Since the incident with my dad calling me a bitch over nothing about two years ago, I actually haven’t had a real conversation with him at all. I haven’t had the desire to engage with him and just have not felt up to putting in the effort. He never calls or texts me unless I initiate. He also doesn’t e-mail me unless I’ve sent him a gift. Even when he does e-mail me to thank me, most of the time, it’s because my mom has urged him to reach out to thank me because he doesn’t have any commonsense himself to thank anyone for anything.
We were altogether on Saturday for a few awkward and pretty quiet meals. We barely talked about anything at all, if any words were actually exchanged. And the few times Kaia was playing in the same room, he barely engaged unless forced. My mom would yell out orders to him repeatedly, as though he was blind, deaf, or just a child: “CAL!! Hug her! Hug her! Give her a high five! She wants to see you! She’s trying to play with you!” This is all while he had his Android right up to his face, too busy in his own world called the Internet. While he did engage more with Kaia for these three days than he did during our last visit two years ago, the bar was already set quite low. He constantly needed to be directed (by my mom) to interact with Kaia. He just doesn’t know how to be a grandparent, much less a parent.
Needless to say, I’ve had a complicated relationship with my dad over the course of my 38+ years. As a child, I used to be terrified of his outbursts; while they were quite rare (especially when you compared them to my mom’s almost constant yelling), they were very explosive and violent when they did occur. That’s why Ed used to be so terrified of him. All our dad had to do was yell out one short, harsh sentence, and he could render Ed to immediate tears. He oftentimes belittled and name-called us. I do not remember a single time when my dad ever expressed any compliment to either of us. He definitely never complimented Ed. Our mom often times spoke to our dad like he was a child, so once I got to my teenage years, I started thinking that our dad was like the third child of the family.
My dad was always busy, or at least, he gave off the perception of being busy. When he wasn’t at his day job, he worked most weekends at one of his apartment complexes, which he owned and managed. That was his way of making “real” money and freedom from working under “the white man.” And when he was actually home, he never really engaged with us or spoke to us in any meaningful way. He’d tinker around in the basement. I used to think he spent more time with the family parakeet than he did with either of his actual children. Ed and I rarely interacted with him, and when we did, it was mostly when our dad would criticize us or act like a child with us. I didn’t quite get that when I was young, but I do remember the stings of my dad’s name-calling me as young as four years old. Still, I loved and admired him, as most young children do love their dad. He provided for us. He made sure we had a roof over our head. I always had the necessary school supplies bought on time and in order. He indulged me in little hobbies, like reading (he never said “no” to any book club order I requested), teen magazines, beading/jewelry making, and painting. He was the reason I even got a pet parakeet as a kindergartener.
As I grew older, I realized that while my dad was certainly adept at many things, such as general trade work, house repairs, and making money, he was sorely lacking in general maturity, emotional intelligence, socialization, and basic communication and understanding of the entire world. He had strong opinions on food, things, and places that he had zero experience with; he could not carry a simple conversation with almost anyone without assistance. He had only one friend, who he spoke to maybe once a year (and only when that friend called HIM, never vice versa; that friend died just months after Ed died in 2013, from a sudden heart attack). My dad could barely even write a coherent sentence without a grammatical error, even as someone who was born and raised in the U.S. I always thought it was strange that I received so many clear, thoughtful, and eloquent emails from his younger brother and sister (my uncle and aunt), who were just a couple years younger, yet their communication with me was like night and day vs. with my own dad. You would have thought my dad was the immigrant who learned English as a second language based on his writing proficiency, but he actually wasn’t. And while he was certainly capable of many home repairs and renovations, he rarely ever did them to the house unless my mom yelled or threatened him. The main bathroom tiling rotted during my elementary school years, and for over two years, we had to take showers in the crappy in-law shower downstairs. My mom had to scream at him to finally get his act in order and repair the bathroom. The carpet was hideous with age, installed from the time my grandparents first moved into the house in the ’60s. In the year 2000, my mom finally stopped waiting on my dad and sought out a carpet installer to get new carpet in place. Any time of major repair or furniture decision (like sofas) always happened because of my mom, never my dad. My dad was generally a talker and never a doer. That can be interpreted as laziness, cheapness, or any combination of the above, but it was always infuriating to experience as a child.
Later on, his laziness and inability to see any project to completion just became more apparent and painful: he started renovation of the kitchen and even pushed back a wall around 2010, but then he never completed it. The wall still has holes in it, and it looks dilapidated and as though rodents could make a home in it. He half installed a hood over the stove, but then he never completed it, so it cannot be used. All of that is in the same state it was back then, and now it’s 2024 with zero plans for completion. He started growing some plants in the garden, but then he got bored of them and tired of weeding, so now the whole yard is overgrown, covered in weeds, with endless piles of dirt and homeless flower pots lying around everywhere. He keeps saying he will work on a compost pile to enrich the soil, but he’s been saying that for over 10 years. None of his efforts have any visible return or benefit. The backyard, which used to be a flourishing garden under the care of my grandma, his mom, has now been a wasteland, a total eye sore. So, that’s been 30 years of rotting away. When she died, the garden died, too.
My mom has complained and said that my dad is filthy and getting worse. He doesn’t clean anything, so it’s up to my mom to do all the chores to clean the house, despite her misaligned disc in her back. And the hoarding he has done from all the Craiglist and Next Door groups has truly been out of control. The basement does not have a straight line you can walk through. When I am not there, my bed, according to my mom, is covered with “all your dad’s junk.” It reminded me of my grandma yelling in Toisan all the time, that her middle son (my dad) “just likes to break things.” I’ve contemplated hiring a housekeeper for them, but that idea is almost immediately squashed when I think, How the hell is a housekeeper supposed to navigate all their junk?! Spider webs are hanging in almost every room. most surfaces, even the uncleared ones, have a thick layer of dust on them. It’s the house of rot and decay.
Part of me wonders if my dad is depressed. He has so much time to do things, yet he wastes it all away on YouTube and his supposed “compost bin.” He doesn’t exercise or do anything active. Sometimes, it almost feels like he is just waiting to die. I always hoped that when my parents reached retirement age that they’d actually do activities that they enjoyed and found fulfilling. But all they do is…. nothing. The rest of the time, they spend too much time criticizing others, gossiping, and complaining about how bad San Francisco is becoming. They are both too stubborn to listen to me.
I wonder if my dad ever thinks about Ed in any deep way. To date at his current age of 76, my dad has lived 12 years longer than he ever expected, given the lengths of the lives his own dad and older brother have lived. Ed used to say, with deep hurt in his heart, that he looked forward to the day my dad died (he anticipated 64-65) because he’d be free of his bully. But Ed took his own life, so instead, my dad had to see Ed die. The house was already rotting and piling up with clutter when Ed was there, but it’s only gotten infinitely worse since then. I only wish Ed had moved out, as if he did, I always thought he’d still be alive today because he wouldn’t have been so heavily oppressed by the two people who were supposed to be his parents.
It’s hard to fully fault my dad, though. It’s not like he had supportive parents who spent any time with him at all during his youth. His mother, my grandma, was deeply critical and criticized pretty much everyone every chance she got. She didn’t know how to be loving or affectionate. She was cold and never hugged or kissed any of us. That’s why he was so mean and abrasive to us every time we asked him to teach us anything or showed any emotion outwardly; he had no one to teach him anything and had to learn it all himself. He had no one to show him affection. And he lacked the emotional maturity to take the time to think about how he could improve as a parent. The one thing he did do far better than his parents, though, was provide food and shelter for Ed and me. The reality is that our dad is just a product of intergenerational trauma. He had terrible role models, and so he became a not-so-ideal role model and father figure to his own children. The trauma persists through generations. I am trying to be the one who finally breaks it. So we shall see if I am successful.