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Congrats to my folks, who after almost 20 years has finally paid off their home!
My moms has also informed that after more than a year of toiling, working 12-hour days and a second mom-shift at home, she’s finally earned back the initial investment she put into the restaurant that she manages. She’s finally making a profit off of her small-percentage ownership [sic].
While I’m here abroad, trying to show my girls what they’re truly capable of, my mom is at home making those possibilities come to fruition. She has trouble understanding how our narratives are inextricably intertwined. She can’t fathom how I’m doing this because of her, but I am.
That’s America for ya. An immigrant woman, who came from nothing with the most base knowledge of survival English can buy a small piece of a Chinese fast-food restaurant and earn an honest living from it- but at the same time she can’t comprehend English enough to know how much her own kid shows love and adoration for her through writing.
I keep saying it over and over and over again, hoping in vain that one day they will stumble across these words and finally be able to internalize it: I am proud that you are my parents. I hope you’re proud to have me as your kid.
For a couple folks who arrived in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, without a dollar between them and a handful of broken English phrases- my folks did alright for themselves. They raised three kids, made sure we were clothed and fed and even bought us a Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 1980’s. Their dream for us was that we finish high school, finish university and then find a permanent cooshy, rolling office chair to settle into. Their dream for us was to live leisurely beneath fluorescent lights, enjoy air-conditioning and not have to stand eight hours a day to get health insurance.
I partly fulfilled this dream after graduating, and then trashed it for this unsustainable volunteer gig. Alan, on the hand, is a system analysts or something equally as vague and exhaustingly boring. But at least he’s taken some of the burden off my shoulders so that my parents don’t feel like all their kids are failures.
Now Albert’s done. He has no plans of being a humanitarian bum like me.
“Albert, don’t be like your big sister,” I warned him. “Get yourself a job with health benefits. I haven’t seen a doctor or dentist in more than four years.”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. I thought perhaps he already had a job lined up, something were he can use his newly minted graphic design degree.
“Really?! What happened?”
“I’ll never be a volunteer.”
The three of us kids- this bizarre amalgamation of hopes, dreams and expectations have chosen divergent paths. But ultimately we fulfilled something for our folks, for our immigrant community and for ourselves- whatever that may be.
We love our pops.
It’s funny that a man who is so un-aesthetically inclined raised two graphic-designing kids. Albert, my youngest brother, is going to graduate this summer with a degree in graphic design and this is equally an ode to my dad and Albert. I had it printed out and sent to my parents house, my brothers are gonna stick it in an 8×10 frame and bestow this hideous piece of design work to him.
I hope he thinks it looks good.
(During past Father’s Days I’ve sent him cards with hot dogs, a slot machine that dispensed Big Macs and various other disappointing weirdnesses.)
In 1981, with me in Chinatown, Los Angeles.
I called her on mother’s day morning. She was sleeping. I miss my mom and I miss sleeping.
I’ve been debating on whether to write about this for about two weeks now. That’s also the same amount of time it’s taken me to finally even come to terms with it.
Working and living in Chittagong has been so hectic and draining that I’ve just recently given myself the time to process it all.
My mother’s father, my grandfather, my gong-gong, passed away.
Albert e-mailed me on April 20th to say that he was in the hospital. On the 21st he was on life support. And on the 22nd he left us. Albert told me over Skype, I had about a half a minute to even think about it before I had to meet with a student in the next room.
From that moment on, I buried it. I dug a deep hole inside of me and gingerly placed all my hurt into it before covering it up and tip-toeing away- hoping that if I left it silently that it wouldn’t notice I was so far away from it. I was simply too busy with work to even imagine not doing it.
Guilt overwhelmed me.
A memory crawled its way back into my thoughts.
Just days before I left for Bangladesh, my folks and I got into an argument that I felt was born out their concerns for me and my future. I complained about the ordeal with Alan, one of my younger brothers, and he sided with them. He asked if I could understand where they were coming from. I’m empathetic enough to understand my parent’s point of view, that they’re worried about my well-being and they only want the best for me. But what I didn’t appreciate was when my mom lobbed some really petty and upsetting remarks at me.
I said that it just came down to the fact that no one knows what I’m doing abroad or why I’m doing these things. They never asked.
Except this time Alan did ask me something, “Maybe mom just thinks like ‘Why you gotta help the world before you help the family?’”
It stung and I didn’t have an answer. Maybe those two thoughts are mutually exclusive. His question came back to me when I talked to mom a week ago. She was in the midst of planning gong gong’s funeral.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about us. We’re fine.” I could hear her pushing back tears.
“Okay,” was all I could muster.
I felt like the worst daughter/granddaughter. On the other side of the earth. Helpless and not present. I’m left with re-thinking my purpose and why I’m here and what I would do if something might happen to another loved one.
I’m wandering around inside myself trying to find where I hid this pain, so that I can hold it up to the light and know it. I took the last couple days off work, but still don’t feel any better or worse. I can only describe it as feeling lukewarm.
I’m getting up tomorrow morning and teaching again. Work again. Because, really, I don’t know what else to do.
A heavy homesickness has stricken me. I’m homesick in a way that I’ve never felt before. The kind of missing that’s tumbling in the pit of my stomach and weighs my heart down to my feet.
Filed under: Fambly
It began years ago, when I first moved out and would return occasionally to do laundry or pick up frozen dumplings mom bought for me from the Chinese supermarket. I would be lounging on the lima green love seat when dad came into the house through the garage. He'd tilt his wrinkled bald head and say, “Who is dis homeless?”
There was a brief interlude, those two years at my salaried adult job, where my family refrained from calling me a bum. But ever since my annual income has dipped so far below the poverty line, to a point where I am not required to file a tax return for the past two years, the homeless title has triumphantly returned.
We were in my mother's grey Corolla for no more than five minutes after they had picked me up from LAX when mom said in Chinese, “When will you stop breaking my heart, find a real job and make some money? Please, when you get back, do something better and make some money.”
I haven't even left and mom's already nagging and chiding future me into doing something.
It's disheartening to think that all that I've done with myself thus far has only made my mother worry.
Perhaps this is the plight of the non-professional child of working class refugee immigrants.
I can write all I want, draw and design as much junk as my hands will allow, play in as many ridiculous bands as my voice can plow through- but my folks will never understand or appreciate it as long I'm not earning more than five-figures a year. (I didn't break four-figures with my income from the last two years combined.)
“Since you're not my daughter, I can say that you're brave,” Marah's mom told me. Everyone else's mom thinks I'm doing alright, except for my own. She didn't come here to America, to give birth to me in the richest nation in the world, just so that I can grow up to wash dishes with a BA degree and a hefty student loan. Dang, after having typed that out, I guess that is heartbreaking.
I understand that mom just doesn't want me to have to struggle financially, to be comfortable enough to afford whatever inane new gadget is on the market, to get fat and watch lots of TV and stay out of developing nations in south Asia that are nestled much closer to war-torn countries than we are here in her suburban home. I know mom loves me, she made me catfish soup and bought me coffee, but it wouldn't hurt for her to tell me she's proud of me every now and then before I leave for a year and a half.
I may be homeless, but I'm still someone's kid seeking affirmation from moms and pops.
My brother, Alan, and his BFFs Jen and Dennis made this awesome video-invite to their New Year's Eve party.
Alan:everyone brought beer from around the world
we have about 100 beers left!
sick!
haha
Filed under: Fambly
In the midst of updating my youngest brother about the goings-on of me life, he asked, “Are you on meth?”
(Nope.)
