The week ends, the work week, at least.
And here I am, in the train, through the rain, under the gray sky.
Speaking of rain, I wonder how bad the leak is on the roof of my house in New Haven. The roofer will have something complicated and distressing to tell me, I am sure, perhaps Monday. I have called two other roofers and see what they think. They haven't called back.
These phone calls and getting the news are all very annoying. Emotionally they take a toll, and they disrupt my work flow, not only the act of calling but that emotional toll distracts me from working. I wonder still what the worth is of keeping the house. Is it really making money for me now? When will its price go up? Is the wait and possible income worth the trouble? It also costs me money to keep it. I don't know if I have the time to figure it all out.
In an hour I will be having Turkish food with that guy friend of mine. The one that I had steak with. His birthday is coming up, next weekend, a week from now. He shows his birth year on his Facebook page. He's turning 41. How did he celebrate his 40th? I wonder. That was around the time he moved to New York. Maybe he, not being Chinese, didn't care about the number 40 and coinciding it with his move. Maybe he did. If I were him, it would mean a lot. Forty. Me, I have three years left. I wonder what those three years will be. Hopefully, I won't be worrying about my house, by whatever means. Maybe I will have my own apartment in New York by then. Maybe I will be the best tango dancer among the amateurs. Maybe I will be done with finance and start something else.
Looking back a human being sometimes wants to know the meaning. I haven't done that yet. I am guessing you do that as you get older. Some years I go over the old letters, journal entries, and reflect upon the steps I've taken, and the ways to go. I think about this now because I think my Dad has been asking himself this question for a while now. Specifically, he has been insecure about being a good father. I suppose, knowing him, he has always been insecure. I wonder if he has ever thought he was good enough of a father. Probably never. He apologized about a year ago being a failure, failure to put his children into "middle-class" America (by that he meant I didn't have more than one fancy car and didn't even have a flat-screen TV).
This time his insecurity manifested in a darker way, at least in a way that upset me. He called a couple of weeks ago, actually, two weekends ago, asking if I could pick up Granny again from that infernal traffic swamp of Chinatown. I explained to him that driving was one of my most hated activities, and driving in Chinatown was just about the worst thing I would let myself do. He didn't sound upset, not terribly disappointed. I felt I needed to justify this because I didn't think he would understand. Then, I forgot about it.
But later in the week, Mother called and told me how I upset my Dad to no ends, how he wept after hanging up in pain and anger, how he was disappointed not only in me but also in himself in being a failure to raise a son that would do the right thing. The right thing, to him, was sucking up whatever inconvenience I had to help a woman who suffered many years to bring us happiness. He complained that if I wouldn't do this for my Grandmother, how could anyone expect me to do anything good for him, who's already old.
I was seriously upset hearing this. At one level, I hated the face that he hid this from me, that I had to hear it from someone else. At another level, I hated the way he said everything was fine but really he was exploding inside. Furthermore, he was setting up a trap for both of us. He knew, and Mother told him so before he called, that I hated driving and hated it a thousand times more driving in Chinatown. He nevertheless tested the impossible, tested to see if really even his own son would refuse him. He never likes asking for favors, and it's not only because he's self-reliant, but also because he is afraid of rejection. He set up this trap to play out that rejection onto himself using me. Then the icing on the cake is his childishness. He said later in the week, after I called (not knowing he was upset) about all of us meeting together because my little sister was in town, that if it weren't for my little sister he wouldn't want to see me. How does a seventy-something year old man behave like a seven-year old?
The deepest anger I had is reserved for myself and how I became like this. If you know me, you know that I do more or less the same thing as I have just described about my Dad. I have inherited a lot of these traits from him. Suppressing anger, letting people do as they wish, not asking for help, and being childish. I am sure other people do this too, but other people didn't inherit these traits from my Dad.
When the anger subsided, I started to forgive myself, because finally, I realized, I wasn't at fault. I didn't choose these traits. Someone spoon-fed them to me just as he spoon-fed me the best food he could afford. Parents do what they can, and it is never perfect in the sense that every spoon is full of the right thing to do at the moment. So I forgive him a little bit, too.
I saw them along with my little sister. It was a little awkward at first. But we talked more, nothing out of the ordinary. They still needed me to be the bridge between my sister and them, the same sister I rescued from them. I was still angry, however. But with a greater concentration of disappointment. Here was the man I had until college relied on to be my moral and intellectual guide. He's the person I could always turn to for an answer. Now I see he was childish, insecure, and didn't know still how to love a son. If you love your son, how do you manipulate him to do what he explicitly says is painful for him. How do you put tradition before filial love? He's not perfect in that sense, and no father can really do that all the time. But I felt a lot of disappointment.
I also felt I had to make a greater effort to walk away from the legacy of those spoons of bad traits fed to me. Or reconcile with them, I guess. I don't want to feel dishonest with my friends. I want to be more straightforward. I don't think the Chinese culture is deceptive and dishonest; but it can feel like that when it is implanted in the Western culture where there are fewer rules and more explicit communications. I want to show my anger when someone so much as annoys me, I want to be able to tell people what I need and be prepared for refusals.
As for my Dad, I haven't decided on what to do with him. I need to tell him this, even though my Cantonese isn't strong enough to express my thoughts thoroughly. I don't want him to feel even more inadequate as a father. I guess I need to get over my anger first through some other channel before I can talk to him in a rational way.
A friend of mine wrote me an email (to which I still haven't found the time to respond, so busy) in which she stated that her Dad was diagnosed with cancer. She's one of the reasons I can speak Spanish so well. She was in New Haven for just two semesters, but because she wasn't comfortable speaking English, we spoke a lot in Spanish (she's actually Italian). Her email reminded me that parents, if you're "lucky" in the most twisted sense, will not outlast you. So while they are here, find your path back to them if you have broken the the connection. No matter how bad the relationship was, you will lose a piece of yourself once that parent disappears permanently. Lost it forever. So when I am done with being angry, I will talk to him. For now, I will rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment