J and I arrived in Taiwan late Saturday. Note to self for next time: If flying from Seoul, fly into Kaohsiung instead of Taipei. That would shave off a 20-minute bus ride and 90-minute train ride. Anyway, the first day reunited with the fam was rather challenging. When you’re used to just calling your own shots without having to brief or answer to anyone, it becomes a huge point of contention when someone else starts giving unsolicited instructions and advice. I mean, truth be told, my relationship with my parents has almost always been this way but I dunno: somehow it just never gets easier for me. Hence, my nickname as leader of the Hothead Mafia.
The good news is that J and I are finally gaining more freedom in terms of being able to run off on our own without chaperones. But I had an interesting epiphany about all of this. My friend K has described this dichotomy before: it’s essentially the collective vs. individual debate. With the Taiwanese, you do everything together. Anytime there’s an activity, everyone is invited.
So for example, my fav cousin A invited J and me to visit him in Tainan on Monday night after he got off work. We thought he was going to take the two of us out for street food and then tour the famed night markets. Well, after we showed up, his parents were all surprised that my parents didn’t come with. Um, you didn’t say for all of us to join…
The next day, a different cousin invited us out for Korean food. She’s the cousin who is a language teacher (English and Korean) and has traveled to S. Korea multiple times. Again, we show up and she asks where my parents are… Um, I didn’t know you were inviting them too… apparently, it’s assumed.
The third time this difference in thinking emerged was when my youngest aunt complained to me about how on several occasions, when she stopped home unexpectedly, she discovered the the caretakers (both from Indonesia) had cooked their own native dishes and were enjoying the meals among themselves. My aunt was outraged: how dare they use the ingredients that I buy to secretly make foods that they don’t even share with all of us? All of the foods they make for us, we share generously with them… She was so pissed and insisted that it was a breach of rank. I didn’t get it. at all. They are migrants. They work 24/7 in your house, cleaning and cooking your cuisines… maybe they are homesick and they just want to eat dishes from home. My family generally does not like spicy foods, and Indonesian dishes are often very spicy… I really didn’t read it as an affront at all, but my aunt insisted that if it wasn’t inappropriate behavior, why were they doing it in secret?! Anyway, it was a very bizarre conversation and it made me feel really sorry for the caretakers. My grandparents all look amazing and it is due to the constant care by these hardworking women. Seriously, they leave their families to work in another country where they have to learn a new language, and they have zero time off. I guess it’s technically unscheduled time off, like if the old people are sleeping and you’ve already done the laundry, mopped the floors, cleaned the house, and cooked the meals, THEN you are free to retire to your room to rest. But fuck man, the work is brutal.
I argued with my aunt that just bc you employ them doesn’t mean you own their lives. I dunno. My aunt claims that my family is far more generous to the caretakers than other Taiwanese families. Her friends apparently do not allow the workers to eat the food they eat or to eat alongside them. It’s a very bizarre old time, Downton Abbey kind of hierarchy. My aunt was even claiming that the older lady, who takes care of BOTH my grandfather and grandmother, is lazy and not as meticulous as the other. But shit, since I have been here, I have felt exhausted seeing the amount of work this woman does. And actually, now that my parents are back and the caretaker and my grandparents are staying in the Kaohsiung condo together, I hope she is getting some respite from my slave driver aunt. I mean, to me, the lady is responsible for caring for the old people. Should her job description also encompass all household duties for like 3 extra people in the family??? Seems way excessive to me.
All of this is another reminder to me about how fortunate I really am. This privilege thing just blows my mind. And it also makes me so scared and angry about Trump and his inflammatory rhetoric. Immigrants leave their families and their homes bc their conditions back home are dire and desperate… Can you imagine the level of poverty and hopelessness that would compel someone to leave her two children for at LEAST three years straight? It’s so easy for a spoiled asshole like Trump to blame crime and rape and whatever social ills on immigrants, but fuck man, the immigrants I know: they work harder than anyone, bc they have made real fucking sacrifices to put skin in the game. This is not a goddamn joke.
There are other reminders for me on this trip. I am def super defiant, and if I weren’t born the daughter of the one person in my father’s family who established life in the States, what might have happened to me? There are so many rules here… sure, every culture has it’s ways but again, I do NOT do well prioritizing the collective. I want my independence. I don’t want to sacrifice for others. I don’t want to be burdened with having to keep the family unit together, you know? I want to live where I want, to do what I want, to think how I want… part of my struggles growing up had to do with this very stark clash between cultures. After all, my parents never fully assimilated to American culture, so all this drama about my estrangement with my brother and my family constantly insisting to me that “blood is thicker than water…” it has been a breeding ground for many decades of conflict.
The other day even, my eldest aunt kept commenting about how I should reach out to my brother. “You only have one brother… Look at how much I respect and love my brother (meaning, my father). What would I ever do without him.” I mean, as I’ve mentioned before, she’s like ridic with how much she idolizes my father, but to all that bullshit, I just said: “Well, your brother is nothing like my brother.”
I mean, it’s not necessarily all blamed on culture. I have American friends who have said to me, “Life is short.” I agree. Some fights are petty, and it’s silly for people to just keep holding grudges. The thing is though, this is what has to be done to preserve my own sanity. I’ve tried the whole “help us by helping Johnny” thing and that has NEVER worked. For me, the solution was to step away and just drop the toxic relationship. It’s not about money. It’s not about my parents giving him money or supporting him or whatever. Bottom line is that he’s not a mature, responsible adult. I’m not a parent, and I’m certainly not HIS parent, so I’m not going to put up with his selfish, immature bullshit. I won’t.
Needless to say, direct confrontations re: these age-old issues have waned in recent years, but they continue to be top of mind at every single visit. And as someone who listens and is sensitive to what/how things are said, the pressuring and blaming and insinuations just really get under my skin.
My father says he hasn’t even harassed me about the kid-free thing. Um ok, maybe not directly. But when you say, “Oh, whenever I get together with my friends and they all talk about their grandkids, I don’t have anything to share or say. So I don’t want to socialize with people anymore, bc I have nothing to talk about,” you ARE saying something to me. Here’s the thing: You can’t blame me for you not having hobbies or things to talk about. That’s just an excuse. You have a gabillion things going on: projects, investments, travels, whatever. Why are grandkids the ONLY acceptable topic? It’s bullshit. And you also can’t blame me for ruining your life or for thwarting your happiness. You need to be accountable: your happiness stems from you, not me. Fuck yeah, I called him out on this shit. And he wasn’t pleased. Then, I took it another step further. His best friend in Ohio has two daughters, both over 40 and both unmarried and child-free. Does his friend walk around moaning and groaning about how unhappy their situation makes him? No. He just says: that’s their life. They have to live their lives. Yeah, he wishes they were married but their lives are their own.
My dad says his father is always pressuring him about the family line going extinct. I said, well, it’s not right that he keeps harassing my dad about it. Frankly, what the hell does a 90+ y/o man know about living in modern society? Please. Step the fuck off.
So yeah, there have been some conversations. There are a lot of methods my paternal grandfather uses that I don’t like. For example, he always says so wistfully to my father: if only you could have retired sooner; then you could have spent more time with your mother when she was alive. Ugh, WTF? What is done is done. Maybe she should have moved to the US so she could have spent more time with my dad and his family… You know what I mean? We all make choices using the info and circumstances we know at the time. What is the point of regret? Maybe there’s a cultural difference: the Chinese always tend to be obsessed with sacrifice and woe is I mentality, but wouldn’t it have been better if my grandfather had simply said, “Your mother would have been so proud to see all that you have done and to have you home again…”
I know, here I am doing some major backseat parenting… Ugh. Like I said, every visit is a work in progress. On the plus side, Martin seems to be doing well. I’ve had some wonkiness with my home cameras and the sitter hasn’t been giving too many updates, but at this point, the most important thing is that Marty is well and we get to see him when we get home.
