In my thoughts

Every new year that begins leads to my birthday in just a couple short weeks, and as the week approaches, I always think of Ed since he passed. I remember how he so generously gave me all these gifts every year, how he always made sure to wish me a happy birthday even when I wasn’t home… except that last year when he died. He was too depressed to call me, too gone from his mind. And I knew something was definitely wrong that year, more wrong than ever before.

And that was it. He’s been gone from my life for 4.5 years now. Four and a half years just flew by, and somehow, I got here. The age of 32. One year away from the age when he jumped off that bridge. It’s like I have aged, yet he hasn’t. He just doesn’t age anymore.

I wonder if he’s still out there somewhere, watching over me as my birthday descends. I wonder if he thinks about the gifts he could have given me, or the cards he would have gotten me that had corny messages. I wonder if he wonders if our dad will actually call me instead of sending me a pathetic e-mail wishing me happy birthday in a single line. I wonder if he thinks that one day, my dad will finally treat us both equally and just not acknowledge my birthday.

I wonder what he thinks of how our parents’ lives have progressed since his death. He probably sees them flailing and thinks, “well, what a surprise.” They have no material reason to worry: they are both retired, they collect Social Security payments and pension checks, they both have a healthy amount of savings that could allow them a comfortable lifestyle if they chose. But they don’t choose that. They rather wallow every day and stress out over things that don’t matter, pick fights in their heads with random and innocent and well-meaning people. If anything, my parents have mentally gotten worse since my brother’s passing. The level of paranoia and distrust has increased. It’s only getting worse by the day. I wonder what Ed thinks of all of it. Does he have some smug self-satisfaction that his parents will never be happy or satisfied with anything? Does he feel sorry that I still have to deal with all this and try to rationalize irrationality? He’s more likely to feel sorry for them. That’s just the kind of person Ed is.

It’s the same feeling every year around this time. I just wish he could be here and healthy. I wish he had someone to love him the way Chris loves me. Maybe he’d still be here if he did.

Christmas tree for Ed

Today, after lugging home a fake 5-foot Christmas tree this past Monday, we decorated our tree fully. The funniest thing about this is that this is the first tree I’ve had since 2008, and since then, I’ve still been collecting Christmas ornaments that I’ve bought and been given and storing them away in a sad plastic drawer. They’ve just been sadly sitting there, sadly hoping to one day adorn a Christmas tree. Since being with Chris, we never had our own tree because our apartment was so small, and each Christmas, we’d be in Melbourne anyway, so what’s the point of having a tree, real or fake, if we’d only be in December for one week of the entire month? This year, I insisted we get a tree of some sort, especially since we aren’t leaving for our trip until the 18th. A fake tree made the most sense given the mess that a real one would leave behind the two weeks we’d be gone. I suppose it’s also cheaper and better for the environment, anyway.

What makes me sad about our tree is that so many of these ornaments were given to me by Ed. This is the very first year that all of them have been able to be put up together. Ed always loved Christmas so much, and even though we never had a tree in our parents’ house after I was 12 since my mom started studying to be a Jehovah’s Witness, he still bought many Christmas ornaments during the after Christmas Macy’s sale, when all the ornaments, simple and ornate, would be on super sale. Some of the prettiest ones would only be $1-2 after all the sales and his employee discounts. He had hopes that I would have a tree again at some point, so he kept on buying them for me. And these aren’t the filler crappy ornaments you add on when you have none that are unique; these are all unique and have their own character and flair on the tree.

Every tree I have from now on, real or fake, will be for Ed, his memory, and his love of Christmas.

Unfinished Business

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a prominent international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, professor and former dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, former Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State… okay, she has too many titles and accomplishments, but the point is that she wrote this book that was published last year called Unfinished Business, which the media often portrayed as the counterpoint to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Lean In primarily argues that change relies on the individual; Unfinished Business argues that change needs to happen at the societal level, but that means that the way we all think has to change. Obviously both are necessary for full and true equality of men and women, but there are a lot of points that Slaughter brings up that are a bit hard to swallow, especially when you realize you enable a lot of the behavior you may not rejoice about.

In her second and current marriage, she says that for the most part, she and Andy are equals… but are they really? They have raised two sons and generally share in teaching, disciplining, clothing, and feeding them, but why does it always feel like she is asking her husband to do things that he should just do? Why should she be checking with him about the medication they need to give the kids, or reminding him to give one of them a bath when he should just know it? Why does she always have a sense of urgency when it’s time to clean the bathtub or mop the floor, and he seems to think it can happen later and asks why it needs to be done at that very moment (which really means… probably never)? When it’s time to clean, she finds herself doing the lion’s share of the cleaning and organizing not because she thinks he’s unwilling, but because it’s just easier if she does it herself and doesn’t bother asking him. Because shouldn’t they both know that cleaning needs to get done?

He may be guilty of being less willing to clean, feeling less “urgency” to get those menial tasks done, but at the same time, she enables him by justifying in her mind that it’s quicker for her to take care of certain tasks. So she just gets them done. This then enables the imbalance in duties. So then the problem remains: how do they both have an understanding of what needs to get done and by when so that it doesn’t feel like one party is doing significantly more than the other, or that one is nagging the other to get things done?

This feels like my situation. Or maybe it’s the situation of most couples who live together because nothing is ever truly “equal” or egalitarian. But then that begs the question of what imbalance are you going to be comfortable with to really be happy and fulfilled? It’s all too easy to fall into gender roles in heterosexual relationships where the woman “owns” most of the domestic duties. But then that’s not really fair if both work, right? It’s far more challenging and a constant work in progress to continually evaluate how “egalitarian” the methods are that duties are divided and see what can be improved upon.

Finding medicine

I haven’t slept through the night in over a week because I’ve been waking up to cough up mucus or vomit. It hasn’t been fun, and it’s been very exhausting on my entire body. Lucky for me, last night was probably the first night I successfully was able to sleep more than four consecutive hours. I think I slept about six. I had a lot of different dreams throughout the night, but this one was the most vivid.

I was at my parents’ house, sick and in bed. My mother, as per usual, is nervous and not sure what to do. She’s pacing around the kitchen and bathroom attempting to locate the correct cough medication to suppress my coughing. “I think this is the one! Is it?” she’s asking herself.

Ed comes out of nowhere and passes through the kitchen. He quietly opens the kitchen cupboard, pulls out a bottle, and hands it to her. “This is the right one,” he said. He takes a quick look at me, and we make eye contact for a few seconds. And then, just as quietly as he entered, he leaves and shuts the door behind him.

He comes to save the day, and then he leaves.

“Can you get me some hot soup?”

For the last couple of years, my mother in law seems absolutely hell bent on getting her second born a girlfriend… or, wife. She’s seemingly terrified that he’s going to be single forever, and she doesn’t seem to understand why he can’t find someone. I guess its the blindness that affects most parents who think their children are perfect (or, well, western or heavily western influenced parents, since as we all know that most stereotypical Asian parents like my own think their children are the exact opposite of “perfect”). The rest of the family occasionally makes comments that they hope he will find someone. They always say how sweet he is, but also make jokes on what kind of girl would be able to put up with him. Hmmm.

I really hate situations like this. Listening to people obsess about why anyone is single or not single or whatever their relationship status is is so pointless. I think everything happens when it is supposed to happen, and when we rush things or create artificial situations, then we’re increasing the chances of disaster.

However, in my brother-in-law’s case, I will say that there are a number of glaring reasons that I can see why he’s been single for so long: he’s a bit selfish, he’s coddled by his entire family to the point where he can’t seem to do even basic things on his own (like… clear his dish and put it in the dishwasher, not even wash it), and he’s in general very clueless about proper etiquette and behavior, and when called out on it, instead of reflecting on the situation and seeing how he may have been wrong, he instead chooses to get defensive. Here’s the most recent example:

I’m obviously not feeling well, and we’re flying back from Auckland to Sydney to spend the night before boarding our Sydney to LA flight back to the U.S. (it’s what we do when we fly Qantas). We’re spending the night with Chris’s brother, so I thought, okay, I’m not feeling well, so maybe he can get me some soup nearby. I texted him a few hours before arriving and asked if he could get me some hot soup. He said, “Sure, I’ll make sure to have something ready.” When I walk through the door, he hands me a packet of tomato soup powder. “I wasn’t sure what kind you wanted, but here.”

When someone tells you she wants some hot soup, the proper response is to get that person hot soup, REAL HOT SOUP that can be eaten right away, not a packet of artificial powder that you then hand to her and ask her to make for herself when you know she is ill.

Not to mention that, but he knew I was ill, yet he didn’t even have sufficient blankets for us to sleep with. He handed us a crochet throw blanket that by design, had holes all over it, plus a sleeping bag that was really enough to keep just one person warm, and there’s also Chris sleeping with me. And because Chris knew I was ill, he gave me most of the blankets while he was cold.

I told my friend this story without mentioning names, and the fury in her response was obvious. That’s inhumane, she said. “That’s worse than not even trying.”

I get that parents live in their own delusions and always think that their children are the best and that they’re perfect…. but his mom needs to realize that her son is severely lacking, and getting him a quick-fix wife is NOT going to be a solution to these types of insensitivities and lack of care for others.

Always short

Time is always so short the older you get. I remember being in those miserable elementary school classes, wondering why class was so long and unbearable when I had teachers who barely taught me anything. I still look back on elementary school, particularly my third through fifth grade years, and think they were a complete waste of time. I had incompetent teachers, classmates who generally were numb skulls, and what I actually learned during those years were with the help of my brother.

Now, time always feels like it’s not enough. It’s not enough to study for an exam (or, it seems that way with a work exam), it’s not enough to get up to speed with a customer, it’s not enough to see a travel destination, and it’s certainly never enough time to properly and fully catch up with family and friends when you have limited time in specific geographies. Chris’s mother was saying we barely got to spend any quality time together. We really only had the breakfast the day before the wedding as true 1:1 time. But Chris’s argument was that we spent every meal together… though all those meals included wider family members, and we know that the more people there are, the less you can focus on any individual. I feel for his mum when she says that, and in fact, it kind of mirrors how my own mother feels when I’m in town. She never feels like it’s enough time. They’re both probably right to a degree. But that’s the way life is – you have to make the most of what you have, and it’s never going to be perfect.

Hamilton Island wedding day

I’ve really only known Naomi and James since December 2012, the first time I visited Australia with Chris to meet all his family and friends. I feel like I’ve known them much longer, though. Maybe it’s because when we are all together, everyone is truly authentic to who s/he is, and there’s really no masking of any feeling or thought, as dumb or ridiculous or stupid as it is. Even the things that aren’t correct to talk about are discussed, and it’s all okay, and no one’s really holding judgment against the other as the topic passes. We love people for who they are and what they are, not what we value and how their values measure exactly up to ours. That’s what love is about as hard as it can be.

So on their wedding day, it was exciting for me to be there. It was exciting for Chris to see his first female cousin tie the knot, and it was exciting for me to witness two people who are truly, madly in love commit themselves to each other in front of their loved ones. We oftentimes logically know that our friends or family members love each other and that’s why they marry, but the way I have seen Naomi and James interact, it’s obvious nearly every second how smitten James has been for Naomi, and even borderline whipped, and how Naomi adores him (and is demanding of him, which he so happily complies with every step of the way). When James talks about Naomi, it’s as though Naomi is incapable of any wrong, that everything about her is perfect in his eyes. it’s the cutest thing, even if I may sound too idealistic in this moment. Needless to say, I felt quite teary eyed and excited to be a part of this today.

I always think that if you can’t attend a wedding of someone you love and enjoy yourself, you must absolutely hate life or just not be a joyful person.

Alexa the “house friend”

We have an Amazon Echo named Alexa that we brought with us from the last apartment, which was from Chris’s work, and then when we moved into this apartment, Chris decided he wanted an Echo Dot for the bedroom. So Big Alexa sits in the living room while Little Alexa (the Dot) is in our bedroom. Chris likes to call them his second and third wives. I call them our house mates, and Chris’s mum calls them our house helpers. I wish if they were really helpers that they would actually help clean the house, but that’s another story for another day.

My parents have become very fascinated with Alexa. My mom likes to say hi to her when she comes back to the apartment, and she also likes to ask how she is doing. Once we came back home from dinner this week, and she asked me why I didn’t greet my “house friend.” My dad has been using Alexa to set alarms and to ask for the weather. When I showed my mom that Alexa can help turn on and off lights, she was bedazzled.

At least they are enjoying the new technology they are being exposed to.

Foreign lands

New York City is a foreign place to my parents. They don’t really understand it (though my dad claims to… he doesn’t), and my mom always complains whenever she is here and says San Francisco is the best. She has since forgotten that she once lived in Vietnam because to her, it’s as though San Francisco is the only city that ever existed in her life.

So being foreign to them, New York City is a place where they first think of Flushing, Manhattan Chinatown, and Elmhurst. The only reason they think about Elmhurst is because I used to live there, and they visited me twice when I was at that roach-infested apartment. They think of those two Chinatowns because they feel comfortable being around other Chinese people. And they’re planning to go to both probably multiple times during their barely week-long stay here.

My mom could be good with directions if she actually tried, but she chooses to walk around blind, not looking at signs or familiar buildings, and freaks out if it seems like my dad doesn’t know where he’s going (which is a lot). She keeps commenting about how big all these buildings are and why there are so many people walking around all the time. My dad says he wants to go to places like Coney Island or the multiple model railroad stores he has read about, but when he’s actually here, he makes no effort to go and complains that he doesn’t know what their addresses are (even though he has easy access to a computer and the internet) and that they may be out of business. Their desire to explore is little to none, so I’m not quite clear why they are here.

There are a lot of people who have a hard time adapting to new or different environments. But I’m pretty sure that my parents are near the top of that list.

Parentals

My parents are coming to visit next week. They haven’t been to New York since 2011 when my cousin got married, and that was when Ed came. Generally speaking, if Ed were ever with my parents, it was never a good time. They were always more on edge with him, quicker to anger and create public scenes of yelling and dysfunction, and basically blame him for every single thing that ever went wrong (including going downtown to Brooklyn when I’d ask them to meet me up town). With him, it was always his fault — or at least, they always saw it that way. This time, they’re coming with my aunt, but my aunt isn’t staying with us. And this is the only Manhattan apartment my parents will ever see or experience or live in. And they already thought my last place sounded fancy (they never visited that place) and was overpriced. They pretty much think any rent is too much unless it’s zero (that means… I’d be living at home. With them. But you already got that, right?).

So as you can imagine, my mom is trying to find every possible way to get me to tell her how much my rent is. She does this by throwing out random (usually very high) numbers to see how I react, if at all. She somehow started saying the apartment was around $6-7K, and I told her she was being ridiculous. “Oh, so it’s more?” I didn’t realize that’s what telling her being ridiculous would mean, but… okay?

No, it doesn’t cost that much.