I did the math as soon as I learned addition and subtraction. My dad’s 43 years older than me. That means when I turned 18, he was already pushing 61. I wondered if he’d make it to when he’d have to walk me down the aisle. My mom was just three weeks shy of turning 35 when I was born and thus, she was turning 53 just shy of a month after I became a legal adult. Whenever she jokes around about how they’re not going to be around for much longer, I want to assure her that it’ll be a while from now and that I’d would miss her and my dad but I know it’s never going to trigger the response that runs through my head. Something half-hearted and sarcastic is more realistic. I’d like to say that the language and culture barrier really explains the discrepancy between what I expect from her and what she shows me but I’ll never be sure.
How much will I really miss them? I guess I’d miss them as parents but that’s about it. Though the role “parent” should be a significant part of my life, I have to sadly admit that it’s not. They’re my parents and I respect them as such, but I don’t think I respect them nearly as much as people. My mom’s willing to give a stranger at the subway station a quarter so that they can make a phone call but she frowns upon donating blood more than once a year. My dad’s all gung-ho about being a Christian and helping others but lacks the drive to confront the problems at home. They’re the reason why I want to go to church but they’re also the reason why I find religion silly.
Would I be satisfied if I made the same amount of progress that they have in 23 years? Probably not. Yes, they established a business in America after immigrating from Taiwan with next to nothing. Apparently they were relatively well off there with the same business. It was stable, successful, and Taiwan was their home. 23 years and their English is still just as it was 15 years ago if not worse. I think I’m most frustrated with how much I know they could have accomplished versus how much they actually have. They don’t need me to translate for them nor do they need me to figure out any technological problems they run into. They’ve accomplished so much more than these petty things, why are they stopping? I used to try to give them the benefit of the doubt and say it’s because older people didn’t grow up with the technology we have and thus, have a more difficult time picking little tidbits up. This still doesn’t explain the complete lack of progress.
What I’m even more frustrated with is what they think of me. Impatient, stubborn, selfish, defensive, and easily broken by any heated talk. Impatient, fine. Stubborn, indubitably. Selfish, I guess so since I’m only really driven to do things when I want to do them. Defensive? I like to consider as rational. Easily broken? No. I grew up watching them fight with my siblings and all the anger that came rushing out of all of those arguments. I’m not easily broken - I’m just not interested in throwing glass napkin holders at people’s heads or locking myself in my room to break all that I own. I choose to focus the sadness brought on by these memories while the impending destructiveness brewing inside of me passes.
I wish they taught me the concept of “thank you,” “I’m sorry,” and “I love you.”
I just got back from an internship career fair hosted by Rutgers… I spoke to three representatives from three different companies. There were probably around 150 people in the two rooms reserved just for this event. It was weird to think that every student was there looking for some type of internship or job. I wonder how many of them knew exactly what they were looking for. I myself was fortunate enough to speak with a man who worked at Goldman Sachs’ operations which is the exact department I am hoping to be in. We spoke for about ten minutes (which is rather lengthy if you consider how much traffic they were probably going to get) about what kind of person I am, what I do, and what Goldman is looking for. It went surprisingly well and it did make me want the internship that much more; however, on the way back to my dorm, I still didn’t feel great. I don’t know what that would take - a phone call? An interview? A giant sign that says “come work for us! (please)”? Maybe. I don’t know though… I feel like there’s so many people who are more qualified than I am. (Ha, that’s such a demeaning statement to read aloud.) They may even want it more than I do. All in all, I guess a part of me feels like I don’t deserve it or that it would be wrong for me to take an opportunity that they’ve worked so hard for away from them.
It’s like when you have a bag of Lucky Charms, you know, the cereal with marshmallows… the cereal that you only buy and eat because of the marshmallows. Let’s say you’re the person with the bag of Lucky Charms one day in elementary school. You’re not the type to just pick out the marshmallows. Instead, you’re willing to eat the crappy “whole grain” bits first just so you can indulge and savor the marshmallows, all at once, later. How nice, right? Now let’s add to the picture: I’m your friend. For now, at least. I look over and notice that the ratio of whole grain pieces to marshmallows is irregular. You have at least two marshmallows for each crappy piece. Hey, I’m just going to swoop up those marshmallows. It doesn’t look like you like them anyway.
That’s not fair. You obviously valued those bits of stars, balloons, and clovers much more than I did. You deserved them more than I did because you’ve spent countless minutes enduring the taste of nothing from those non-marshmallows. You worked for a marshmallow-only ziploc at the end that you were rather certain you were going to have yet you were gypped.
I don’t want to be that kid who takes someone else’s Lucky Charms marshmallows.
During my fall semester, I’ve been volunteering at a nearby soup kitchen in our downtown New Brunswick area (which is awful to walk through as a young lady, by the way). Just like any new experience, I was nervous at first but quickly got over that factor. In the past couple of months, I’ve volunteered at the soup kitchen seven times. To my surprise, most of the “customers” at the soup kitchen have cell phones. Like many other volunteers, I thought it was a weird thing - do they choose to pay their cell phone bills monthly over paying for their meals? Does someone else pay it for them? Furthermore, most of them look perfectly well off. They’re well-groomed, seem to bathe regularly, and I’ve even seen one man walk in with a shiny red motorcycle helmet that lacked a single scratch.
…Really?
One particular woman frustrates me the most. She’s a regular and is very social; however, she presses all the wrong buttons. Her doctor apparently said that she can’t consume food that is too rich (i.e. the ravioli we prepared today). OK. That’s fine. What about the bagged lunch we have? (It includes a sandwich, a snack, and some type of beverage.) Nope. She doesn’t want it.
“You know what?” she says. “I’ll just have a little of the ravioli today but that’s it. No more after it. My doctor says I’ll end up in the emergency room if I have too much of that stuff.”
Again… Really?
A chef on our end suggests some leftover turkey from Thanksgiving. She goes to the walk-in fridge and takes out a bowl. At first, the customer says no but then changes her mind. The chef heats some up in the microwave and puts the rest back into the refrigerator. Then the woman asks for seconds. Fine. That’s heated up to and served to her. How nice.
At the same organization’s Clothesline Project is where donated clothes are sorted through and organized so that anyone who needs them can walk in and take a few garments with them. A lot of the conversations I’ve heard while I was there was in Spanish so I didn’t pick much up. However, I understood this much: 3 pieces of clothing per person. A couple of ladies took advantage of the fact that they were not watched by the supervisor. They stuffed clothing into bags they were carrying and only left a few garments in their hands as they were leaving to be seen.
Should I have said something there? I’m not sure.
During that same day, a woman approached another volunteer and myself with a slip of paper. I’m guessing that it was documentation to prove that they needed the clothing they came for. She explained that it was her first time there and didn’t know what to do. Her four-year-old daughter was with her…
They looked for some clothes and even though the mother’s voice sounded rather light, you could tell that she was trying to uphold that facade for the sake of her daughter. Luckily, the supervisor found a brand new winter jacket for the daughter that fit her perfectly. Sure, she didn’t have the luxury of going to the mall with her mother to buy the jacket that some kids claim they have to have but it was cute, pink with various colored hearts decorating the interior. It even had matching snow pants.
While I was sorting through the boxes of clothes, I found a brand new boxed holiday-themed pajama set. If I remember correctly, it had reindeer on it. It was size 5T which meant that it should have fit her daughter or at least be close to fitting her daughter. I approached her, box in hand, and asked if it would and if she would like it since I honestly didn’t know where to put it. She looked down at my hands, said yes, and thanked me graciously.
The entire volunteer experience has left me with mixed feelings. I guess I know I’m helping people but do some of these people need the help? Do they deserve the help? Am I a bad person for even saying that?
I’m grateful for all the opportunities and the luxuries I’ve been blessed to have as well as all the people in my life that I know I could turn to if I ran into unfortunate circumstances. I’m also more than willing to give back but I’d like to be sure that who I’m giving back to deserve it.
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Amen.
Anguished Teen
Maybe my expectations of her is just too high. Maybe my expectations are unreasonable. Either way, I always have this irrevocable dread whenever I’m with her. I think I love her just because I have to, because she’s my mom…I know I don’t love her because because she’s my friend. I don’t feel that bond with her. I don’t feel like I could truly open up to her (and that’s difficult for me to not be able to do considering how much of an open book I am with complete strangers). Perhaps I’m afraid of her judgment, shame, or even hate… or it’s because I know it’d only bring irrational disapproval and that’s something I simply don’t want to hear. I’m so incredibly bitter and angry because of her and I’m so ashamed of myself because of it. It’s so adolescent to be considering ways to get back at her, to show her what a shitty daughter I could be and these ideas only end up making me even more upset at myself.
There are so many times where I just sit across from her, dying to share my aspirations, ideals, and dreams. There are rare times where I do get up the nerve and give her a glimpse of who her daughter is and hopes to be, but time and time again, I regret it. I can’t talk to her about relationships because, for whatever reason, she doesn’t have that natural ability or desire that most women have to talk about the opposite sex. I could have sworn I told her about the internships I scored but just today she was telling me about an email she received about jobs in Morris County. Thanks Mom - you’ve just shown me that not only do you refuse to listen the words you speak but you’re deaf to mine as well. If you’re the one preaching to me about going to church and reading the Bible so I could solve my everyday problems using those stories, then I think I may be better off not going.
Where did I go wrong? Did I learn something wrong? Was I supposed to pick up a submissive trait while I was growing up? I’m sorry but any child that she raises would not be submissive and let her or anyone walk all over them. None of us ended up like that and only a scrap of me respects her for not being like that. Her passive aggressive ways piss me off and her inability to accommodate drives me up the wall. Sure, this entire post may be unfair since she can’t defend herself, but hey, whenever we argue, she ends up resorting to saying, “You’re right. You’re always right. Alright?” That’s fine.
I don’t doubt that she’s undergone more hardships than I have, but it is because of this that I expect so much more from her. I want so badly to feel sincerely empathetic about all of her experiences and I want so badly for her to share these experiences with me without a look-at-what-you-have-now-and-be-grateful attitude behind it.
She makes me dislike her, but that’s not the worst part - she makes me hate myself.
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All right. I just wish my mom and I were friends… and I wish that was as easy as it sounded.
Foxxy. I don’t know what it is about him this summer but since my parents and I aren’t exactly living together and I was the one who nagged for a dog ten years ago, I am deemed as the person to take care of him while I’m not at college…and it’s been weird. Some things have been the same, some different. He used to constantly want to sit on/with someone and wiggle his way under the fence all every chance he could outside to visit the dog down the street or to just go on his own adventure. Now, he lays down on our laminate flooring every day I sit at our dining room table on my laptop. All day. Every. Day. He rarely wants to go out on his own and if it seems like I’m leaving, he’ll immediately and excitedly run out the door until he realizes I’m not actually leaving, in which case he comes running back onto the steps briskly. He whines and barks when I put him in his crate at night and randomly bursts out when he hears a foreign sound or if someone’s at the door.
Most strangely of all, he waits outside the bathroom door while I shower. It isn’t just that - he consistently follows me everywhere and sits wherever I stop. I probably take this kind of loyalty for granted since I find it to be an annoyance half the time, but during other times, it’s just nice to know I’m never alone with him around. It’s been a decade and despite all the “accidents,” it’s hard to think that this companionship probably won’t last another decade longer.