Several years ago, my friend purchased a house in a suburb of Sacramento shortly after getting a new job up there at the local Veteran’s hospital. I was really happy for her and thought it was incredible — not only that she got a new job and bought a house, but that it all happened so quickly. She had only been searching for a couple months before this house worked out and it closed.

We ended up coming to visit her several months after she moved in during July 2021, when I was visibly pregnant. While she had told me that her brother would be “temporarily” living with her (he already lived in the area before she got her job offer), what I didn’t realize until later was that both her parents would also be living with her, as well. From her mom’s perspective, once two out of her three children were living in the Sacramento area, she wanted to move to be closer to them, especially since she said she never liked living in Arkansas. So she moved, then her dad sold their house and shortly followed after. When my friend told me, I always thought that they’d come live with her temporarily before getting their own house; at least, that’s how she framed it to me when we spoke. When I stepped into the house for the first time, I realized… no, that was not the case, or the intention, at all. The intention was that her parents would effectively move all their valued family belongings and essentially set up my friend’s house as their own. All their family portraits, including their graduation photos and special family event photos, were already up in frames. Her mom’s Buddhist praying area was set up in front of the house. Her parents even had the main bedroom and ensuite. My friend had relinquished her rights to her own main bedroom and was sleeping in a small bedroom next door that was like a teenager’s room.

Ohmigod, I thought to myself then. This is her family’s house now. She paid for it, but this is her parents’ house, and she’s living in it. I wasn’t sure how to react to any of this. And like she and her brother were as children growing up, her mom did all the cooking five to six days a week, and they’d eat out as a family once or twice a week. Her mom did all the decorating of the house, all the cleaning, all the housework. Her dad, the stereotypical Vietnamese male, did no housework and almost expected to be spoon fed. He didn’t even clear his plate from the table after eating.

While it’s now over three years later, the setup is still the same. Her parents and brother are still living there. None of them have any intention of ever leaving. They’re all just aging together. My friend and I are the same age, so we’re almost 39. Her mom is 71, and her dad is 81. I asked her if she was happy with this setup.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” my friend insisted. “They’re getting old and will need help. It doesn’t make sense for them at their age to live on their own or take out a mortgage.”

The strange thing about that statement is that her mom is currently in excellent health, which is why she keeps churning out Vietnamese specialties every day in the kitchen and does all the cleaning. Her dad has a rare slow-growing cancer, but the doctor has already said he’d likely just age with it given how slow this growth is.

I asked her how she would make new friends or find a potential partner with this current setup. She mostly spends all her time with her parents and brother, and while she does have some friends at work, that seems to be her only way of making friends since she doesn’t go out much. She said she didn’t mind it, but maybe she’d try online dating again. I have a feeling that both my friend and her brother have mental health issues that she’s never openly discussed with me, but she has hinted at it a few times without any elaboration. While it makes me sad that she refrains from being open with me about her feelings, stresses, and borderline unhealthy attachment to her parents as a nearly 40-year-old woman, I don’t push it with her. I just let it be, even though it seems like she’s just living the same life she did as a child, just 20-30+ years older. She seems to accept it as her fate. But part of it, I can tell, is her general distrust of society as she’s said repeatedly to me. She will casually mention she can’t trust humanity, which is why she would never be happy living in a condo or apartment long term (“What if they are stupid and set a fire that burns their apartment down, and then my apartment gets destroyed?”). But then the opposite of that is becoming a recluse in your own fortress of a home, isolated from other people who could truly add value to your life in the form of company, support, and love. Frankly, I am more concerned about how it feels like she is letting the prime years of her life pass her by. One day, her parents aren’t going to be around anymore, and then what will she do? Who is she going to lean on, especially with no friends nearby?

A former colleague I was friendly with reached out to me a few weeks ago to let me know that she had relocated back to New York in the last year from San Francisco. She asked if I was still here and if I was, that she’d like to meet up for coffee to catch up. I hadn’t seen her in over two years, so I thought it would be good to see her. We met up late Friday afternoon for some tea and sat at a park in Chinatown before I went to pick up Kaia from school.

We chatted for over an hour about all the usual things: her relocation, our respective work situations, people we still kept in touch with from our last company. We talked about Kaia and parenthood, and we also talked about health. I was pretty stunned when she recounted to me things I’d shared with her over three years ago when she was last in town, and we met for coffee. I invited her and another former colleague to hang out on my roof, and she remembered me telling her about my cubital tunnel syndrome and random travel anecdotes that I didn’t even remember telling her. I was really endeared that she remembered, and it felt really comforting. I’m so used to being a broken record nowadays and sharing the same stories over and over again that I forget who I have shared them with… and frankly, who even cares and retains them.

But it made me realize how it feels like people have such short attention spans now that they don’t really listen. People complain about news articles being too long. There are even people now who think that some TikTok or Instagram videos are too long, so they just swipe to the next one that is faster. Chris even complains sometimes when his brother or I are telling a story and he keeps saying, “Get to the point!” People don’t seem to appreciate the art of story telling the way I always did as a kid and even now, as an adult. But I think the best stories are nuanced and have interesting arcs. There’s always a good lead up. Characters have different subtle personality quirks that only reveal themselves with time. And it’s comforting to know that there are still some people in existence who really do take the time to listen, and even remember.

My friend is visiting from San Francisco this week for work, so we went out to dinner tonight at an izakaya in the East Village. While the food was fine, it wasn’t anything to get excited about, and there was no “wow” factor in any single dish of the small plates/bowls we ordered. It was a bit of a downer (and when I shared this with Chris, he poked at me for glorifying the East Village dining scene… which is probably fair in this case). But at least it gave us some quiet time to catch up without many others around. Similar to how we would “open” restaurants in Uruguay and Argentina, we ended up being the first guests to arrive at 6pm here, and no one really started coming in until around 7:30 when we getting towards the end of our meal.

Afterwards, we chatted while walking all the way up to Koreatown, where we ended up at HHD (Heuk Hwa Dang), an international Korean franchise of bubble tea, croffles, specialty drinks, shaved ice, and coffee. Unusual for Koreatown, the space is very large, with plenty of tables, as well as large “step” seating, and the menu for desserts is huge. So we shared a massive mango strawberry “snowflake” (it’s essentially a shaved ice, except with shaved sweetened milk “ice”), generously topped with freshly cut fruit, jellies, and some soft-serve vanilla ice cream. As we spoke, we realized that our own voices had to keep getting louder and louder because we were surrounded by other people who were at least 10-15 years younger than us, talking and laughing loudly while enjoying their own shared snowflakes.

My friend chuckled and said, “It’s as though I can’t hear because it’s so loud in here… I keep straining to hear you! Are we getting older and just can’t tolerate this much noise, or are the acoustics here just that bad?”

It’s probably a little of A and B. We prefer quieter places to catch up when we see each other since we don’t see each other too often living on opposite ends of the country. Yes, the acoustics were pretty poor. But it was comical to think that while we would have been happy spending hours hanging out at a place this loud and young in our early 20s, now in our late 30s, there’s definitely a limit to how much time we want to be at these places. We don’t necessarily blend in because of our age and how we dress into crowds like these anymore. And as much as I love the East Village, I am definitely on the older side when it comes to people wandering around its streets now, even if I can still pass for much younger.

Chris always gets annoyed with me whenever I say that I don’t love our general neighborhood (Hell’s Kitchen / Upper West Side) for food. It’s not that I think the food options are terrible here (they are NOT by any standard), but it’s more that when I think of incredible places to eat with a lot of variety (cuisines) at multiple price points, these two neighborhoods that we’re right in the middle of are not within the top 10 (or even 20) across all of New York City for me. However, what I have noticed in the last five years is that a number of places that originally open in areas like East Village (my dream eating neighborhood), Lower East Side, or other great food areas downtown, are now opening their second or third locations in this general area. One of those places is Patisserie Fouet, which has been on my radar for a while. It’s owned and run by a Japanese pastry chef who was trained in French pastry, so the desserts are very much French in technique with hints of Asian flavors here and there. She opened her first location in the Union Square area (complete with a dessert tasting menu), and she decided to open a second location just eight blocks away from us in Hell’s Kitchen, in front of a popular udon spot called Raku. Raku is likely my favorite udon place in all of New York City. I went to their first (and then only location) about ten years ago and was obsessed with the udon and all the dishes I ate there with a friend. Since then, they’ve opened two other locations, one in SoHo and one in Hell’s Kitchen. So now, that’s two popular, fun, and semi-trendy places that are downtown that have now come uptown within short walking distance of us!

I went to Patisserie Fouet in Hell’s Kitchen and met my friend there for a mid-afternoon catch-up. We shared two desserts, while she had a cold brew barley tea, and I enjoyed an iced black sesame latte. I have always preferred one-on-one catch ups over group catchups, but I particularly love meeting with this friend 1:1 because she is so empathetic, insightful, and pointed in her questions and observations. She doesn’t shy away from vulnerable topics and instead, actually invites them. She sees a lot of things in people that most others either never notice or don’t want to point out. The older I get, and the more entrenched in being a parent I become, the harder it is to make real, lasting friendships with people who I find genuinely interesting. And in group situations, it can get awkward very quickly to discuss any touchy topic or anything seemingly exposing of yourself. So I feel thankful I’ve found this friend and we can be totally open and share unflattering things about ourselves, things we’ve done, and our relationships, and that it doesn’t negatively impact how we see each other. In fact, it actually does the opposite: it helps us better relate to and respect each other for being so candid… and being open about the fact that we’re all deeply flawed individuals who are just trying to do their best in life and with others. If anything, we should applaud ourselves for having that level of self-awareness to see that we probably do “wrong” things all the time but do make an intentional attempt to be better and do better.

A friend of mine who lives in San Francisco is coming to New York for work next week, and so we’re planning to meet up on Monday and Thursday night. She’s extended her trip to stay with us for Thursday night and will leave Friday evening. When I asked her what she wanted to do while in New York or if there were any restaurants or cafes she wanted to check out, she simply responded that she wanted to go restaurants or spots that she couldn’t do with young children or babies… so in other words, speakeasy-type venues, cramped and small restaurants you couldn’t easily roll a stroller into, or places where you’d never even think of asking the server for a high chair at.

It was kind of funny when she responded this way because I could completely relate. I have a growing list (as always) of places I’d like to eat at in New York, but given the weekends are with Pookster, a large percentage of those places are just a no-go with a young child. It’s not to blame your child, but more recognizing that some venues just are not suitable for families or young children. And that’s okay. So we’re planning to do a tiny izakaya meal and have afternoon tea during her time here. Even though we’re both mothers now, we still enjoy and crave adult time and time to catch up one on one… without the constant injections of screaming and toddler questions that would happen if our kids were around and we tried to converse.