Living to exist vs. living to live

Chris has been pretty cognizant of the fact that his dad is turning 70 next year, plus his mom is in her late 60s. Because of this, for the last few years, he’s been urging them to retire fully. His dad works for himself, while his mom works three days a week, so part time, but he’s been insistent in telling them that they should both just stop work altogether to do all the things they enjoy doing, plus discovering and picking up new hobbies they always talk about but think they don’t have time for. They are both reluctant to retire, though. I think his dad just loves what he does (it’s amazing… he’s an accountant who LOVES being an accountant!). His mom doesn’t want to give up her medical license perks. I get it. But at the same time, his urging them to retire to pursue their passions reminds me that my dad is actually turning 74 in just a few days. That means that my mom is 68.

And while both of my parents are pretty much retired, they don’t pursue any passions and instead, seem to let each day pass them in their usual mundane way. They complain about everything from the weather, to people, to politics. They gossip. They ask about people but never ask those people they are asking about. It’s a pretty miserable existence when I think about it, especially since they are both financially set and could pretty much do whatever they want to do at this point, but they choose not to. They could remodel or renovate their home. They could travel. They could actually work on the yard and make it into the beautiful garden it once was when my grandma cared for it. But the truth is that… they don’t seem to take pride or joy in literally anything. Their house is dilapidated. The yard looks like a disorganized mess with piles of dirt everywhere, a few plants that seem to be doing well, but their appearance is marred by all the ugly dying plants surrounding them. That house and its yard are literally just dying. It always makes me a little sad when I go home. When I bring it up to my mom, she gets mad and says I am negative, “just don’t talk about that. You’re going to upset me.” She says it as though I am provoking her when all I am doing is asking… what the hell are you doing with your life?

So Chris summed up his urging his parents to retire like this: He wants them to actually live life, not to just exist…. the way my parents do. And while that seems like a blunt, stabbing kind of comment, the truth is that… well, it’s the truth. My parents are living just to exist each day with no real path to anywhere. I’m not saying we all need to have goals to achieve when we’re in the later half of our lives, but in the very least, there should be some motivation to do things that we actually enjoy and are passionate about. And they don’t seem to have that. And that makes me feel sad for them.

When a random stranger is supposedly more trustworthy than your best friend

I knew coming back to San Francisco with the baby would be annoying. I just didn’t really think about exactly how it would be annoying in the weeks leading up to the trip. I had already asked one of my best friends if I could borrow her kid’s Pack and Play, which was sitting in storage unused at her mom’s place in anticipation of baby number 2. This would give Kaia a safe place to sleep at my parents’ place. I already told my mom that I’d arranged this, but she didn’t listen. She claims that her “friend” is giving her a “like brand new” crib, plus a high chair. She wouldn’t share the name of this friend, nor how or why this person had a high chair or crib to begin with. That’s how I knew that these were both sourced from a random Craigslist person. My dad is addicted to Craigslist and getting free crap off of it. It’s like his one hobby that he actually follows through on because he rarely follows through on doing anything he says he will.

She called late last week, telling me to disregard my friend’s Pack and Play. “Tell her you don’t need it anymore,” she insisted. “This one is better. It’s like brand new. You can’t trust Rebecca. How do you know she kept hers clean?”

Seriously? She’s going to trust a random person off Craigslist over my best friend? I tried hard to remember what I learned from the Maturity Awareness Approach in the Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents book: 1) express, then let go, 2) manage, don’t engage. I calmly told her that I had already arranged to borrow my friend’s Pack and Play, and that we were still going to use it. She’s my best friend, and I trust her to keep things clean, especially things she’s allowing my baby to borrow. My mom denied this was true and tried to fight me on it, but I kept my cool and simply restated what I already said.. We are going to use the Pack and Play… in the exact same words. I was not going to engage with her bullshit.

“You don’t want the highchair?” my mom said, trying to change the subject.

“We are talking about the crib,” I said to her in a monotone. “We do not need your crib.”

“Okay, you’re in a bad mood right now, so we don’t have to talk,” she said, clearly mad. And then she hung up.

The truth was that I didn’t even get worked up. Was it annoying? Of course. But because I already expected her to try to exert control, I didn’t feel any need to change her mind or engage her and felt pretty calm the whole time. This is my baby, and my baby is going to have what I want for her, not what her deranged grandmother wants for her.

Coming home with the baby brings anxiety

I’m planning to come back to San Francisco at the end of August since I have a work offsite planned, and Chris and the baby are coming with me. It will be an opportunity for me to not only go for work and meet my colleagues in person for the very first time, but it will also be the first time my family will be meeting the baby. For our sanity’s sake, we’re only spending the weekends at my parents’, while spending time at the hotel that will be expensed during the weekdays since I’m in town for work. My mom called today, so I told her we were planning to go home since I have a work offsite planned. When she asked me how long, and I told her it would be just over a week, of course, she got upset.

“Yvonne, why is it so short?” she said, in her usual annoyed tone. “Why can’t you just work here and stay here longer, and I’ll take care of the baby? You should stay at least a month. Why don’t you think about me?”

It’s always about her.

My mom is delusional. She always forgets how miserable we are together when we are in the same place for longer than 3-4 days and all the fights. She has short term memory. She always imagines everything to be flowery when it is not. Also, has she completely forgotten that she herself said she isn’t even strong enough to hold the baby while standing up? She can’t even hold a coffee mug without spilling it all over the carpet at home. I reminded her this, and she responded, “Well, I can try.”

“No,” I responded sternly. “You can’t ‘try’ to hold and take care of the baby. You either do it or you don’t, and you won’t. Taking care of a baby is work, and you can’t do it.”

She wasn’t happy I said this, but I wasn’t saying any of this to make her happy. I don’t trust her being with the baby alone given all her outdated recommendations (e.g. “why doesn’t the baby sleep with a blanket?”), not to mention her lack of strength with her arms and back. I just need to try my best to be emotionally detached, being calm, managing the conversation at hand and not engaging. I’m already getting anxiety about being home, and this trip feels like it’s going to be more work than actual pleasure already.

When your mom tells you to stop sharing photos of your daughter to someone she hates

I have one Jehovah’s Witness friend in my mom’s congregation who I communicate with occasionally throughout the year, mostly through email and occasionally over text. She’s always been a kind, thoughtful, intelligent person who I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with. My mom doesn’t like her or her family, and I’m sure the primary reason is because she is Black. A while back, I believe she had a conflict with this person’s dad, who was an elder in the congregation, and since then, she wants nothing to do with this family other than cordial greetings. Once, she didn’t want me to meet up with this person when I was in town because she was 100% certain this person was going to poison and kill me. Yes, I realize that was probably a sign my mom was mentally ill, but I didn’t really need that extreme example to realize that.

So I called her today after about a month of not really talking at all. I know she was staying away because she knew Chris’s parents were here on and off, but I didn’t tell her what days specifically to keep her on her toes. She has her friend there and put me on speaker phone (how lovely). She makes annoying comments about how when I come home, she wants all of us to have dinner together (no thanks). And then she says, “I just want you to know that I tried to show a photo of Kaia to (this person’s husband), and he said, ‘I don’t need to see it. I already see so many photos of Kaia that Yvonne sends to (this friend).”

My mom exaggerates the negative when she talks about people she doesn’t like. What I am sure happened, which I confirmed with my friend, is that her husband likely said that he had already seen photos of the baby through my friend that I sent. My mom, in her mentally unstable state, interpreted the meaning to be “I don’t need to see photos.” And even if he did say that, I don’t care. Why is this such a big deal??

My mom went on to say that I should only share photos and videos with people “who really care.” Let’s also keep in mind… the last time I sent photos of the baby to this friend was over 3 months ago, and I hardly inundate anyone who isn’t the grandparents or my best friend with images of the baby. I recognize that not everyone is going to gush over my baby the way I do (yes, believe it or not… I have some level of self awareness).

The littlest and most benign things upset and make my mother angry. And the worst part? I still get so exacerbated by her constant barrage of bullshit that I always react and say something. I’m sure it is because part of me wishes that one day, just one day, she will have a normal reaction to a normal thing. And that part of me always ends up extremely disappointed to hear her make a big deal out of yet another nothing situation. These problems should not even BE problems. They should be non-issues that no one even talks about!

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – the book

Since Kaia was born, I haven’t had much time or energy to read any books. I figured it would be temporary and that eventually, I would start reading again since I’ve always been a reader. Only recently have I started listening to podcasts again, and though I’ve attempted to sit down to open a book, it hasn’t really worked out. Part of me doesn’t want to spend time reading when I could be spending it playing with and watching my baby grow. Every day she’s growing so quickly and doing new things, and the idea of missing out on something new she does always makes me a bit sad.

Well, I had a book I was waitlisted for via the NYPL / Libby app since last summer that I finally got off the wait list for, and it was a book that I read about called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents. I think it got mentioned in one of the parenting groups I’m in because a parent was really scared about repeating the same mistakes of her parents. I think one part of how to tackle this is first beginning with self awareness, recognizing that not everything your parents did was “right” or what you want for your own kids, and having checks in place to ensure you do not repeat the same behavior. With parents of the previous generation, a lot of growing up was just about survival, especially if you were the child of immigrants who were just trying to keep the roof over their heads and food on the table. They didn’t have the time or energy for self reflection on how they could do better than their own parents; they focused simply on the physical aspects of shelter and food.

I started reading this book. A lot of the examples provided are very much centered on the white family experience, but I can see how it could be adjusted slightly to account for cultural differences. At the end of the day, I believe that the majority of parents try their hardest to raise their children to the best of their ability. But many do not think about what they could improve, and instead raise their kids how they themselves were raised. I think that’s what my dad did: his parents worked all the time, so they never had the time to teach him anything, so he took it upon himself to learn everything he knew. That’s why he had no patience to teach Ed or me even the simplest things, like how to tie our shoes or ride a bike, or the more complex, like changing oil on a car or driving. He just expected us to learn on our own. He communicated mostly by yelling; that’s what his parents did with him. His parents criticized him constantly; that’s what he did to Ed and me. He knew no different, so he did the same with us and perceived that as “normal.” My mom got disregarded completely as the 10th and last child of her mom. She experienced zero affection or love from her mom. She tried to learn from that and showered me with love and affection, but alas, it ended up becoming more suffocating than anything. So while I get frustrated with both my parents, I recognize that they were just limited by the experiences they had, and they thus lacked the emotional maturity to improve how they parented. But because they are emotionally immature, they will never recognize or admit their faults. The book also describes how children of emotionally immature parents tend to have a higher level of compassion and empathy. I guess that’s one way Ed and I benefited from having unrealistic and immature parents.

The book gets redundant with its examples, though, and it doesn’t give much in the way of coping mechanisms. I thought the whole point of the book was to help identify toxic behavior and then address how to deal with it all and live a healthy and happy adult life?

Father’s Day 2022

American Father’s Day is today. Given my own dad is socially inept and awkward, he rarely calls me. I cannot even remember the last time he called me. I’ve stopped calling him directly since it’s always so awkward, and he doesn’t even say hello to me when he answers the phone and realizes it’s me. He’ll usually just say, “Yeah? What do you want?” Does that sound rude? Yes. But to him, that’s just a normal response (but I can only imagine how HE would react if I responded to HIM that way if he were to call). Instead, I’ll send a gift and if it’s running late, I’ll text or email him to let him know, plus a Happy Father’s Day wish.

So I did that today, and he responded right away by saying thanks, and, “Please wish Chris a happy Father’s Day, too.” Interesting. He never messaged to wish me a happy Mother’s Day last month, but he wishes indirectly a happy Father’s Day to his son-in-law? With my dad, everything is always a response, never something he initiates. It always has to be a quid pro quo thing with the other person initiating it, otherwise he will never be the first to do anything. And well, he can’t really wish me a happy mother’s day in response because no one is going to wish him a happy mother’s day.

People always say that you should spend time with your parents now while they’re here because once they’re gone, you’ll have regrets. So occasionally, I wonder if I will have regrets that I did not call to initiate conversation with my dad more often. But when I think about it, I honestly do not believe I will. Who wants to sit in an awkward conversation, especially one that starts as rudely as “What do you want?” The worst part about all this is that my dad never thinks he’s wrong, and my mom always fiercely defends him on the stupidest and most egregious things he’s said and done. I’m grateful that I always had a roof over my head and food on the table to eat, but when it comes to a real, loving, unconditional relationship, that was definitely never there with my dad, and even less so between my dad and his son. It’s partly why Father’s Day as a holiday to me is a pretty meh day.

Dysfunctional siblings

I call my mom about once every two weeks now. Since the baby’s arrival, this frequency is probably the most that I can tolerate while still being sane. I recently found out that my uncle, my dad’s brother, had to have hip surgery; one hip had to be completely replaced. My cousin drove him to the hospital while a neighbor picked him up and offered to stay overnight with him to help him out since he’d have limited mobility. My parents have known about the hip surgery this entire time but never called or suggested they come over to visit or help. I knew this would be the case: my dad has a terrible relationship with his one living brother, and he holds grudges against him from their high school days. But eight years ago, when my dad had his heart surgery, my uncle was kind and visited him twice, once in the hospital and once at home. Nine years ago, when my brother died, he took my dad out to eat for his birthday the week after the funeral. He seemingly tried to forge some kind of relationship, but my dad is so socially awkward and blind that he couldn’t see that.

My mom was aware of the surgery, so she asked me about it. I asked her why she had to ask me when she could just call or text him herself. She got pretty angry and basically went off on a tangent, ranting about almost all the things my uncle has done that have been rude or mean or taken advantage of her and my dad. For a while, I just zoned out and did my work as she vented. I’d heard most of these stories before multiple times, but she loves to repeat herself and show she’s always the victim. I don’t doubt the truth in any of these stories, but I also don’t see a reason to constantly talk about the past. It wouldn’t hurt to drop off a single meal for his brother, but I know my dad wouldn’t do it. Grudges run deep with both my parents; forgiveness is not something they believe in.

I never suggested they bring something, though. But she got angry at me and said I’m asking too much to ask her to bring something for him.

“Ummm, do you hear anything that I say on the phone? I never asked you to do anything,” I said, while rolling my eyes internally.

“Oh, you didn’t?” my mom responded. “Well, you should forgive me! I’m disabled!!”

That sounded a bit facetious and sarcastic at the same time, but I let it go.

When grandma insists she isn’t racist

My mom wasn’t happy about the fact we were planning to hire a nanny. She kept saying over and over that “your own blood” takes care of your baby the best. When I asked if she was suggesting that I quit my job, she told me she didn’t want that, but what other option would there have been…? When she found out we finally hired one, she immediately asked me what the nanny’s race was. When I told my mom she was Jamaican, my mom responded, “Does that mean she’s Black?” She said the world “Black” in a near whisper. Why do Asian people of her generation always do that?

I told her to stop being so racist and that there was nothing wrong with Black people, or specifically, having a Black nanny. I told her we obviously vetted this person through not only references but also a trial, so we knew she’d be a good fit for us. My mom was nervous and completely unconvinced. It wasn’t until two weeks passed when she felt more at ease… after I let her know that Kaia greets our nanny with a smile each morning when she walks in.

“Can you send me a picture of what the nanny looks like?” my mom asked. “I want to see how dark she is…. I mean, what she looks like.”

“WHAT?” I responded, incredulously. “What is wrong with you? It doesn’t matter how light or dark skinned someone is, and who cares what she looks like if she’s getting the job done?!!!”

“It’s a reasonable request,” my mom insisted. “I just want to see what the nanny looks like. She takes care of my granddaughter all day, so I have a right to know what she looks like. I’m not prejudiced. I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot be prejudiced.”

Uh-huh. Sure, they can’t.

When your mother looks for horror stories to freak herself out and think that her granddaughter will get kidnapped

My mom called this afternoon to tell me that I needed to be careful with the nanny that we selected. Apparently, my dad has been fueling her fear of a non-family member taking care of our baby during the day by sharing stupid and ridiculous YouTube videos of babies getting kidnapped. The one that my dad showed her was of a mom who was unloading her car of groceries. She was running in between the car and the house and left her front door open. At some point, a stranger snuck into her house and grabbed her baby and left. Of course, this completely freaked out my mother and made her even more paranoid. My dad has an amazing talent of further instilling paranoia into my mother when she is already naturally paranoid and untrusting. It’s almost like he gets some sick thrill of scaring my mother even more than she already is. And when I have previously pointed this out to him, he pulls out his bullshit “what aboutisms,” which futilely attempts to divert the attention from him and immaturely tries to imply that whatever I do is worse. What-about-isms are one of the most immature responses because it refuses to accept the possibility of wrongdoing on one’s part. My dad has been doing this pretty much since I was a young child, so it’s nothing new to me.

Then, she suggests that my aunt had a suggestion. What she really means to say is, she has a suggestion but she wants to say that my aunt or my dad or my uncle or someone else she has spoken with suggested it so that it would come off as lighter to me. She says that my aunt suggested that Chris’s mother fly over and live with us until the baby was at least one so that a family member who actually genuinely cares could take care of the baby. Family is best, my mom said. “You can trust family to take care of your child. You cannot trust outside people to take care of your child.” She said that she would do it, but her arms and back are not strong enough; she could drop the baby, and that’s it!! So, she concluded, Chris’s mother would be good for this because she is able bodied.

While in some families, this would be normal, this is not going to happen here. Chris’s mother has never offered to do anything like that. They live all the way in Australia; that’s a 21-hour flight away!!! Does my mother ever use any real logic ever?? They are coming to visit in the summer, but it is exactly what it sounds like: it is a visit. They are not coming for the purpose of child rearing. I don’t even think that something that she is interested in. She is probably more interested in using our baby as a trophy to be able to tell everyone that she finally has a grandchild! She’s never given any indication of wanting to help with rearing her grandchildren, and that’s completely fine. Plus, she works. Not everyone has the luxurious life my mother does where she has all of these paychecks coming in and she doesn’t have to work. And my mother also ignores the fact that people from other countries cannot just fly over and stay here for unlimited amounts of time legally. She does not understand anything about this. 

I tried to explain this to her, and of course, she just gets really defensive and angry and says that I am causing conflict. She says I am overreacting and raising my voice when she didn’t mean any harm. And her favorite thing to say of all time is: “you may have more education than me, but I have more wisdom.” Because that is so relevant in a stupid conversation like this. 

If she really had more wisdom, she would not be getting paranoid and frantic over stupid ass YouTube videos that my dad shows her to freak her out and hate the world more.

When your husband trolls your parents

Since my parents found out I was pregnant, they have been insanely overprotective and obnoxious about pretty much everything. They are not shy at all about criticizing me and my decisions, or about telling me when they disagree. One of my mom’s favorite things is to tell me she has more wisdom than me, so I should do what she says…. right. When I went to get the Covid vaccine last May, they both admonished me and said that I was being selfish, only thinking about myself being able to go out to eat and socialize as opposed to thinking about my unborn baby (it was actually the opposite, but hey, they have more wisdom than me!). When I got the COVID-19 booster shot, my mom got even more pissed, saying that I had no idea what risk I was putting my baby in just weeks before labor and delivery. And when I was in San Francisco back in August, Chris was holding back and trying to be very patient when my mother was fussing over me about literally everything: she got mad when I leaned over the dining table to get a dish during dinner, she did not want me bending down, and she obsessed over me eating cold foods. This was all annoying, but I expected it. And since we were only in San Francisco for one week, I put up with it. If I actually lived in the same city with her and had to deal with her fussing over me this much, I probably would’ve told her to take a hike and learn science. 

So, since the baby has arrived, I have tried to communicate to my mother that I’m not going to deal with her ridiculous nonsense. I stopped responding to all of her 5 million daily calls, and I tell them constantly to stop freaking out and that I’m doing what I’m going to do, and I am not going to listen to them. Chris particularly likes to egg them on by trolling them. He takes pleasure in getting reactions out of them because they are that predictable.

The latest episode of this was when one morning, Chris woke up to check on the baby before a feed to see that she had broken out of the swaddle that he had done in the middle of the night. It honestly looked like she was stuck in a big bag and trying to wiggle her way out. He thought this was absolutely hilarious, so he decided to take a video of it, completely aware that this was something that would totally piss off my parents and make them think that we were irresponsible parents to their grandchild. He immediately uploaded it as an unlisted video to YouTube, and that afternoon, he sent it via our group text that he created facetiously among my mom, dad, him and myself.  He laughed evilly and was just waiting for a reaction. 

Well, I took a nap after nursing the baby that early evening for just an hour. And when I woke up, I looked at my phone to see that there were two missed calls, one from my mom and one from my dad. There were also two voice messages, again, one from my mom and one from my dad. In addition to that, my mom sent me a direct text outside of the group text, asking me why I had covered up the baby’s face… She would not be able to breathe. I did not bother listening to the voice messages from both of my parents as I knew that they would be accusatory and irrational. Instead, I quickly looked at the audio transcript on my phone to see that both parents had accused me of suffocating my child – entirely predictable. The funny thing was, the way that my dad started the message was, “Yvonne: there is a video showing that the baby has her face covered.“ Well, considering that it was uploaded to my account, doesn’t he think that… I would know that the video existed?! Granted, they did not know that Chris used my phone to send them this video link, but considering that this is my YouTube account, why does he make it sound like there is a random video out there showing that our grandchild is about to suffocate that I would not be aware of? It’s as though this was news or something that we had no idea about, and that just seemed senseless.

I responded to my mom’s direct text with my usual sentiment: stop freaking out. And then, I ignored both the voice messages as well as the missed calls. On top of that, the next day, I refrained from sharing any photos or videos with them. I cannot deal with their nonsense.

And the more that I think about it, the more ridiculous my dad‘s involvement in this is. To give you some context, my dad has not called me directly probably since September of last year. Even after the baby arrived, he never had any direct voice contact with me until this call. He has only sent me these basic 1 to 2 sentence emails. He has also sent me a handful of texts, but mostly in response to videos and photos that I sent of the baby. The most substantial text he has sent is, “Nice,” or “interesting,” or “very good.” So as you can see, he is not particularly interactive or talkative or… Really involved. 

And when I really, really think about it, it’s ridiculous that he even has these responses considering the fact that he was not really even actively involved in my life while I was a child or my brother’s life except to criticize us. Sure, he paid the bills and made sure we had a roof over our head, but in terms of day-to-day interaction, there was a little to none unless it was a put down. When I think back to my childhood, there was never a time when my dad spent any quality one on one time with either my brother or me. He really did not know us, our interests or hobbies, nor did he make any attempt to show he wanted to build a bond with us or be interested in our lives and development. In fact, he spent more quality one on one time with my pet parakeet. Every night, when he would get home from work, he would spend about 30 minutes to one hour downstairs in the bird’s room, talking to Willie my parakeet, playing with him, and having one on one time with his favorite child… my parakeet Willie.  He never did that with Ed or me. In fact, he barely even said anything to either of us when we were at the dinner table. How does this even make any sense? So now, fast forward to 36 to 43 years later, and he suddenly has all kinds of opinions about my child, his grandchild! And that, when I think about it, is very infuriating. 

So no, I’m not going to put up with them.  And no, I am not going to deal with the fact that they have zero sense of humor and are stuck in their ways, and think that their parenting is the best. Because as you can see from the above, it is clear that their parenting is not the best.