Labels. It’s not the main thing I want to talk about, but it’s important. Why? Because as much as I’d love to be free of labels, it’s not going to happen any time soon. More importantly, as long as we live in a society that thrives on slapping labels on people. We must know who is in and who is out, musn’t we?
(Which is my issue with the Democrats hammering on the ‘weird’ meme. I get it, but I’m still not happy about it.
In my last post, I mentioned that I had some empathy for my mother when she was younger beacuse she basically was a single parent of three children (the third being my father) in a foreign country when she was in her late twenties. She worked forty hours a week (taking the bus back and forth, which was half an hour to forty-five minutes each way, depending on traffic), then came home to cook for my brother and me. My father was never home before ten p.m. because of the affairs he was having. Yes, that was the reason, and my mother barely kept it from me.
In fact, as I have mentioned, she started using me as an emotional support person when I was eleven.
She did all the chores around the house, too. Except for mowing the lawn and a few other ‘manly’ chores (like taking out the garbage). I’m sure she helped with shoveling the snow, though, because we lived in Minnesota. We got a LOT of snow.
It really wasn’t fair.
My mother worked forty-plus hours a week (plus commute), then had to do the cooking, the cleaning, the sewing, and anything else around the house. Plus, my father had all these unspoken rules that my mother (and my brother and I) had to follow. the biggest one was that no one other than my father was allowed to show any negative emotions. If I got upset, angry, or scared at all, I got yelled at.
I distintcly remember when I was a teenager, my father and I had a huge fight. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was loud and angry. On both sides. I ran to my room and slammed the door. A minute later, my father flung open the door and screamed about how I was not allowed to do that in his house.
That was the day I knew that I could never ever have an honest moment with my father. Should I have yelled at him? No. Should I have slammed the door to my room? Also, no. But I was a teenager. Acting out is a very teenaged thing to do. What he should have done, I don’t know. but acting like a more out-of-control teenager in return was not it.
That’s the problem, though. He was basically a teenager at heart. Self-absorbed, poor impulse control, a nasty temper, and what’s worse, the power and the means to act out all he wanted. He was very respected in Taipei while he was the president of a company (though, to be fair, that’s what I heard from my mother. Who is not the most reliable of narrators).
I talked to my parents last night on Zoom. My father was obsessed with how old he looked and asked if I would recognize if I saw him on the street. He has always been obsessed with his age and terrified of dying. He has dyed his hair for decades, and it got to that point where it was embarrassing because it was so clear that it wasn’t his real hair–only a really bad dye job. The dye in the box situation when he could have spend actual cash to get it done well.
That’s the part that flummoxed me. He could afford to spend plenty of money to get it down properly. But, here’s the other thing about my father. He’s worried about money to the point of it being dysfunctional. Or rather, it would be if he didn’t have enough money to pad the worries. I’m not explaining this well. He doesn’t skimp on the things he needs, but he’s always pinching pennies in the weirdest ways. One time he was here, he was complaining about two kiwis being a dollar. The man can afford two kiwis (his favorite fruit) without even thinking twice about it.
Then, he’ll go and buy a clunker car without researching it because–not even sure why. Probably because someone told him it was a good car. So he’ll drop a few thousand (this was back in the seventies when a few thou was a lot of money) for a used car that was a total lemon, but gripe about two kiwis being a dollar! That’s the phrase ‘penny wise, pound foolish’ in a nutshell.
In his dementia, he’s paranoid that we (my brother, my mother, and I) are trying to steal his moey. It’s mostly my mother, and I’m sure it’s beacuse of his lifelong obsession with money.
Side note: My mother likes to make excuses about her archaic beliefs by stating that she was born in 1942. This drives me crazy because yes, she was born in 1942, but she’s lived every year since then. She moved to America in 1966 to go to grad school, which was right on the cusp of the Civil Rights movement. She lived through that and more before going back to Taiwan when I was…I want to say in my late twenties. I can’t quite remember.
In Taiwan, she lived through the election of the first female president from the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party). It was also the first Asian country to have marriage equality. She’s seen the invention of the computer, the cell phone, EVs, color TV, and so many other things. She uses a computer, a cell phone, a car (when she’s here), and a TV.
It’s not like she was cryogenically frozen, spent fifty years ‘asleep’ and then was magically defrosted ten years ago. Also, if she really hasn’t changed any of her beliefs in eighty years, that’s a sad statement on her life. Life should be about growth and expanding your mind/beliefs. It’s been sad to see her regress in the last decade or so.
I’m done for now. I’m sure I’ll write more tomorrow.