We caught up with a couple of Chris’s friends separately before heading over to Chris’s cousins’ house for our last family get-together before leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow, and as I was chatting with his best friend, we watched his three-year-old son play in the children’s play area of the mall we were having coffee at. He said that although he loved his son, he was looking forward to time away from him in March for our California wedding, and even more so if his wife would be able to come, since her attendance was still pending due to employment uncertainty. He said he’s been spending a lot of time catching up with a mutual friend of his and Chris’s, who has been with his wife for years now, and they have a few children together. He was troubled when his friend said to him that without the kids, he wouldn’t know what he would talk about with his wife. That made me feel troubled, too, just hearing that. It seems to be a common thing with new parents, forgetting why they got married in the first place and having their children be their number one priority in their lives, before even each other. Children should of course be the priority of their parents, but the parents can’t forget about each other as husband and wife, wife and wife, life partner and life partner – whatever the pairing is. I don’t think most of us get married thinking that our number one reason for getting married is procreation – at least, I hope it isn’t. I don’t think it’s a selfish thing for married couples to want to have time away from their children and just be together; if anything, I think that is a human need. And those types of needs should not be ignored.
Category Archives: Family dysfunction
Hen’s night
Today was Chris’s buck’s day/night, which is British/Aussie slang for bachelor party. He decided to have a multigenerational celebration, so his uncles and dad came, as well. While he was away with his male family and friends, his mom treated me to afternoon tea at the Hotel Windsor, one of the oldest and most glamorous hotels in Melbourne. On weekends, they have a special treat for afternoon tea guests, as they serve you a glass of French champagne and have a full dessert buffet in the middle of the tea room that includes a tall chocolate fountain, in which you can dip various chunked fruit and cakes, a Christmas pudding station, a custom crepe station with a server making each delicate crepe from scratch, and what seemed like an endless variety of petit fours, French sweets, and other individually portioned cakes, pies, slices, and desserts, everything from mango cheesecake, crème brulee, vanilla mille feuille, pistachio and raspberry cakes with intense pistachio flavor, fruit mince pies, multiple flavors of macarons, and mousses.
The usual tiered afternoon tea stands were gracefully presented at our table with a layer of crust-less tea sandwiches, little savory eclairs, mini meat mince pies, and savory pumpkin tarts, and topped with these perfect little scones, some plain, some with dried fruit. The variety of mango and passion fruit desserts made this experience uniquely Aussie vs. American, as well as the fruit and meat mince pies. The savory use of pumpkin was also more expected of the Aussie use of pumpkin in food, whereas I’d never seen this before at any afternoon tea spot in San Francisco or New York. Another thing that made this experience more Aussie was the subpar service. At afternoon tea at a five-star hotel in the U.S., such as the Plaza Hotel in New York, where I’ve had tea once, they present your tea almost immediately after you choose your leaf selection, and they eagerly come to refill your tiered trays as soon as they are even just half empty. There, they constantly come to dote on you and ask you if you need anything else. Here, a server came to ask to replenish only once, and our individual tea pots came out almost 20 minutes after our tiered trays came out, which was pretty ridiculous. No one came to replenish our hot water until almost an hour and a half into our dining session, too. And when I exclaimed in excitement, “Wow, there’s a custom crepe station?” when I saw the crepe chef in the middle of the room flipping, she grunted, “Yes, there is,” with the most surly facial expression possible. The servers here really seemed to hate their job and hate serving.
We came back home, and in a few hours, all of Chris’s female cousins, aunts on his dad’s side, and mom’s cousin and daughter in the area came for a semi-surprise “hen’s night” party in honor of me. We enjoyed food, conversation, a game that included a video of Chris, another around clothes pins, and Loaded Questions, and so many laughs that triggered the lingering effects of my whooping cough and further exacerbated the aches and pains in my back muscles and ribs through the night. We were all together for just over five hours, yet when I think back to my original bridal shower and bachelorette weekend back in San Francisco and Monterey in September, I realized I probably laughed more and harder tonight than I did at my own event with my own friends and family then. I guess it makes more sense since everyone here knows each other really well and we have a connection to each other, as opposed to the people back home who didn’t really know each other at all and were meeting for the first time, but it was just an observation and take away I had at the end of the night. We did have Chris’s mom’s cousin and daughter come, the daughter I met once last year and really liked, and the cousin I was meeting for the very first time tonight, and somehow they fit in straight away and got into all the inside jokes.
I guess if I really had to sum it up, the group of ten women tonight vs. the group of six in Monterey and about 16 in San Francisco are just more laid back and easy going. Uptightness doesn’t seem to exist in this group (a smidgen with Chris’s mom, but even that is so mild compared to my circle back home), and everyone truly does go with the flow and doesn’t take anything that seriously. I don’t know if uptightness is a disposition that one is just born with or something one is conditioned to be or not be based on nurture and environment, but it’s a relief to not worry so much about what I am saying or doing, fearing that I may offend someone in the room. I know if we were ever to play Loaded Questions or listen to Chris on video answering questions about himself and then me answering and comparing, a lot of my own female family members, if not ALL of them, would decline or refuse to partake in the activity, and some, like my mom, may even get offended at Chris’s answers or some of the Loaded Question questions. What will be really interesting to see is how all these women get along during our wedding week coming up in March, and if my side will even make the slightest effort to get to know these women traveling so far over beyond “Hi. How are you?” and “How do you know Yvonne/Chris?”
Menace
Last night, I dreamt I was at home, and my dad was showing Ed how to do something in the kitchen. My dad has a lot of good qualities, but teaching is not one of them. In fact, he’s probably the last person I know who I’d ever ask to teach me something because he gets extremely impatient and frustrated easily when showing anyone how to do anything. He thinks people can read his mind when he has explanations that he chooses not to verbalize because they are simply “common sense.”
Needless to say, this session was not going well, and my dad starts criticizing my brother, saying he’s doing it all wrong, that he’s useless and can’t do anything right. Ed immediately walks away from the kitchen and goes into the back room of the house. I follow him and start running after him. Ed is facing the window, and I said, “Hey… turn around. Let me give you a hug.” He reluctantly turns around and looks at my face and then opens his arms towards me. I hug him and hold him tightly, and then I start crying. “It’s okay, Ed,” I said to him, rubbing his back. “You’re not useless. You can do lots of things well. I know you can. I love you. You’re going to remember that, right?” He says nothing, but I can feel his tears dripping on my back, and he tightens his grip on me.
And a happy Boxing Day to you, too.
Family “fun”
Sometimes, I can’t even be around my family for ten minutes without hearing something really senseless and irrational being said or done. I had lunch with my aunt today, who is here for two months from San Francisco to help take care of her grandson in Brooklyn, and she informed me that her son, this grandchild’s dad, and his wife may not be coming to the wedding in March because they noticed that our wedding date is on a Friday, and in their words, “But Ryan has school that day.” This child just turned three years old. His schooling is hardly going to impair him in life if he misses a couple of days for this wedding. And our wedding is on Good Friday when many schools and businesses will be closed. There is zero logic in my family.
The other alternative, as his wife noted, was that my cousin could go, and she could stay behind with their son, who absolutely cannot miss a day of school no matter what. My aunt expressed her disagreement and dissatisfaction to them and to me.
I can’t believe it. Even when I make things really simple for my family, they find ways to make everything hard for themselves.
Mom’s take on terrorism
I talked to my mom on the phone today, and she asked me if I was aware of the attacks that happened in Paris last week. Of course I know, I said. Everyone knows.
“You’re really lucky that it didn’t happen while you were there,” she said in an admonishing tone. “I’m telling you right now. It’s dangerous to be traveling.”
I reassured her that it didn’t matter where in the world I was because terrorism could happen anywhere, at any time and any place. And lo and behold, New York City has just received ISIS death threats! I had to add in that last part because, well, how can I not be where I live and work?!
“Yes, I know about New York,” she said. “That’s why I told you not to go anywhere at night! It’s dangerous! Just stay home!”
Yes, because terrorists would never think to be out and about, bombing and shooting random people in the morning or during business hours Monday through Friday. They have to wait until the evening when it is dark to start shooting and killing people.
I stopped responding. I need to get better at not responding and just nodding my head.
“Unnecessary”
I let my dad know yesterday that we’re going to Australia for Christmas this year. He didn’t seem mind; in fact, he sounded like he was expecting it. I knew he’d tell my mom, who would get mad about it, so I was waiting for the point in our conversation tonight when she’d bring it up and demonstrate her frustration.
“You know, you can do what you want to do (that’s code for: you shouldn’t do what you want to do because it’s always a bad decision), but why are you spending all that money to go to Australia again this year? You’ve already seen Chris’s parents four times this year (that’s not even true; I saw them in the spring when they visited New York, and in October at Andy and Navine’s wedding in France). Why do you need to see them a fifth time this year? It’s unnecessary. I can see if you hadn’t seen them even once this year, but already four times! This is just not necessary. And then you are going to see them again in March!”
This is what I do. I try to respond calmly and rationally. It never works because she never actually hears anything I am saying. I told her that I’d only seen them twice this year, and the second time was for a wedding, which is a big deal even if it isn’t to her (because when I told her earlier this year we were going to the France wedding, she again said it was unnecessary and it was just spending money and wasting it… yes, wasting money to go to a close family member’s wedding. A waste). We’re going to Australia to spend Christmas with them. Christmas is a big deal in their family. My parents don’t give a crap about Christmas. Therefore, she will never understand.
In my mom’s world, spending money, airplane travel, and having fun seem to all be unnecessary. “Chris doesn’t care about us. He just wants you to spend time with his parents and his family. Do you really think he cares about us? I had (hand) surgery last week, and he didn’t even call to see how I was doing!” That’s because I told him it was minor and that you were fine. But she doesn’t care.
“Airplanes are dangerous. They crash. If your plane crashes, he is responsible for my daughter,” her voice getting louder at this point.
Time to end the call. The jealousy and absurdity were just getting to be too much.
Invitation prep
Chris and I have spent the weekend going through wedding to-dos, writing out wedding invitations, preparing the envelopes, and going through the mailing address list. There were a few names on the list of people who are my mom’s friends who we didn’t have addresses for, and so I had to call my mom to ask for their addresses. This is one of the must frustrating things because my mom is honestly one of the most disorganized people I know. It will take her weeks to find a friend’s address because she has about five different address books in five different places, and she doesn’t even write all the addresses in those books. She writes them on random note pads that she leaves all over the house. This is not an exaggeration.
So I called her today to ask for a friend’s address, and she says, “Why are you sending her an invitation? She got laid off from her job a few months ago.”
Well, this isn’t really about job status, is it? It’s just our sending her an invitation, and she can RSVP yes or no or whatever she wants regardless of whether she can come. She’s a good friend of my mom’s, so I’m not sure why she wouldn’t want her to at least get invited formally.
“I don’t think you should send her the invitation,” my mom persists. “She has nothing to offer.”
I realize that in the majority of immigrant Asian families, people throw weddings expecting to bank it in and profit. I’m Westernized to the point where I don’t look at it this way, so regardless of whether she comes or doesn’t, gives money or doesn’t, I really only added her to the list because my mom asked me to a year ago. I did what I was told, and now I’m being told to undo what I was told to do.
“Did you remember to put on the invitation that you want cash only?” my mom said. “You don’t need junk gifts.” I wanted to grind my teeth.
My family is too complicated.
Bullying
This afternoon, we went to see Hasan Minhaj’s show Homecoming King at the Cherry Lane Theater in the West Village. The show goes through his immigrant family’s path to coming to America, how he met the sister he didn’t realize he had, and the bullying he faced because of his Indian heritage in school. During the talk back session after the show, he and a film director are discussing bullying in schools in general and why they both think institutions and people in general need to acknowledge it more and do something about it.
It made me sad to remember how Ed used to be bullied. He was a pretty easy target since he wasn’t particularly athletic, was skinny and not that tall, and of course, he wasn’t confident. He was bullied by classmates, even by a teacher at his elementary school who used to hit him. He was defenseless and didn’t know that it was wrong and that it shouldn’t have happened. And even if he did tell our parents, what would they have done? Would they have even defended him and went to the school to have it addressed given that our own father bullied him?
Every day there’s something to remind me about Ed and the injustices he faced. The question now is, what can be done to change similar situations for kids who might face a life just like his?
Paranoid personality disorder
The last time I was home, my mom went off at me for hours even after I was in bed at 10am to get ready for work the next day to tell me that Chris treats her and my dad “like dirt” and has zero respect for the two of them. The reason for this was that she claimed that Chris had never once in the last three years ever offered to pay for a meal for her and my dad, and that he just expected my parents to get the tab every time, except for that one time at In N Out Burger, which she says was a massive insult. The irony behind all this is that Chris has paid for many things for them, including vacations to the Grand Canyon and Vancouver, yet, she seemed to have forgotten all of that.
So given that this incident happened, I’m not sure I want Chris to see my parents before the wedding. He’s planning to go to San Francisco for work in two weeks, and he asked if I wanted him to go see my parents. My knee-jerk reaction was no unless he was adamant to pay the bill at whatever restaurant it would be at. He got annoyed at it, saying he refuses to play my mother’s games and that she always fights him for the bill anyway, and so it’s a lose-lose situation. “Why don’t you just do what you would normally do and not do everything as a reaction to your mother’s potential responses?” the therapist said today. It’s a valid point. So maybe I should just let him go see them.
We went through the DSM and came to the conclusion that my mother is almost a textbook example of paranoid personality disorder. She’s constantly distrustful of everyone and anyone, is hypersensitive and misinterprets compliments as backhanded insults. She holds grudges for every little thing that happens to her and always perceives herself to be the victim. Someone is always “hurting me so much,” as she always says. The examples throughout the course of my life are so many that I can’t even go through them all.
The therapist thinks that as part of my process for empathizing, I should keep this disorder model in mind when dealing with her and recognizing that it doesn’t make sense to act rationally with someone who is not rationale. But I’m not sure if I really think that will help me because Ed and I always thought she had some sort of disorder. With something like this, it’s nearly impossible to treat, and it’s even harder when the person doesn’t recognize that she has the problem. So it will never be acknowledged, treated, or cured. It’s an impossibility.
Hopeless hope
I met with my therapist yesterday after not seeing her for about four months. She was busy sunbathing in the Hamptons while I was occupied with busy Mondays filled with revenue reports. We spent some time discussing my series of bad dreams of betrayal, my time in San Francisco, fights with my mom, and my friend who failed to be a part of my bachelorette weekend.
We spent the most time discussing why I always feel the need to defend the people my mother puts down. “If you know based on history that she will never see your point of view and will always use this as the beginning point of a fight, then why do you keep defending them?” she asked me.
Well, there are several answers to this. First is that I hate it when things are unjust, and I cannot stand people being attacked without any valid reason. Second, I am kind of deluded myself because I hopelessly hope that one day, she may actually listen to what I am saying and realize there are other perspectives other than her own. Third, it’s a lose-lose situation for me regardless of what I respond with because no response satisfies her, and she will find some way to turn the attack on me. If it’s not this conversation, it will be in the next conversation.
So at the end of the day, I just become more self-ingratiating by believing that I am standing up for what’s right when it actually causes even more agony for me. Maybe I can be just as deluded as my mother.