All About My Mother

The other day my parents came to have dinner with me. It was my Mother's first look at my apartment.

She never has anything good to say. Nothing like, "Wow, nice carpet!" Not even, "Nice carpet, how much did you pay for that?" More like, "How much is this place? $1,300? Wow, that's expensive." I know what she was thinking. If I had taken up her brilliant plan of living in Stamford and spending the weekend at her house in order to do tango, everyone would have been happier because I would be saving money and time.

This comment came around the same time where she said in China she felt obligated to spend thousands of yuan on stupid medicinal stuff and souvenirs, just so the tour guides don't put on a mean face. She knew very well that the tour groups made their money not only from the tour packages, but also from commissions from the many shops they took the poor sheep to during the tour. But she still spent all that money.

Flanking this confession of wasting money was not only the comment on my expensive apartment ("expensive"!), but also a quip about how "only if you're stupid would you be selling a house now". It was in reference to my suggestion that if her mother didn't live in that house, she should just sell it. I know that it was also an indirect jab at my decision to sell my house at this terrible time.

So the point is, for someone who supposedly is so brilliant at making up money-making schemes, she managed to waste all that money on this trip of hers.

And after all this fuss with the housing bubble that showed how out-of-date the aspect of Chinese culture is of owning property as the best way to ensure a stable financial future, she still thought that owning stocks was not as good as owning a house.

This blog entry is to show where I get my stubbornness. This woman has an idea and is fixed to it. No evidence can persuade her otherwise, especially if the point of the evidence is to show she's wrong.

At the same time, we are so different in what we want in life. I want less, whereas she believes more material goods shows greater success in life (which eventually translates to some twisted sense of happiness). I can't explain to her why I would spend money to live in New York, the emotional price. And let's not get into the side of marriage.

I have deeper things to talk about, but not now. It's late. I need more sleep to rid this stupid cough. And talking about family is always a good way to open up something in me, anyway. Perhaps tomorrow I can talk more about this past weekend of non-stop tango dancing. But tomorrow I am actually invited to the birthday surprise of one of the tango teachers in New York. The normal thing to do would have been getting closer to the man who helped me most with my tango life and who organizes most of the famous milongas, who also happens to live just a few blocks from me. But for now that route is a dead-end because he also happens to be the whole reason I cut off connection with that French woman to start with. Tango is too full of drama. But for now, I will find my own anchor with other people. I will see where this path takes me.