Posts tagged with "family"

Papa Was A Rolling Stone

My dad called. After 14 months with­out con­tact.

Not that I was­n’t expect­ing it. He e‑mailed me two weeks ago (flagged with the lit­tle red excla­ma­tion point to note that it was impor­tant), telling me that he was hav­ing a par­ty on New Years. “Can you come and join us?”, it said.

“Us?”

Is he dat­ing now, I won­dered. Married?

I sat on this e‑mail, unsure of what to say. A lit­tle while before this, Merv struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with me about fish­ing. I told him I used to go to this one fish­ing spot at a lift-lock in Peterborough with my dad, and it made me won­der what I would say if I ever talked to him again. He did­n’t even know me when we were on speak­ing terms, how would he know me now? I’ve changed so dras­ti­cal­ly in the last year.

We nev­er left things off on bad terms. We just stopped talk­ing to each oth­er, so there was­n’t any ani­mos­i­ty, on my part, at least. I nev­er con­tact­ed him because I nev­er felt like it, and I was expect­ing years to go by before he con­tact­ed me.

Then he called on the week­end. It took me by sur­prise. I thought e‑mail was a way for him to stay dis­tant, while ful­fill­ing the min­i­mum parental respon­si­bil­i­ty. I had guests over and was enter­tain­ing and some­what charged up. He start­ed talk­ing to me in Chinese, and I could only reply in English. It was too much for my mind, and I was too much on my guard. So I told him to call me next week.

And he did.

Continue read­ing “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”…

A Note On Chinese Titles

Both my Tai Chi teach­ers eschew the title of “Master”, and pre­fer to be called by their first names. As I’ve had it explained to me, even the true mas­ters feel like they need a cou­ple extra life­times to com­plete­ly mas­ter Tai Chi. This is what my teach­ers com­pare them­selves to, so I sus­pect they feel it erro­neous to use the same title, even though they’ve been teach­ing for decades.

I find it very awk­ward. In Chinese, the word “Master” or “Sifu” implies a teacher, not nec­es­sar­i­ly a lev­el of skill.

When I was young, I called my cousin by his Chinese name, because I thought it was insult­ing to address him by his rela­tion­al title of biu dai for “mater­nal younger male cousin” (or “moth­er’s sib­lings’ son who is younger than me”). I thought the “dai” part referred to some­one as “under”, the way “junior” could be used pejo­ra­tive­ly in English. The thing I did­n’t under­stand was that it was appro­pri­ate, per­haps even more appro­pri­ate than address­ing him by name. I’ve since become privy to the com­plex rules of Chinese names and titles, espe­cial­ly rela­tion­al fam­i­ly ones.

As a kid, the first thing you’re sup­posed to do when enter­ing a house is greet every­one — adults most impor­tant­ly — by their title.

People con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion though, and even as par­ents, they’ll address their elders the same way. It’s a way of rec­og­niz­ing and respect­ing the roles in the fam­i­ly. Even though my Tai Chi teacher is Occidental, I feel com­pelled to address my teacher as “Master”, instead of “Mike”.

And it’s hard habit for me to break.

Rebel Son

Rana pulled me aside the oth­er day and told me, I under­stand your cul­ture now. I under­stand your deci­sion.

She elab­o­rat­ed on a woman at work who had sent her daugh­ter to live in China. It was soon after the baby was born, and the grand­moth­er assumed respon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ent. The moth­er nev­er went to vis­it, only send­ing mon­ey for her upbring­ing.

That day, the grand­moth­er and grand­daugh­ter came to work, hav­ing flown into Canada to vis­it. No one at work had seen the child, two years old now. The whole time, she was ner­vous and shy, clutch­ing the leg of her grand­moth­er. When the moth­er tried to hold her, she would­n’t budge, only cry­ing the rau­cous, uncon­trolled, unin­hib­it­ed tears of a child.

Rana told me this with sur­prise and con­fu­sion in her face. It was hard for her to believe that any­one could do this to their baby. I wish I could say that I was sur­prised.

This child was too young to know bias or bit­ter­ness. She only knew what she felt, a being of pure emo­tion. The woman who was sup­posed to be her moth­er was no clos­er than a stranger, and for the first time, Rana was exposed to this.

I’ve always con­fid­ed in Rana about my own rela­tion­ship with my par­ents. She’s one of the few who real­ly care, ask­ing me if there’s been any news on a reg­u­lar basis, espe­cial­ly since I cut all ties. We nev­er argue, but she’s nev­er ful­ly agreed with me. She always tried to give me a mater­nal per­spec­tive, being a moth­er of three her­self. I’ve admit­ted that I don’t under­stand what it means to be a par­ent, but that day, she real­ized that she nev­er under­stood what it means to be a child of the Chinese cul­ture.

It’s cold. It’s mate­r­i­al. Most Chinese par­ents can only express their love with mon­ey.

In this way, my par­ents showed me that they loved me. They prob­a­bly think they did the best they could, but as a child of the North American cul­ture, I felt noth­ing. I nev­er knew what it was to be loved.

And Rana said, You were the one who rebelled against this.

Letter To My Mother

You did­n’t know it, but for years I’ve come close to burn­ing the bridge with you. It was a heavy step to take, because in doing so, I knew that I would nev­er be able to go back on such a dras­tic deci­sion.

I appre­ci­ate all the finan­cial sup­port you’ve pro­vid­ed. It’s been more than I can ask for. Unfortunately, what I want­ed and need­ed the most was emo­tion­al sup­port.

I’ve always played the role of the sub­mis­sive son. Your boy who’s always done what you want­ed and agreed with what you said. When we exchanged tears on the phone in August, I let you know how poor­ly I was treat­ed grow­ing up. I’ve always put up with it, but the way you act­ed last week was the straw that broke the camels back. I keep giv­ing you a chance, over and over. Seeing you over those few days was the last one. Even if you say now that you can change, the risk isn’t worth it. The poten­tial mis­ery, frus­tra­tion, and anguish you may cause me aren’t worth it.

Normally, I would be sen­si­tive about the tim­ing — the fresh divorce, the tran­si­tion — but I don’t care any­more. I’ve put my feel­ings aside my whole life. You pushed me too far, and now I have to con­sid­er myself.

Don’t con­tact me again. Not even if some­one dies. Any calls, mes­sages, e‑mails will be ignored. This is not an easy or a brash deci­sion for me, a deci­sion I’ve made after cool­ing off and calm­ing down, but from my point of view it’s for the best.

You give me noth­ing but pain and mon­ey, and the mon­ey does­n’t mean a thing.

From now on, I don’t have a moth­er.

And you don’t have a son.

A Place To Stay

Thumbnail: Scratch sand 1

Thumbnail: Scratch sand 2

Gua sha, or sand scratch­ing, he calls it.

I’m already sob­bing. The cul­mi­na­tion of anoth­er week of stress and lack of sleep. One dis­ap­point­ment after anoth­er.

With the bowl of a porce­lain Chinese soup spoon, he scrapes the mus­cles along the back of my neck.

This caus­es rup­ture of the small sub-der­mal cap­il­lar­ies (petechia) and may result in sub-cuta­neous bruis­ing (ecchy­mo­sis).

According to Chinese med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, the inter­nal tox­ins in the blood are released and cir­cu­la­tion is improved.

Before con­tin­u­ing down my shoul­ders, he rubs on some Vic’s VapoRub. It lubri­cates the process, cools the skin to ease the burn­ing dis­com­fort, a mix of east­ern and west­ern tech­niques. The patch he rubs turns a mud­dy mix of red and gar­net, and from this he tells me that I’m work­ing too hard. I have to look after myself bet­ter. Relax every day. Take an hour to exer­cise or walk. The first step to a healthy mind is a healthy body. The colour indi­cates that I have a lot of tox­ins built up in my body.

The dark­er it is, the more it’s sup­posed to hurt, but I feel noth­ing.

I take a sip from the mug that he hands me, full of pale yel­low liq­uid. It burns going down. Flavourless, but maybe that’s just the con­ges­tion.

“It’s spicy”, I mum­ble, no longer speak­ing Chinese. It’s too much on my mind. I need to express myself with­out lim­i­ta­tions.

“It’s just gin­ger-water. If you can’t take it, you can add some sug­ar.”

I don’t reply. The unas­sum­ing con­som­mé rais­es the inter­nal tem­per­a­ture, killing the sick air. To quell the spasms in my chest, I take slow­er, deep­er breaths. It does­n’t work.

“I admire you, uncle. One day I hope to be a father like you.”

He breathes a short but heavy sigh. I can tell that these words pain him more than any­thing else I’ve said. He tells me, in Chinese, “Uncle does­n’t make a lot of mon­ey. I make sure I spend a lot of time at home”.

“I like you, uncle. I hope that no mat­ter what hap­pens, we can still be friends.”

“No mat­ter what hap­pens, you’ll always have a place to stay with us in Hong Kong.”