Category Archives: Family dysfunction

Aubergine

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Tonight, Chris and I went to see the play Aubergine, a play about the power of food as a form of expression that could potentially be stronger than words. It was particularly amusing because the playwright is Korean, and it’s told from the perspective of a Korean American who has already lost most of his Korean language skills. Throughout the play, they touch on a variety of issues, including lack of generational understanding, the pressures to live up to strict Asian expectations and upbringing, the failure of Asian families to acknowledge many truths and human emotions. In the end, the protagonist’s father dies after not having had the soup that his son, a chef, had so painstakingly made for him as his last meal before leaving this world (he even killed a live turtle for this soup to please his uncle, his dad’s brother who came all the way from Korea to see his older brother one last time). And the son thought in the end, he didn’t even want to eat my soup; he died without me in the room. Not only did he not want my soup, he didn’t want to have his last moment on earth be with me. It was a painful moment.

Shows like this always remind me of the inevitable fact that one day, my parents will pass from this world, and it’s absolutely terrifying to me. In the back of my mind, I wonder and probably know that there will be many things I won’t get to say before it’s too late; it’s like how I felt with my brother. Except in my parents’ case, in a “normal” life, children should live to see their parents pass, not vice versa. I should accept this as a fact, as a part of my upcoming reality whenever that may happen. Will they know that I always worry about them and wonder if they are truly happy? Will they know that I always wanted the best for them in the same way that they always thought they wanted what is seemingly the best for me? Will they know I wished every day that they could trust the world a little bit more and have a little less anger against everyone? I don’t think so, and it’s mainly from a lack of understanding. And to be brutally honest, will they know that even though they may one day die, my anger against them because of how they mistreated my brother will likely live on forever in my life, until my death?

Sadness

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I arrived back at JFK at about 4:50am; the winds were in my favor overnight, and so our plane landed about an hour and ten minutes earlier than scheduled. I grumbled at the idea of going back to the office on time, so I decided to sleep a bit longer and come into the office late.

The first full day back in New York is always strange for me. It’s me, back in the freedom that New York City provides, away from the prying, manipulative hold of my parents. It’s away from all the clutter of my parents’ house, the endless screws and paper clips and razor blades that are scattered all over the floors in certain rooms; it’s also away from the darkness that is increasingly becoming my parents’ house.

My bedroom always looks a little more depressing every time I come home. It’s the bedroom that Ed and I grew up in, where both of our beds still stand, where the frames of photos of us and our parents are turned inward, looking stupidly organized (“the light will eat them up and they will fade!” my dad insisted, when he turned the photos away from frontal view. In other words, you cannot see the photos; you can just see the backs of the frames. What a great way to display photographs!!). The blinds are closed, which means no natural light comes into the room. My parents’ bedroom is even worse, with thicker blinds that block out the light even better, and piles and piles of paper, buckets with endless tools and screws, and who the hell knows what else all over the floor. There’s barely any space to get around the bed, and I honestly do not know how my tiny mother hasn’t had an accident tripping over something in her own bedroom yet. Oh, and they lock that room when they aren’t home, even when it’s just me home, which makes their bedroom even more like an unwelcome lair, hiding needless secrets that they never want exposed. In fact, they lock both their room and my old room, always fearful that someone will expose their secrets and get whatever rare valuables they seem to be storing.

In New York, I’m also away from all forms of irrational thinking that my parents have. So while they lock the two bedroom doors, my dad has had this strange desire, since Ed passed away, to leave the gate unlocked when he or my mom is home. It drives me nuts. Why would they keep the gate unlocked but lock their bedroom doors? Even though I grew up in this house and lived there until age 18, my parents don’t think I will close the gate without slamming it because many visitors slam it. My dad put in this weather stripping for it over a decade ago, which for a lot of people, makes the gate harder to close. You really just need to press it for an extra second, but everyone is too impatient and slams it. So my mom and I will usually bicker when I try to close the gate and my mom insists she will do it. That’s the kind of thing my parents like to argue about — how to close a gate and who will do it. When I’m in New York, I never have to worry when I go out with visiting relatives or friends about someone sneakily paying the bill behind my back (and thus my being “indebted” to them); I also never have to worry about others paying the bill and then getting mad at me later that they paid it. I always have to think about that whenever I go home. It’s a really irrational worry and form of stress, but that is instantly on the agenda as soon as I step into my parents’ house.

So despite all the above, the truth is that as soon as I enter SFO, go through security, and reach either the airline lounge or sit down at the gate, I actually miss my parents a lot for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. I miss my mother’s love and hugs and kisses, the way she is always concerned about whether I’ve had enough to eat or whether I will be safe. I miss my dad’s sheepish hug at the end of my trip, the way he usually pats my back awkwardly in his own way of showing fatherly affection. I miss my dad always asking me if I want anything at Costco (his Costco love will never die; he’s an Asian dad, after all, and loves his deals) even though I usually decline. This time, because we had to get some wedding photos printed at Costco before dropping me off at the airport, I humored my mom and agreed to bring back women’s gummy vitamins. She was so excited; my dad wasn’t, though, because my mom insisted on buying me the name-brand gummy vitamins vs. the Kirkland Signature brand (Costco brand) gummy vitamins.

I wish they could be happier and more content with life. Every time I leave, I know that their level of happiness will decline and pick up again the next time I come home. With my coming home, it’s something they look forward to. I’m honestly not sure if they look forward to anything else in life. And that always is a worry lurking in the back my mind, that they really aren’t living for much outside of me, their one living child. It always makes me feel sad and a little helpless, kind of like how I felt when Ed was at the end of his life and I knew he was struggling, but I had no way to feasibly help.

Leaving home

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Leaving home always leaves me with mixed feelings. I love my parents very much, but the harsh truth is that I cannot be with them for long periods of time, otherwise I lose my sanity. I always feel sad on the way to the airport because I know that my mom has that sinking feeling in her stomach, knowing her only living child is leaving her for the other side of the country. She starts worrying about every last thing: the weight of my carry-on roller bag, whether the night flight will make it all the way to New York (she thinks that flying at night is more dangerous, but obviously she’s just basing that on her lack of knowledge of how airplanes work), and if the driver who takes me from JFK back to my apartment will be a creep or not. She always reminds me right before I leave her at the curb side to stay longer the next time I come home so that she won’t miss me as much (that doesn’t really make sense, but it just means she wants me around longer, even if we do argue).

I always wish my parents could be more positive, that they could try for once to see the best in people and stop nitpicking at everyone in their lives, including each other. I wish my dad wouldn’t have a last argument on my last day with me about the shower, insisting that his tiles never mildew because he always wipes the tiles down after a shower (they will always mildew, just at a slower rate). I wish my mom wouldn’t accuse people like my aunt of trying to take advantage of her. I wish my aunt would stop inviting random Jehovah’s Witness strangers to what are supposed to be “family dinners.” I have a lot of wishes, but they will always just be that — wishes. I know they want the best for me and miss me when I’m gone, but that’s why I do try to come home at least two to three times a year to see them, and when I do see them, I try to have them participate in enjoyable, productive activities together. It’s always hard. That’s all I can say. It’s just inevitable that my mom will get upset over something irrational, blame me and start yelling. It’s also inevitable my parents will argue about senseless things, too, and blame each other for everything that is wrong. It is always hard. No peace exists at the house on the hill in which I grew up. It’s just a cold place with a lot of bitterness.

Space

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Being in my parents’ house, the home in which I grew up, makes me realize that having a small Manhattan apartment really isn’t such a bad thing after all. When you have a smaller space, you tend to have a lesser desire to buy more stuff, which means less chance for clutter. Less space also tends to mean less to clean, which is always a positive in my book considering how anal I am about cleanliness. But to be honest, being in this house for too long ends up getting me angry for some reasons that have little to do with Ed. It has to do with how inefficiently this space is used and how worse it seems to get every single time I come back.

This second floor flat is technically three bedrooms and one bath. Only two people, my parents, live here. Yet there is stuff everywhere — all over the floors of the bedrooms, on the breakfast room booth seats, and even sitting on multiple chairs throughout the house. The sunroom (the third bedroom) floor has model trains, busted computers and hard drives, nails, and screwdrivers everywhere. There are papers scattered around the perimeter of the room. And then right in the center of the room are two vacuum cleaners; one is busted open while the other one has a cord that is undone. In my bedroom, there are two beds. My bed is usually covered with papers piled high everywhere when I am not home. I know this because my mom told me. Maybe, just maybe if my dad cleared all the clutter on the desk in the room, he could actually have space for all those piles of paper.

The sunroom makes me pretty mad because it used to be the play room in the house, the house where we had plants, an extra bed, and fun things. Now, it’s a room that is completely wasted and serves zero purpose other than to dry clothes. A desk sits in there with two chairs (one of which is obviously extraneous) piled with junk on them. The desk is covered in about 10 different open hard drives. As someone who’s lived in Manhattan for four years now, I get mad when I see space that is wasted. You have all this great space, but you’re not even going to use it the best way?!

And then I thought, one day, I’m going to clear out this house, and I’m literally going to take everything and dump it into a massive garbage bin. I can feel my blood pressure going up when I see all the clutter that has zero meaning. This house is Marie Kondo’s worst nightmare. She’d get heart palpitations walking through this place.

“Hiking” with family

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The hiking day in Marin kind of turned out the way I expected it, meaning it pretty much got derailed. On our first trail along the Tomales Bay trail in Point Reyes National Seashore, it was quite foggy and cool, meaning that the beautiful seashore I was hoping to see was barely visible from our trail. We did, however, see deer and mule elk, and just smidgens of the ocean. It honestly wasn’t enough to make that trail worth it, though, and I certainly got that message loud and clear when about a third of the way, both my parents insisted they were too tired to continue. They complained and said the dirt path wasn’t good (even though it was extremely flat along 95 percent of it), and my mom complained that she almost fell. We probably made it about 70 percent of the trail before we decided to turn back. I really did not want to elicit the wrath of either parent on the ride to Mount Tamalpais or back into the city in the evening.

But then what really made the trip frustrating was when the gas tank of my dad’s car was about half full, and he said he needed to fill up. It was like my mom’s paranoia radar went off, and she continued to obsess over the gas and running out for the long, windy ride along Highway 1 to the gas station, and finally to the East Peak of Mount Tamalpais. We had no gas problem, but my parents made it into a needless problem to create a problem on this day trip. We took the short cut route by parking in a lot that was 0.3 miles away from the East Peak summit, and about 0.1 miles into it, my parents turned back and said they couldn’t do it anymore. On their way down, my dad loudly complained that he’s just not used to this type of activity. I could hear the complaining on my way up. When Chris and I reached the bottom and we were driving back to San Francisco, my mom insisted that they’re not as young as us, and they cannot go as far and as long. And I said to her, there are people in their 80s who are on this super short trail and they did it just fine. You can do it, too! It’s a useless argument because my mom loves to use the excuse that she’s old, therefore she cannot <fill in the blank>. She is technically 62 years old, and definitely able to walk up a bunch of wooden stairs that she refused to go up.

I would love it if my parents had a grab-life-by-the-balls attitude, if they took life as it came and didn’t complain endlessly about everything that either happened or has the potential to happen (the latter is real in my parents’ house). Why are we doing this hiking? my mom said. Because I want us to do an activity together and so we can see some good views! I respond. That was a bad response on my part, though, because my parents don’t really care much about views, and the only activity we successfully do together is eat.

Chris noticed that on the way back to the car along the trailhead, my mom was walking about twice as fast as she walked when we first started. This is how we know my mom is 120 percent capable, but she just wants to be perceived as not because she doesn’t like going outside and walking on anything that is not paved cement.

Embarrassment

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I think everyone, once we become adults, has at some point felt embarrassed publicly by their parents. It’s inevitable, right, that they will do something, anything, that will annoy you and make you feel awkward to be seen with them in public. Well for me, that happens almost any time I’m in a place with my parents where something is “all you can eat” or “all you can grab,” and they make sure to take advantage of that to no end.

Yesterday, I took them to the hotel lounge at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, where Chris and I will be staying this week, and they were wide-eyed when they saw all the snacks, full dinner spread, and fresh cut up fruit neatly laid out for guests to take. Needless to say, they wanted to take advantage of it, even if that meant stuffing a few bags of potato chips and a handful of apples into my mom’s reusable shopping bag. My dad took the liberty of filling a plate of food with pork loin, Israeli couscous, and sautéed spinach, and eating it, even though we had dinner plans at a Vietnamese restaurant just an hour later with Chris. “Why are we going out to eat if there’s free food to eat here?” my dad mumbled between bites.

I feel bad about my embarrassment. Really, I do. I was reminded countless times growing up (and still occasionally, now) that my dad grew up in a Chinatown ghetto with barely enough food to eat, which meant he oftentimes ate leftover spoiled food and got sick. My mom grew up in rural, poor central Vietnam with mostly rice and only rice to eat — not many vegetables, and meat was a luxury item rarely seen or even smelled. I’ve never had to worry about having enough food to eat, or a variety of dishes to eat, and now, I get to stay at hotels where the food and variety overfloweth, and my parents only get to experience this when they’re with Chris and me. I get why they would want to take as much as they’d like. To them, the world could end any second, all their life savings could diminish tomorrow (that’s what happens when you don’t trust the world at all), and so they want to take as much as they can and save everything “just in case.” Granted, my parents are financially comfortable enough to travel at their leisure; they just have zero desire to do so and find travel and enjoying life’s pleasures wasteful. They live like paupers, and when they see a lot to take, they will take as much as they can get.

My mom is aware of my feelings of embarrassment. That’s why she scolded my dad when he suggested getting a few more bags of potato chips. I overheard her say, “Don’t do that. Yvonne doesn’t like it.” I feel conflicted about it, but I guess this is probably what will happen with every subsequent generation to some degree. Maybe we’ll just never understand each other, or worse, maybe they’ll never really know me the way I wish they could. I just don’t think they have the capacity to know me and what I’m really about.

And that makes me sad because then I think: what if my future kids end up feeling the exact same way about me? 

“Home”

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“Have so much fun at home!” a few of my colleagues exclaimed as I was heading out on Friday. “It will be so nice for you to spend time with your parents and family!”

Home means different things to different people. Oftentimes when you tell others you are going home, it conjures up the idea of going back to the familiar, to the house or neighborhood in which you were raised in all of its relative sheltered glory. It can mean getting pampered by your parents with all of your favorite home-cooked meals, getting your mom to do your laundry for you since you’re a “special” temporary guest at the house for a finite period of time, and having whatever errands you don’t like doing done for you by your parents or siblings. It means seeing all your family and friends you grew up with again.

Usually, these feelings that “home” conjures up are happy. Colleagues think it must be happy. Friends from where you currently live think it must be relaxing for you. Well, “happy” or “relaxing” are not necessarily the first words that come to mind when I think of going back home. In fact, better adjectives to describe my feelings about going home include “conflicted,” “stressed,” “anxious,” and “torn.”

I love San Francisco. I love it even with how increasingly expensive it is becoming, despite the increasing homelessness problem that the city refuses to acknowledge or take care of, despite that neighborhoods I used to walk through look completely different today than what they were twenty years ago. What I do not love are all the unnecessary and completely made up conflicts of my family, immediate and not immediate, the senseless arguments I know will happen within days of arriving because of my mother’s twisted, negative way of looking at the world and assuming everyone is out to get her (and me, for that matter), and the awareness that every single time I go home, I know I will never see my brother again. It is a constant and inevitable reminder that he is dead, gone from this world by his own hand, and likely to get the hell away from all the undeserved, incessant criticism and torture he endured in that house on the hill we grew up in. Every moment I am there, I feel like I am waiting to get accused of doing something wrong or not doing something I should have done, or getting criticized for something about Chris or his family or both. I try to deal with it for a few blows by not saying anything, by being silent, but I’m not weak, so I cannot just sit there and take it. So of course inevitably, I will yell back and let her know I’m not going to take her made up lies and perceived hate.  I know most people say that all other (Asian) parents are kind of like this. After speaking with different families and therapists for most of my life, I know that what I face, and what my brother used to face, is quite a bit different.

What is scary, though, is that oftentimes when kids feel this way about their parents, their parents have no clue they have these feelings. Mine are included here. They think we must be excited to come home. They’re temporarily excited to have us home for the first few days. They don’t have the awareness that their excitement is temporary, though. They cannot imagine why we would not want to visit. I mean, they raised us and brought us into this world, right? We owe them. How could we not want to visit? That’s… being ungrateful. The least we could do is visit, especially since in my case, we’re not… supporting them. Maybe it’s the immigrant Asian thing. Immigrant Asians think they gave their kids a “better life” by immigrating to a Western country with supposedly better opportunities and privileges. Because they made these sacrifices, they think their kids owe them. I’ve had to think about this almost my whole life, and I still cannot quite wrap my head around these two generations reconciling this conflict fully. It doesn’t seem like it has a resolution. It’s one of those things that just goes with you to the grave.

So, all of the above is why the concept of “home” is so conflicting for me. It’s why when other colleagues who live away from home tell me they are going home, I don’t immediately make comments like, “That’s so great!” or “That’s so exciting!” or “It will be so relaxing for you!” I don’t really mind hearing comments like this directed to me because they’re just generic, and I don’t expect everyone to be aware of my dysfunctional home, nor do I expect others to be sensitive to the fact that “home” is not a happy place for everyone. When others tell me they are going home, I usually respond with a comment like, “Are you looking forward to it?” Funnily enough, a lot of times, I don’t get a positive response to that.

There are more unhappy families out there than people realize. Or, maybe people just want to live in their tiny ignorant bubbles and believe that most families are happy and seemingly functional.

SF planning

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I spoke with my dad today on the phone and let him know that I want us to go to Mount Tamalpais and the Point Reyes lighthouse in Marin County when we’re back in a couple weeks. He sounded excited about the lighthouse, since he’s been mentioning visiting it for years and just hasn’t gone (that is normal for him), but then he didn’t seem too enthused when I told him we were going hiking. My dad doesn’t like to walk even three blocks to buy groceries.

“Well, your mom probably can’t walk too much,” he said to me. “So I’m not sure hiking is a good idea.”

“It’s going to be less than a mile at a time,” I responded. “She’ll be fine.”

My mom is fine walking, say, twenty-one blocks to her Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall for her service meetings, but she’s seemingly not okay walking even half a mile if it’s on a dirt path?

The last time my parents explored this area was before my brother and I were even born, in the 1970s. That was a time when most of these roads were in pretty terrible condition, and way before they repaved everything to make the area more tourist friendly (and frankly, driver-safe — we’re in a cliff zone here). It kind of makes me sad to hear that, though. Living in the Bay Area, while extremely (and increasingly) expensive) has so many benefits, one of which is being so close to nature, gorgeous coastal views, and all the benefits of the outdoors. We should be taking advantage of all these benefits to make the most of our time in these places. But I guess not everyone agrees with that perspective.

Research study

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Tonight, my friend, who works at an “innovation firm” (I’m pretty sure that’s just a BS-y way of saying consulting firm), reached out to ask if I might know anyone who is a recent empty nester, and if he/she’d be willing to participate in a one-hour interview for a study he has just been assigned to work on. I thought about everyone older I know who might fit this category, and I remembered that Chris’s dad’s cousin has children who have just left home who might actually fit the bill. I reached out to Chris’s dad to ask, and they immediately responded and said they’d participate (and they’d be rewarded $100 for their one-hour contribution to this study, so if I were them, I’d take my friend up on the offer, too!). My friend asked what they were like, and I told him they actually came to our wedding and were some of the kindest people in the world. But then as I was typing this out over text, I realized I say that about almost everyone in Chris’s family. The only people I really don’t say this about… are my own family. My own family, extended and immediate, are not the kindest people in the world, and if they are acting like they are, it is exactly what I said it is — an act, unless it’s my sweet aunt. Everyone else is doing it for a show or because they are expecting something.

I just think it is so exhausting to expect something all the time and put on a show when I don’t really mean it. It’s no wonder that nowadays, I am very rarely called the “nicest person ever” the way I once was in middle school, or the way certain women at my office are called. It’s just too tiring. It’s too tiring to not be myself and to be nice all the damn time.

But then if I got really cynical about this, are Chris’s dad’s cousins genuinely the kindest people in the world, or are they just… acting like that? I have a feeling it’s not the latter.

68th

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Today is my dad’s 68th birthday. Every year since my brother passed away, it’s hard for me to think about my dad’s birthday without thinking about my brother’s death and the fact that he’s not here. When I spoke with my primary care doctor two months ago about my dad’s heart surgery, she told me that because of the double bypass, he pretty much has a brand new heart with new vessels and should be good for at least another decade or even three if he takes good care of himself. If I were a parent, how would I feel knowing that I would outlive my son by over three decades?

I always wonder what my dad really thinks about his son’s death, if he ever looks back and wonders if he could have said something more, criticized less, spent more time with him and nurtured him. I wonder if he ever has regrets that he just refuses to share with us, or even worse, refuses to reveal to himself. It’s difficult to navigate the mind of someone who is so emotionally removed and stoic almost all the time. It will always be one of those eternal mysteries that lingers in the back of my own mind.