The way this trip has been set up, I really won’t have much, if any, alone time with my mom at all. It’s usually the times when Chris would go to the office or leave early to go back to New York when she’d corner me and chew me out about something she didn’t like or got mad about that I did. But we don’t have those windows this time because a) Chris isn’t working and b) Chris and Kaia will be with me the whole time. The little bit of alone time we got yesterday was during our walk to the pie shop in the Outer Richmond. I was getting annoyed at how cluttered, dirty, and dangerous the house has become. When I look back at my childhood, our home, for the most part, wasn’t very cluttered at all. My dad was anal retentive with organization back then; he always knew where everything was, and everything had its place. In his older age now, he is dirtier, more cluttered, and hoarding like never before: multiple toaster ovens (“in case ours breaks”) are stacked on top of each other in the basement. A dresser is sitting in the corner of the dining room table. An exercise bike is positioned blocking a dining room chair in the dining room. Piles of boxes, cans, and who-knows-what completely cover the breakfast room table. You can barely see any of the dining room table surface. The amount of hoarding has really gotten out of control. It’s almost like some switch got turned on in my dad’s brain when he hit his 60s, and he just wants to hoard everything humanly possible. My parents could not conceivably enjoy living in their own home. And if you cannot be comfortable in your own home, then where are you going to be comfortable?

I made this case to my mom, and she insisted that she “is disabled,” and she doesn’t make the decisions of the house. I pointed out to my dad that the kitchen floor was buckling and bubbling; he stepped on it to confirm it, then had no reaction. I pointed out all the spider webs growing on the ceilings of both bathrooms and all over the kitchen. My dad nodded to acknowledge he heard me, but he did nothing to change it. In some way, the amount of dirt, dust, and cob webs that have accumulated everywhere is like a sign of death and decay of the house.

Ten years ago if I noticed this stuff, I would have immediately been all over it and vacuumed up the cob webs, dusted and wiped down all the surfaces, and cleaned up all the clutter. But I wouldn’t have been able to throw it away; I would only have been able to toss it into some bin or box. So once I’d leave, it would all become a mess again. I did this cleanup once before, years ago, and my dad was completely up in arms and hissed at me, even though all his little screws and tools were scattered all over the sun room floor. I don’t do it anymore because I know it will be a temporary fix, and once I leave, it will all be in a disarray again. Plus, I don’t have that much time here anymore. I also have a toddler to care for, and she’s my priority while visiting in that house, not the nastiness of the state of my parents’ living situation.

In the short time we’ve been here thus far, Kaia has already managed to get her foot stuck in a snap mouse trap (which luckily was weak and did NOT snap on her), got her hand glued to a mouse glue trap, and also taken out almost all the detergents and cleaners within reach in both the toilet room and the main bathroom. She’s taken my mom’s vitamin/pills mini plate, stolen my dad’s pill containers, and grabbed endless of my mom’s little trinkets at her sitting area. She’s also tried to open bottles of Lysol, Pine Sol, and other harsh surface spray cleaners. I told my mom that Kaia was grabbing everything, and why didn’t they clean up before we arrived (she claims they did)? And her response was, “You have to watch her!” Ummmm, yeah. We cannot watch her every second. We’ll be lucky if we leave this house once this trip is over and don’t have to call the Poison Control Center.

The last time I came back to San Francisco, it was exactly two years ago, in August 2022, for a team offsite. That was a much larger team offsite, whereas this one is for a smaller and slightly different group. But I did the same type of trip, staying in San Francisco at my parents’ for the two surrounding weekends and staying at a hotel during the weeknights. This time, we’re going up to Sacramento for two days. This time, Kaia is also two years older, bigger, and very, very verbal. She takes in everything around her, sizes people up, and decides who she likes and who she doesn’t pretty quickly. She had heard my mom over speaker phone during our calls over the last couple of weeks, so when my mom called yesterday and I had her on speaker, Kaia immediately asked, “Is that Popo?” And so when I told her that we’d be seeing Popo and Gonggong, she knew who we were going to see.

We landed at SFO early. Our one checked luggage came out quickly, and we got into an Uber headed to my parents’ house. And after we arrived and unloaded, we had an uneventful and awkward lunch. Kaia ate an entire cha siu bao, a huge one. My mom went between hovering over her and kissing her when she was least expecting it to going back into the kitchen to fuss and clean over something. My dad awkwardly sat there and ate his food, chewing with his mouth open as always, and said almost nothing. I asked him what he had been up to lately, and he said, “Not much.” I asked him what he did during the day to fill his time, and he responded simply, “YouTube and yard work.” That was really the extent of our riveting conversation. My mom said that she was spending her days doing “Jehovah’s work,” and that after that, she had to rest her neck/back and do all the chores around the house.

The house is, for the most part, in worse shape than it was two years ago — more peeling paint, more drawers and cupboard doors and doors and knobs that don’t seem to work properly, and more clutter, whether that’s from Craigslist hoarding or from overbuying toilet paper. The Costco toilet paper that my parents hoarded during the pandemic had previously filled most of the sunroom space. But now, there are at least six Costco packages of toilet paper right in the damn hallway. Every table surface, whether it’s the dining room table, breakfast room table, side tables in the living room, and even the shelves in my old bedroom are covered with crap. Just to lay out a cutting board on the kitchen counter, I had to clear off so much stuff. And this would not be surprising: there is a MOUSE problem at my parents’ now. My old bedroom has at least eight mouse traps set. And of course, Kaia manages to walk right into one (which luckily, was not set properly, so it didn’t snap her), and then grab a glue trap and get it stuck to her arm.

I told my mom during our walk today to pick up a pie that they are inviting the mice with all their clutter. They have created a nice, inviting, warm home with plenty of places to hide and sleep and play for the mice with all their accumulated crap, so they can keep setting up all the mouse traps that they want. But the mice will never leave the mouse until all the clutter is gone. And she started hissing at me and saying I was causing trouble. “Why can’t you just be peaceful?” my mom whined. I told her she always wanted to assume ill intention: doesn’t she realize that I am saying all of this out of pure concern for their health and well-being? Mice in the house is not a sanitary state. It is NOT clean. And having clutter literally everywhere and on every surface and all over the floors simply creates more opportunity for my parents to fall and seriously hurt themselves. For people of their age, really severe falls and accidents happen at home more than in any other place. And at their age, their bones do not heal as quickly. Why can’t they understand something so basic?

It’s also funny how quickly Kaia picks up on how sad, miserable, and uninviting my parents’ floor is versus my aunt’s warm, welcoming home upstairs. She sees how bad it is and handles it in her own way. My aunt’s space upstairs is the exact same layout as my parents’, yet the space is decorated warmly for guests, and there’s actually clear spaces to walk and run. It’s like night and day between their two homes in the same freaking building. So Kaia loved running endlessly up and down my aunt’s hallway to her bedroom and back into the living room. She didn’t want to leave. And she kept asking to go back upstairs: ” I wanna go upstairs and see Mumu.” Little kids are so discerning, but my parents don’t seem to get this.

It’s like my subconscious is awakened when it knows I’m heading back home to San Francisco soon. For the first time in ages, I dreamt about Ed again. And this dream was not a pleasant one. It was like the dreams I had for the months after he died 11 years ago where he kept dying and killing himself in different ways.

I dreamt I was back at my parents’ house, and I thought I was home by myself. I went into the bathroom, and there was a large baby bathtub suspended above the regular bathtub. But it was weird because I could see a pair of legs under the baby tub. I moved the baby bathtub to reveal my brother, face up, eyes closed, half drenched in water and unconscious. He was wearing the Ed Uniform: long white-sleeved shirt, beige khakis, and black zip-up jacket, no socks. I screamed, grabbed and shook him, and asked him to wake up. He was completely unresponsive. I ran to grab my phone and call 911.

I woke up abruptly at about 3am. I felt sweaty and extremely irritable. Just a few hours before, I had woken up, asked Kaia if she needed to pee while she was still asleep. She clearly was fast asleep. But within seconds, I heard “ssssssssssss” — the sound of her peeing right onto her waterproof hospitable blanket mat. Great. I ran to soak up as much pee as possible. When I asked if she wanted to pee, I meant… pee in the potty.

I hate those dreams so much. It always is a reminder to me of how powerless I was in Ed’s desperate situation, how powerless I will continue to be in the constant miserable state of my parents’ lives. It’s like the theme of my family life with my parents and Ed: powerless, always, with nothing humanly possible to do to help.

My aunt, who was my mom’s only current living sibling, her older sister, passed away three days ago. She wasn’t feeling well, got hospitalized, and died from a stroke. My mom got a text message very early this morning and a call from one of her nephews, who informed her. Of course, my mom was completely distraught. She left Vietnam in 1971 during the Vietnam (American) War. She didn’t see her sister or any of her family until January 2008. That’s 37 years of not seeing your blood family. It was an emotional reunion, and one that was short lived since we only stayed there for about 2.5 weeks. My parents never went back to Vietnam after that visit. And so, that was the last time we saw my aunt.

It’s strange to call my mom’s sister my aunt because I didn’t really know her or anything about her until I went to Vietnam in 2008. My mom always said that her sister was why she had everything she had. My aunt was the one who helped her learn English when their mother refused to let my mom go to school, saying school was wasted on a girl, especially the youngest in the family. My aunt was the one who encouraged my mom to apply for the U.S. Army position, which eventually led to her meeting my dad at work. My aunt was the one who housed her in Quy Nhon while my mom worked. She was also the one who convinced my mom to reconsider the marriage proposal my dad had made, after my mom first rejected my dad, saying she couldn’t go to the U.S. and leave her family behind. My mom always said that she owed her life first to her sister, and then to my dad. When I first met her, she ran to me, cried, pulled me into her arms, and held me tightly. I held her back, but it felt strange since I knew nothing about her. I still remember how skinny, bony, and frail she was, yet her grip and hold were so strong. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry because I didn’t really know her. And given our mom never taught Ed and me Vietnamese, I could never communicate with her the whole time I was in Vietnam. My mom was the perpetual (and exhausted) translator.

I got food poisoning for the first only real time in my life on that trip to Vietnam in 2008. And I could see her worry; that’s one thing that she and my mom shared: constant worry about literally everything imaginable. My aunt made me ginger tea every day. She boiled me a special chicken broth. She took care of me like I was her own child. And all I could say back to her was, “cam on” (thank you) in my perfectly accented Vietnamese that only knew how to say just a handful of Vietnamese words. I guess my ear picked up my mom’s accent over all the years listening to her speak in her central Vietnamese accent, and I was told that even though I knew only a few words, I spoke them as though I was a native speaker.

I know my mom is hurting now. I am sure she feels deep regret for only having visited her sister once the entire time she’s been in the U.S. She probably regrets not sending her more money. I’m sure she’s full of complicated feelings and deep sadness now that her only living sibling is now gone. But on my side, I’m not sure what to do to help make her feel better. It’s a hard place to be when you want to help someone, but there’s literally nothing you can do to comfort them. Losing an aunt is a loss for me, too, given she is my blood-related aunt. But it’s such a distant loss that I don’t really feel anything, as sad as that may be. It’s like hearing that a friend’s friend passed. It’s sad, but there’s not much else there to feel.

I’ve probably joked multiple times (maybe half joked) that there’s no way that I could divorce Chris because I love his family too much. His parents have welcomed me into their family with open arms and always treated me with love, care, and affection. His mom has probably gone out of her way to be sensitive to my feelings, even being a bit too careful and making me wonder why she felt a need to walk on egg shells when framing certain questions she’s asked me. This year marks 12 years of having a relationship with them, and at some point, I really think she should just let her guard down and not be so careful about hurting my feelings with relatively reasonable questions. His dad has always been warm and amiable, always generous at even the most unexpected moment. And with Chris’s brother, I probably see him as close to a real brother as I possibly could. We even squabble and debate like siblings sometimes. We definitely complain to each other like people who have known each other forever.

I have never taken for granted the fact that every year I’ve gone to Melbourne for Christmas, they have always opened their home to me and asked me to treat it like home away from home. That’s a LOT of Christmases between 2012 and now; the only years we did not go back in December were 2017, 2020, and 2021. In total, we probably stay about 2.5-3 weeks total given we do a side trip somewhere else in Australia, and usually end somewhere in Asia. But when you think about it, that’s a lot of time to spend in someone else’s home. I always thank them multiple times throughout the stay for their warm hospitality and eagerness to make me feel comfortable and welcome in their home. It’s especially important to feel welcome in someone’s home when you are traveling halfway across the world.

So when I heard that my friend, who lives in San Francisco, was told directly a number of times that she and her family probably shouldn’t stay longer than two days at a time at her in-laws’ home in Singapore, especially given her young kids were loud and screamed, which caused the mother-in-law a lot of mental distress, I felt hurt myself. San Francisco to Singapore is not a short trip, and on top of that, they’re always there for about a month, which is a LONG time. So to think they are unwanted when so far away just seems like daggers for the sake of daggers. While I felt hurt for my friend, I felt even more grateful for my own situation and how I’ve never, even for a moment, felt that way while in Australia. I am really lucky, really beyond lucky.

I called my dad today to wish him a happy 76th birthday. Unfortunately, he did not pick up, so I’m hoping he saw my missed call. Afterwards, I texted him to say happy birthday, and that a gift would be arriving in the next few days from the three of us. I’m not sure if he will call back since he never calls me.

When I first graduated from college, I used to call my dad on his birthday every year, assuming that I wasn’t in town at the time. But I started realizing that he never called me. He might send me a birthday card or a birthday email, but he never reached out on my birthday. I didn’t really love it, though I know he’s just socially awkward in general. And I recognize that any acknowledgment is better than zero acknowledgment. But it never made sense to me that my dad never wanted to wish his only daughter (and now, his only living child) a happy birthday by voice. So in recent years, I’ve actually stopped calling. I send a birthday card or gift, and I usually text to send happy wishes. But that’s really it.

I hope he calls back. But I don’t want to hope too much since oftentimes when we raise our expectations, they’re just never met. As of today, he’s now officially lived 12 years longer than both his own father and his older brother. I hope he feels like he’s had a life better lived than the two of them did.

I have one email account that I use almost completely for mailing lists, whether that is news summaries, shopping, food blog reading, and the related. I noticed that this year for the first time, I got a lot of suggestions for different businesses I follow that if I don’t want to see Mother’s or Father’s Day-related emails that I could just do a one-click opt-out for these specific promotions. My social media seemed to be peppered with how “triggering” Mother’s/Father’s Day can be for various reasons, whether it’s because you have a less-than-ideal relationship with your own mother or father, your children, or if you’re struggling to conceive, etc. All of the above can be true for many people, so I understand why businesses are trying to be more empathetic about what promotions they are pushing, and to whom.

I always get annoyed by Mother’s and Father’s Day when I really think about them. But I think the crux of my annoyance is that my relationship with both my parents is quite far from ideal, and it’s certainly not from a lack of trying on my part. I think about all the years when Ed and I tried to do nice things for our parents, and it was met with indifference or open dislike. Sometimes, we got scolded at and told we spent too much money. Once, my mom flat out rejected this cashmere sweater my brother got her and yelled, insisting that he return it because it cost too much money. Ed was so upset at this response, but he obediently returned it. In some cases, we gave gifts that were literally left on a table for months on end, never opened and barely even acknowledged. Even when it happened repeatedly, and you would think after a while we’d get used to it, it still always hurt. These responses, and sometimes lack thereof, always made us feel as though our efforts went unappreciated. NO ONE likes to feel unappreciated for the efforts they make to please another human, particularly partners, spouses, and children.

My parents just don’t appreciate gifts or when people do nice things for them. When people do things like treat them to meals or buy them gifts, my mom immediately feels “guilt,” and compelled to return the favor as soon as humanly possible. It was always infuriating to watch. So I always hate giving them gifts unless they are things they explicitly ask for, like skincare for my mom.

This year for Father’s Day, which was this past Sunday, I decided to go the “safe route” and get my dad something he could easily consume with little effort on his part. So I got him some hibiscus flowers to steep for cold hibiscus tea (it’s good for blood pressure, so I figured that would resonate with him), plus some chai concentrate, to which he’d just have to add his choice of milk. My dad rarely says thank you unless my mom reminds him to because he’s an overgrown child, so I usually have to prompt him with a message like, “Just checking to see you got (name the gift)/wanted to see if (X gift) arrived?”

Eventually he will respond to the text or email. This time, this is what he wrote:

“Hi Yvonne,
I received the hibiscus
Yesterday. Thank you. Whatever happen to the Kaia’ videos? She is very depressed so can you resume sending them?”

The underlying message here is that I am basically fueling my mom’s “depression” by not sending regular videos of their grandchild. This is not the first time my dad has sent me a message like this.

I have very little patience for people like my mother who do nothing to help themselves. My mom is hardly in a dire life situation: she gets a pension check and a social security check in the mail regularly. She doesn’t have to work or support/raise anyone. She has a roof over her head, one that was fully paid off decades ago by her in-laws that has the teeniest property tax known to the average person. She gets regular free, prepared food and produce from Meals on Wheels (how valid this is that she qualifies for this program is another story for another day). She’s in reasonably good health. What exactly is she “depressed” about?

As I’ve learned the hard way with Ed’s ongoing depression, no one person can save another person from the pit that is depression. It really starts with the person in question. When a person who is depressed refuses treatment or therapy, there’s not much that can be done, as sad as it is. I told my dad that if she’s really depressed, then she can seek a psychologist referral from her doctor. My dad simply responded, “She doesn’t want it.” Well, then, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink. Nothing I do can “cure” her depression. And if she chooses to have no relationship with her only grandchild by never doing any video/phone calls with her, by not even interacting with her when she’s right in front of her face, then none of that is on me.

Yesterday, my friend came over for dinner, and eventually the topic of our parents came up. While her relationship with her parents is not as fractured as mine is, she definitely has strained relationships with both parents and wish it could be better. In her family, she somehow always gets labeled the “selfish” one who needs to be accommodated, even when she actually bends over backwards to do the exact opposite. And her older sister, in her usual pattern, always plays “victim” and has both parents feeling sorry for her and blaming my friend in the end. It makes no sense, but what does in a dysfunctional family?

I told her that I hadn’t spoken with my mom since end of February after she accused me of being mad at her for not sending money to Kaia (and as for my dad, I haven’t spoken with him over the phone since right before our August 2022 visit with Kaia, when he (figuratively) fell off his rocker and called me a bitch for no legitimate reason). I think it should go without saying that I’ve never had a track record or any record of being a gold digger or seeking out my parents solely for their money. So it’s beyond insulting to think that she’d come up with this crap in her head. It’s just yet another sign to me of how poisoned my mother’s brain has become over the years. She once had so much promise and positivity about the world, but as the years have gone by and bitterness through her experiences has chipped away at her, now she is just a mentally unstable, negativity inducing old woman who chooses to see the worst in everyone. And when there is nothing “bad” to see, she decides, in her head, to fabricate lies about what some given person has said, done, or “thought.”

That just reminded me of my bad memories growing up, being frightened that my mom WAS actually the thought police, policing my thoughts and trying to tell me how to “feel” or even “think.” That was pretty awful, to say the least.

I’ve tried to give my parents nice experiences through vacations that they were never grateful for (and nitpicked over what they spent money on vs. what Chris or I bought for them). I’ve tried buying them nice gifts. I’ve paid for meals for them. I’ve tried spending time with them in various ways when I go back to San Francisco, which they have rejected, complained about, or in one case, where my dad just stormed off and said he didn’t want to go (on a stupid walk, of all things). I said very flattering and gracious things about both of them at my wedding during speeches. I think I’ve tried what I can do to in order to make our relationship better from my side. But it’s not fair for me to do all the work. It takes both sides of a relationship to make it better, and they just keep doing everything in their power to make our relationship worst, whether they are aware of it or not. They have pushed me away, so far that I don’t really think we’ll ever recover.

So, I think back to what my therapist told me two years ago. “It’s okay to mourn the relationship you wish you had, but don’t,” she said. I told my friend this, as well, and she agreed that it was a good thing to hear and be told, and even reminded of. My therapist reminded me of this a few times, and I probably really needed to hear it. Usually, I just brush it off and try to be strong about it. I hate feeling sorry for myself, especially when I know that all around, I’ve lived a very privileged, fun-filled life with rich experiences and good relationships. “Why do you have to say that?” she’d ask me. “So, what… because you have some privileges, you’re not allowed to be sad about what you wish you had or don’t have?” Okay, fair point.

But I have moments of real sadness, especially when I see and hear of other people around my age who have very healthy, loving relationships with their parents. I feel a bit envious and wonder why I got the shit end of the stick when it came to parents. They don’t even have a relationship with my only child, their only grandchild. It’s beyond senseless. And when I think about it really deeply, I just get incensed to the point where I want to bash their faces in.

So, that’s part of what my friend and I talked about last night, and I suppose it’s fitting since Father’s Day is this coming Sunday. I’ll send my dad a gift and probably barely get a response or thank you over text or email, and we’ll all carry on with our separate lives as we always do. I’ve made peace with it because I know in my heart that I’ve done everything in my power to improve our relationship… while they have done absolutely nothing because they continue to live in their own past trauma and lack the emotional maturity to treat their only living child even decently.