CHINESE RELATIONS

When you didn’t want your family to know about us, I abided by your decision.
I recognized that it would’ve created problems – your mother would’ve made everyone’s lives miserable, both yours and your siblings, until you were out of the family and they had been forced to stop associating with you.
Your messed up Chinese family dynamics precluded any introduction going well.

Later you said that you were embarrassed by them, that you did not want to expose me to that environment. Above all you wanted to protect me from your harridan bitch mom, and didn’t want me to think any less of you by seeing what you came from, what you might turn into.
I know your mom’s type, so I can understand wanting to hide from her, and avoid the confrontation.

Because it would indeed have been a confrontation.
It would’ve been a declaration of all-out war, with all the worst emotions let loose, and every poisonous rhetorical weapon in the old lady’s arsenal fired off, burning everyone and everything in her path. From the very moment of first meeting she would’ve hatefully conspired, vociferated against you, denied that you were her child, rigidly enforced a complete cut-off from your siblings and their families, made sure that you and anyone associated with you would’ve been outcastes. She would’ve ripped up everything that you had left behind, burned all things that showed you had ever existed, cut you out of photos, and cut you off from all relatives.
You would’ve become a non-person.
The barrage would’ve been constant, continuous, and unpredictably vicious.
You also feared what she might try to do to me, or try to do to both of us. Or where her venom would surface, given that some of her ambit and her social circle included our neighborhood.
We’ve both seen old Chinese biddies blessing-out their children or their menfolk in Chinatown – it’s valid street-theatre and absolutely fascinating, but quite excruciating for the poor victims.

The likelihood of everything I have just described happening made you cringe, even thinking about it was deeply shaming.


But you love your siblings, and they also have successfully kept much of their lives secret from mom.
And since your mom had her several strokes, she has been out of the picture entirely.

Now you are going to introduce your new boyfriend to your kin.


So tell me, who were you really embarrassed about?


When, over fifteen years ago, you dragged me along to the year-end get-togethers of your martial arts gang, I knew it was because you needed the reassurance of a comforting and supportive presence. Required squiring. Smile and shake hands. No problem.
We did that for several years – each year, I would go with you to meet people who were nice, but whom I did not know, given that I only saw them once a year (even though you attended many social events with that crowd).

You changed martial arts styles over a decade ago.
I have not met any of your friends since then.
You have met all of my friends.

You’ve even met most of my relatives, although you didn’t feel comfortable with such a high level of whitey-whiteness – too many university degrees, too many waspy cultural elements, too much possible correctness about knives, forks, serviettes.
When they visited the Bay Area, you said ‘hi’. Then fiercely resisted spending more time than was absolutely necessary with them.

They’ve inquired about you, and I’ve told them that you are well.
I haven’t told them about what happened, because I don’t want to hear what they have to say about this situation.

I have never been part of your family or your social circle – in the case of one or two people, you even indicated that I was frightening, or not good enough, or too much and too weird for them to deal with……...
I know that you barely ever admitted that you were in a relationship.
All part of keeping the private life truly private, right?

Yeah, I know. Good Chinatown girls 'don’t do such things', nice Cantonese girls shouldn’t hang around with “eccentric” white men.
The you know what will hit the you know what if your mom ever finds out.

She’s been non compos mentis for TWO YEARS now.

For the several years before her strokes, she wasn’t exactly the model of agility or attention either.


SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE

Her final collapse into vegetativeness liberated you. It gave you a feeling of the world finally opening up.
And at that point, I probably also started to become a part of your past, the background that seemed to hem you in.
Her decomposition allowed you to grow.
I was no longer the asylum to which you could flee, and I no longer represented the rock of safety and sanity, once the tempest abated.
Instead, you started perceiving me as someone with an accretion of too many bumps.

You changed.

You like your friends. You love and respect your siblings.


I have never met them.



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