Family Trees and Wise Teeth
January 6, 2011 § 2 Comments
On Sunday night, my parents went to the airport to pick up a distant relative, who is currently a freshman at Virginia Tech. Apparently, his great-grandpa is my grandpa’s oldest brother, which makes this boy a distant nephew of mine, and it makes him my mother’s cousin. My mom said she would draw me a family tree, but she never got around to it.
His flight arrived around 11:30PM [way to be considerate of people who have work the next day…], and I made sure to leave my makeup and normal clothes on until they got home because I expressly wanted him to see how I normally look before getting my wisdom teeth removed the next day LOL. Is that vain? I just wanted to make a good impression.
They didn’t get home until 1:45AM, by which time my brother was already asleep. I padded downstairs and met a skinny boy who towered over both my parents.
“You can call him dà wēi,” my mom said.
“Do you have an English name?” I asked him.
“Mahoné,” he replied.
“…Is that a Hawaiian name?”
“It’s Icelandic.”
This boy was clearly atypical, but I don’t mean that in a bad way. At least he was a lot cuter than our last house guest. My parents set him up in the guest room and we all went to sleep.
The pre-surgery instructions directed me not to eat for six hours before surgery. I thought it would be easy, since I’m usually not hungry in the morning anyway. The instructions also prohibited makeup and nail polish, which made me laugh. I mean, I wasn’t about to make myself pretty for surgery, but how would nail polish affect anything? I typically always wear both, and I wasn’t about to remove my nail polish for no reason. What a waste.
The next morning, I woke up in a foul mood for some reason. I was hungry but couldn’t eat anything, and sat in the car hating everything about the world on the way to the oral surgeon. Mother didn’t help things. I dislike being in the car alone with her because there’s no way to escape if she starts lecturing me, and I certainly didn’t want to hear it that morning.
But it came anyway.
“Are you being serious about looking for a job? Do you understand what your choices are after graduation? What use is it if your father and I came to America if you’re going to be as poor as we were when you graduate?”
During his sermon the previous day, Pastor Alex said that on average, parents and children have 38 minutes of meaningful conversation a day. In my family, I think it’s less than 10% of that even if you combine my brother and me.
Mother was left in the waiting room as the nurses led me into the operating room. I felt nervous. I hate the thought of surgery, the thought of being cut open, the thought of drugs making me lose control of my body, everything. They fitted a tube around my nose for laughing gas, but I still felt too aware. When the IV needle pricked into the back of my hand, I closed my eyes and tried hard not to think about that one summer in China when I got pneumonia and had a needle stuck in my hand every day for two weeks.
One of the nurses fitted something onto my fingertip.
“Let me see if this will read through your nail polish,” she said. Oops. I wondered if they had nail polish remover in their office, but it turned out to be okay. Good thing I only painted two coats this time.
Eventually I lost consciousness. I vague remember the feeling of plastic instruments being shoved into my mouth, which is quite undignified if I think about it, but that’s all I can recall. I awakened with gauze in the far corners of my mouth and a numb bottom lip. We went home and I removed the semi-bloody gauze, sipped on a bit of chicken rice soup [while avoiding the chicken & rice], took my three pills [one for swelling, one for pain, and one for infections], put more gauze in and went to bed.
That night, my aunt’s family came over for dinner to welcome Mahone to town. They made dumplings — I’ve never wanted to eat dumplings so badly in my life [well except maybe when I watched Kung Fu Panda]. Instead, I sat next to Mahone and silently sulked over some bland egg pudding my aunt kindly made for me. She also kept asking me questions about my jaw, which I had difficulty answering due to the swelling. Moral of the story: Don’t try to get me to talk to you if I can barely open my mouth wide enough to stick a spoon in.
I noticed that Mahone wore one tiny earring in each earlobe. Interesting. During dinner, someone asked about his hair, which seemed an artificial brown color.
“Actually, I have naturally brown hair,” he replied. “My mom says that my father had light hair when he was young too, and it turned darker as he got older.”
We all looked at him. I mean, the kid wasn’t that old, but 19 isn’t that young either, to have that kind of condition still lingering about.
“My hair is usually lighter than this, but I dyed it a darker shade of brown,” he continued. What an interesting fellow.
After finishing my meager portion, I took my meds and went back to my room. It was too depressing to watch other people eat what I couldn’t have. I eventually started feeling nauseated and dizzy, so I curled up in bed again and watched Kuragehime, which was an absolutely delightful anime.
I woke up around 9PM to take my medicine, went back to sleep, and awakened again around midnight still feeling nauseated. I really didn’t want to eat, but I had to take my pills, so I went downstairs to reluctantly scoop a bowl of ice cream. It was Oberweis Black Cherry, but I couldn’t even eat the cherry chunks.
Surprisingly, Mahone joined me in the kitchen. He was by the sink making himself hot water when I walked out of the bathroom.
“Thirsty?” I asked.
“Just not feeling well.”
“Mm…likewise.”
I had brought my laptop downstairs with me.
“What are you watching?” he asked.
“Just…some Japanese cartoons,” I replied.
“Cool.” He took his cup of water and a small bowl of mixed nuts and bid me adieu.
I turned my attention back to my bowl. Ice cream is one of those foods [like chocolate cake and PB&J sandwiches] that I can eat forever and ever, so it was weird having to force myself to ingest it this time. The texture was smooth [once I scraped off all the freezer burns], but the enjoyment simply wasn’t there. I wasn’t even allowed to brush my teeth that day, so I just stumbled back into bed afterward.
The past few days have pretty much followed the same pattern. Wake up, nibble on something liquidy, sleep for a few hours, repeat. I didn’t shower for two days because really, there was no point. The good part is that my mom is actually taking care of me, unlike that one time I stayed home sick in elementary school and she made me clean out my closet, and nobody questions my strange eating or sleeping schedule.
On the other hand, I still have a squarely defined jawline, I can only open my already-small mouth partway, attempting to chew anything is exhausting, and I eat so slowly that my food gets cold before I’m even half done with it. Also, I’ve contributed even less to society than usual. I wonder when this parasitic lifestyle will get old? Life would be much easier if my house had a better Internet connection, too.
This is me as of yesterday [feel free to check out the “About Me” page for what I normally look like]:
And so I continue to sit on the couch while watching anime. Hopefully I will be well enough by tomorrow to pick my dad up from the airport!
The Family That Saves Together
December 26, 2010 § 3 Comments
The last time it felt like Christmas in my house was when I was in middle school: The morning sun shone into our living room as we gathered in front of the Christmas tree. I shrieked when I unwrapped the gift from my parents:
The other present, from “Santa,” was Pokémon Silver [how did he know?! Just kidding; I’m pretty sure I stopped believing in Santa by the age of 7]. At that point in time, my brother Larry was still young enough to be somewhat obedient and willingly join our family for pictures and stuff. After opening all our presents, my dad went to go put a Christmas CD into the stereo system, and we played contently with our new belongings as the sounds of a children’s choir echoed throughout the house.
Since then, many things have changed. We’ve spent Christmas at Disney World, at our new house; the past four years have been spent skiing in Wisconsin; I ordered my past two Christmas presents “from my parents” online for myself; we’ve become disillusioned with the enchanting idea of a cohesive family.
Yesterday, I started reading The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. I love reading her books not only for obvious reasons (she’s an amazing writer whose stories about Chinese-American women relate directly to me), but also because they always remind me that cherishing family is extremely difficult yet extremely important. And so I write.
This Christmas, I was awakened at 11AM by a heartwarming text from DP. I could’ve slept for another two hours, but I figured it would be rude to wake up so late on a holiday. When I peeked into the hallway, only Larry’s bedroom door was open; I could hear faint sounds of him playing Call of Duty downstairs. I tiptoed down to wish him a Merry Christmas and took it as a good sign that he didn’t respond with his usual “Shut up, fatty.”
My mom came out of her room as I was entering the bathroom, and when I came back out, I could hear the rustling of tissue paper from the living room.
“Thanks, Laura,” she called up to me.
“Are you not going to wait for the rest of us?!” I responded loudly.
“Oh, sorry!”
Sigh.
I went down to the living room as Larry was examining his gift from our aunt in New Jersey; it was a navy blue American Eagle sweatshirt.
“I already have two navy blue sweatshirts without zippers,” he said. “And I don’t wear American Eagle…”
Our aunt had sent me a Christmas card containing $40, and I looked at it for a while, thinking. A week ago, our other aunt [the one who lives five minutes away] had slipped my brother and me a pair of red envelopes, each holding $200. The two of us were left agape, and he handed me his envelope to deal with. Later, I gave both of them to my mom.
“How much did she give you guys?” she asked.
“Two hundred each.”
“What?? Is my sister crazy??”
“I…don’t know. Maybe you should take $200 to give to my cousin and then leave me and Larry with $100 each,” I suggested.
The aunt who lives in New Jersey is a lawyer and lives in a million-dollar house with her family. The aunt who lives near us lives in a house smaller than ours, and she and her husband make much less money than the other aunt and her husband. I’m not sure if there are any implications deeper than one aunt probably loves us more [I say this objectively, without sarcasm], but it’s interesting to think about.
My mom did exactly as I suggested, and I took my $100 to the mall with LC on Monday to do some Christmas shopping. This past semester, I’ve helped upgrade the wardrobes of approximately three guy friends, which in turn helps me become more purposeful in my gift-giving.
I bought a thin belt for my mom. I tried buying her clothing once during high school, spending a whole hour agonizing over the racks at H&M only to have her return everything a few days later. Women are picky about their clothes, I know, so I didn’t take it personally but still felt somewhat crestfallen. Thankfully, there were no complaints about the belt.
I was going to buy a pair of dress pants for my dad because he has this awful pair of brown corduroys that he wears pulled up to his waist like my grandpa, but I didn’t know his pant size. I bought him a warm beanie instead, to replace the scruffy white one I’ve seen him wearing for years.
When he unwrapped the hat, I asked him how long he’s had his other one.
“Your mom gave it to me when we were dating,” he responded.
When we were dating. When we were dating.
His words echoed in my head. “It’s THAT OLD?!” I said incredulously.
“Your mom had a matching one,” he reminisced. “It was blue with white stripes.”
“Actually, I think it was green,” my mom cut in.
“Her second sister made them for us,” dad continued.
I almost died. To think that my dad still owns and uses something from more than 20 years ago…it’s utterly amazing.
I guess my dad didn’t expect anyone to get him presents, because he bought himself a bag of stuff and left it by the side of the tree LOL. He seemed pretty pleased, even proud of his purchases as he pulled out the six t-shirts and two pants show me.
“Guess how much this one cost,” he said, holding up a Chicago Bears shirt.
“Did you go shopping with mom?” I responded.
“No,” he told me. “I went to the outlet mall in Pennsylvania on my business trip. This shirt cost less than $2!”
My mind was still reeling from the thought of my dad doing retail shopping by himself.
“Wait a minute,” I said suddenly, poking at his pile of clothes. “Did you buy two of the same shirt?”
“I bought three, actually,” he replied happily, showing me the other one. “I’m planning to replace my old t-shirts with these.”
I nodded, thinking about the raggedy shirt my dad currently sleeps in, which has holes at the seams.
When my mom had asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I replied “Nothing” [I already feel like enough of an unemployed burden], so that’s what I got. As a miracle upon miracles, Larry actually gave me something — Apples To Apples On The Go. Seriously unexpected, but it reminded me of the good old days when we played board games together instead of merely sharing the same Internet connection.
I think Larry also asked for nothing from my parents because that’s what he received too. I suppose it’s refreshing for a child not to pester his parents for an expensive Christmas gift, though they might be willing to pay that expense in order to have a son that gives respect instead of verbal abuse. When my dad took Larry to China over the summer, my relatives plastered him with birthday money, so the brand new XBox 360 & COD Black Ops that he plays was purchased with his own funds.
Larry seemed to like the two shirts I bought him from PacSun, but insists that he wears medium instead of small. UGH. He might still be growing [I mean, I hope so because he’s still shorter than me], but the progress is slow and size small clothing definitely fits him perfectly at the moment. I don’t want him to be another case of boy-who-never-wears-clothes-that-actually-fit!
After lunch, my dad and I made a sponge cake with the recipe he had enthusiastically obtained from someone at my aunt’s house last night. Both of my parents were awed by my ability to separate an egg yolk from an egg white LOL.
Whew…I spent all of yesterday writing this blog post. It’s filled with mostly daily minutia, but to me, any time I spend with my family that doesn’t involve fighting is worth recording. The closer I get to leaving this house, the more I have to cherish moments like these.
Residual
December 25, 2010 § 2 Comments
Eight years ago, my family was on our way home from a family dinner at the home of some friends who lived in Hoffman Estates, a good 45 minutes away from our own Chicagoan suburb. It was a cold and blustery night; snow and ice covered the ground as more of it blew furiously from the dark sky. My family & my aunt’s family crowded into our green Dodge Caravan, with my parents in the front, my aunt and uncle in the front, and my brother sitting between my cousin and I in the backseat.
We settled in for the customary long drive home. Some of us had probably even fallen asleep somewhere along the endless highway with the other bright headlights.
Suddenly, our world spun, my mother yelled, and just as quickly, everything stopped. We found ourselves on the left shoulder, pressed against the concrete wall of the median, facing oncoming traffic. The van had slipped on ice, swung from the rightmost lane across three lanes of traffic while turning a full 180 degrees, and crashed into the divider.
We sat, stunned.
“Are you guys okay?!” my mom asked urgently, turning around to look at us. My cousin had a bloody nose from thumping his head into the window, but we were otherwise unscathed.
The three of us sat quietly in the back as my dad and uncle went outside to assess the damage and probably call roadside service. I couldn’t properly process what had just taken place.
“What were you thinking when it happened?” my mom directed toward the backseat.
“God, please save us,” I blurted. I don’t think anything was actually going through my mind when we spun out, but that’s what I probably should’ve been thinking.
“Oh, that’s good,” she murmured, turning back around.
Soon enough, a tow truck showed up, its headlights shining into our grounded vehicle. There was a sizable dent on the right side of our minivan, but the car was otherwise okay, so we slowly made our way back onto the road.
“Imagine if there was a semi truck right behind us,” my mom mused. “We could’ve been dead right now. Thank goodness the road was somewhat empty.”
Yes, we could’ve been mangled and bleeding on the highway. It’s probably my closest encounter to a near-death experience; I don’t really count it because it’s not like someone saved me from drowning, but I guess the possibility of death was still pretty high.
Nobody received any visible trauma from that night, but I don’t ever remember being afraid of being in a car before that, even though I had once banged my nose on the hard plastic armrest of our old sedan because I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when my dad braked.
We’ve been on the road many times after that, and in worse weather too. Hard ice crusted on the road on our way to Florida in 2004, and I was almost too tense to sleep for fear of another accident. I lay awake in the backseat despite the 20-hour drive and prayed fervently to God that He would keep my dad awake and alert. When we drove up a mountain in Hawaii in 2007, I pictured our car sliding over the side of the curving road, tumbling into the empty space below.
Even on our trip to and from Wisconsin these past few days, my mind buzzed with stress at the feeling of the snowy, uneven road beneath our tires. My overly active imagination uncontrollably envisions the worst-case scenario. Our car is going to slip the next moment. Or the next. Maybe around this bend, where we’ll cause a pile-up of Final Destination proportions.
I don’t think I realized this lingering insecurity until the drive back from Wisconsin. Our windshield wipers worked to clear our window of snow particles as my dad made jokes (“Come on, truck, drive faster!”), and I cast my gaze about nervously while typing these words onto a Microsoft Word document, afraid that even as I wrote, my MacBook would be ripped out of my hands by the force of another car smashing into us, bracing myself against the possibility of being the sole survivor of a tragic car accident.
My imagination is morbid, but I guess I’m emotionally preparing for the worst, whether it’s deliberate or not. I wish I just had peace.
Ulterior Motives: Everybody Has One
November 28, 2010 § 7 Comments
As I get older, things become less simple. Family parties lose their glitz & glamor, friendships become tainted with divisions, and problems in my family show up acutely. I am helpless to change most of those and reluctant to take on the rest. But these are some of my observations from the past week:
1. Before coming home for Thanksgiving break, my mom told me that our family friend, a guy who had stayed at our house over the summer while I traipsed around Asia, was going to visit again. She EXPRESSLY warned me not to see him as boyfriend material. It was the first forewarning I’ve ever received, and I laughed. Really hard. He’s 25 and goes to IU in Pennsylvania? Let’s call him JS for short.
i. “He booked his plane tickets for Saturday through Tuesday,” mother told me. “Apparently he didn’t know which day was actually Thanksgiving. He’s been in America for a year and a half — how can anyone be that dumb?”
“Is he good-looking?” I asked.
“No. And he’s short, too.”
ii. My mother’s a blunt woman, but she’s usually not that harsh, especially with people whom I haven’t met before. It seems like she said those things to deter me, even though JS is actually a somewhat distant cousin of mine. C’mon mom! I have SOME standards.
2. Is it REALLY possible to think that Thanksgiving occurs on the weekend? Yes, but what kind of person neglects to look into this matter before booking plane tickets?? I didn’t get to know JS that well, but I figure maybe he didn’t want to stay for the whole week. I mean, all he did was play basketball with my dad and watch my brother play COD. My family’s really not that fun.
3. When mother and I came home from shopping on Monday, we expected dinner to be somewhat ready. After all, it was 5:35, and my mom specifically directed me to call my dad to remind him that dinnertime was 5:30. Instead, we found an empty kitchen table, my hungry brother playing XBox grumpily on the couch, and my dad & JS playing ping pong in the basement.
i. One reason I love watching Desperate Housewives is because despite all the drama [or perhaps because of it], petty feuds and occasional scandals, I learn from it. Lynette and Tom Scavo have stuck together despite all the children, his mid-life crisis, etc. I figured that my dad was just pulling a Tom and was happy to have found a new buddy, especially since his own son refuses to go anywhere or do anything [e.g. Larry spent their 3-week summer trip to China at my grandparents’ house playing on his iTouch, which was bought as a bribe to even go in the first place].
ii. Later, my dad told me what he thought of JS.
“Do you really like him or something?” I asked when we were alone in the car.
“Did you know that his father is overseas?” he replied. I shook my head.
“After JS was born, his father really wanted to go abroad,” my dad continued. “He couldn’t get into America, so he went to Hungary. I’m not sure if he meant to stay there, but he met another woman there and married her.” My eyes widened. “He basically cut off all contact with his family, and JS’s mother hasn’t even known her husband’s location since then. She can’t divorce him because he isn’t deceased. If I’m able to provide a bit of fatherly attention to JS, I’m happy to do it.”
4. My mom got pissed the moment she saw the empty kitchen and remained pissy throughout our dinner of hotpot.
i. The next day, she told me that she wasn’t planning to invite JS back for Christmas break.
“I heard your dad asking JS when his winter break started, but I need to have a talk with him,” she explained. “You saw how he ignored his own hungry son to go play ping pong. That is unacceptable.”
//
Every time I come home from school, things feel cheerful and relaxed. But time & time again, I realize that nothing at home changes. My mom still gets angry at every little thing, my dad lets his frustration build up, and there’s a total lack of communication. Before we left for our final dinner engagement of the week, the two of them had an all-out screaming match in the kitchen. Then mother came outside, where I was watching my white breath dissipate into the rays of the sunset, and took it out on me.
“Why can’t you ever do something useful? You just stay holed up in your room all day while you know your father and I are working hard in the kitchen!”
Whatever, mom! If you and dad insist on behaving like screaming children, it’s not my job to get in the middle of it.
It started before I woke up. By the time I went downstairs at 1:30PM, mother was on her way out the door.
“Where are you going?”
“The YMCA.”
“Where’s dad?”
“I don’t know.” She was curt. He returned from the YMCA five minutes after she left.
Right before we all piled into the car to go to someone else’s house, mother insisted that we take a family photo in the living room with our new Canon T1i. My brother, as usual, had to be dragged downstairs and basically acted like an asshole the whole time, rolling around on the ground refusing to get in the picture. Mother & father both tried to handle the situation from their respective places by the Christmas tree and behind the camera but just ended up frustrated at each other.
“Why do we have to take a stupid family picture?” Larry whined.
“Look at the one we took four years ago,” mother replied, gesturing to the frame sitting by the front door. “You looked so happy in that one!”
But he refused to play along with the façade, and it was yet another reminder that no matter how much mother wants us to try to fake it for the camera, deep inside we all know that this family has been dysfunctional for years. I just thought that my parents would have at least mellowed out with age, but clearly something like that will take more than just passing time.
auradis 