22, 2013. In this year 2019, six years have passed since his untimely death, and with Leap Year in between, it also meant that it was also Monday, July 22, just last week, which means that today, Monday, July 29, 2019, is also the same Monday as when we held his funeral. It made me sad to think about this last night, to think about the general somberness and misery in our parents’ house that week, how I edited my eulogy for him on the Sunday before, and even argued with our idiot selfish cousin the night before about some reprinting he wanted to do on the program that I refused.

But I also thought about how although time has passed, although my parents lost a child and my dad had heart surgery in this time, they’re probably even more miserable than ever before. You’d think that if someone had heart surgery, they’d rethink how they want to live life. You’d wonder if someone had something so gut-wrenching and tragic happen such as losing a child that they’d make some positive changes in their life, create a new start. But our parents really haven’t done anything like that at all; instead, they barely float in their day-to-day delusional life, my mom with believing Jehovah will save her if she continues her preaching with her Jehovah’s Witness acquaintances and friends (despite never having even converted a single person), my dad with believing that if he just keeps organizing his pills, pulling more cabinet doors apart and breaking them, and accumulating more clutter and junk in the house that everything will be just fine. But it isn’t. It’s like a big accident waiting to happen. And that freaks me out because we all know that if anything happens like that, I’ll have to suck it up and deal with it.

I like to think that a lot inside of me has changed since moving out on my own, losing Ed, leaving my dysfunctional and constantly angry and resentful family. I worry less. I’m still judgmental, but I judge a lot less. Frankly, I also “care” less than I used to about even the closest people in my life, but I think that’s for the better. I used to obsess about whether certain partners were the right fit for my friends, whether they were really making the right choices for themselves, if X action was really going to produce Y result like they’d romanticize… but then finally I realized that what I perceived as “care” (or really, what my mom perceives as “care” which she instilled in me) is really a disguised form of judgment. There’s an innate sense of “I know what’s better for you than you know what is good for you” message in that, and that’s not really right, is it? I am more patient about some things, like when my colleagues are telling me they’ve had a bad day and want to discuss their parents’ alcoholism or their dad’s abusiveness towards their mom. But I’m also a lot less patient at the same time; I have a higher tendency now than ever before to cut my parents off, tell them when I think they’re doing something thoughtless or stupid, and just to tell them that they’re wrong and going to cause their own premature deaths. It’s not very Confucian of me, but I kind of don’t care. What I will tolerate from them has changed quite a bit. They may never fully acknowledge they are wrong about anything because that’s just who they are and what they always will be. But that doesn’t mean I can’t let them know they’re screwing up along the way. The truth hurts.

Ed is gone. It’s really terrible. I feel the most hurt from it every time I go back to San Francisco and leave again. I think the other thing that always gets me is the lives our parents are living and how they do little to nothing to acknowledge him in any way. I’m sure our mom does some self reflection and self blame from time to time; she’s told me a few times. But with my dad, as per usual, I’m pretty certain he’s just blocked it all out of his head. He has no methodology for handling and acknowledging emotions. Instead, he chooses to spend most of his time talking to himself, yelling and swearing in all the ways he would have wanted to if he had more courage and confronting all the people who supposedly have wronged him… including Ed and me.

Ed would be sad to see them today. Even though his relationship with them was tumultuous, I think inside, he just wanted to them to be healthy and happy; towards the end of his life, he used to tell me that he’d pray for our mom’s health every night. But we both always knew that was pretty much impossible.