Uncle Dan’s Blog - Parental Relations
I’ve met quite a few TCKs who say that their family is #1 to them, because they were always the constant when life changed course.
I was never like that though. It might well be because they were always constant, that I learned to appreciate my friends for the brevity of our time together. It might also be that I was always a Leavee, and didn’t necessarily feel that consistent relationship with my family.
This was always a sore point with my parents though, particularly my mother. She’s a loving sort of woman, but for some years now is frankly jealous of my relative dedication to my friends. As I remember, things went to crap in Michigan partially because we started arguing about that very subject. I was buying phone cards to call my old friends from Jakarta from time to time, but didn’t call my parents (they called me around once every 2 weeks anyway). When she found out, sh was extremely offended, “How could you love your friends more than your parents?” She would say… And it’s occurred to me now that she’s making gross assumptions out of emotional flaring and jealousy… But I still wonder.
In any case, it made me feel guilty about those friendships I valued so much because they were gone. I guess it was a variety of things, too. Asian and Western cultures tend to clash, because Asian values of Family and Commitment can often conflict with Western values of Independence and Individuality. My friends were mostly Western, or even just somewhat Western influenced, so in a lot of ways they were the people who understood me, and in some ways, still do far more than my parents do.
Anyway, I wondered if I was just a terrible person. Reading the TCK book opened some new doors of enlightenment, considering that I could be quite cold in some relationships. And it’s true, I’m a very in-the-moment person. The people around me tend to matter the most, and if I’m away from them, I disengage myself very quickly. I’m honestly not that great at keeping in touch once you’re out of my life as I knew you. I won’t call if you won’t, and I won’t chat to you online if you won’t. And in some ways that’s how it is with my parents, which frustrates them too.
The reason this is on my mind is because half an hour before I went to work in the student bar tonight, my mother calls me up… which is normal enough. I assume it’s for chit chat. They recently moved to a new apartment a little outside of Zürich, and usually she tells me about how nice it’s turning out to be, and how tired they are from the moving. I couldn’t make it to help them for both time constraints, and also that my ski injury still keeps me from being much physical help. I didn’t even feel comfy lifting a glass at distance with my left arm.
What happens about 5-10 minutes into the conversation is that she starts yelling at me. Non-stop. About how my sister and I don’t care at all about them, not even to call and ask how they are. About how they’re killing themselves over the stuff to finish in the apartment. About how some Vietnamese teen they helped out in Luzern for a friend was so appreciative that he went to help them. About how adopted children seemed to appreciate parents more… About how I always care more for my friends than for them, and how my sister and I are so self-centered and selfish and care about no one else but ourselves…
There were so many stupid assumptions she was throwing at me, the kind that people make when they’re angry without thinking, that while I tried to argue back there was no getting through. And I hung up on her, not only because I was frustrated, but I could see that it would go nowhere.
It was probably indeed the wrong thing to do, and staying on the phone could have at least let her vent. But I know my mother, and it doesn’t actually stop there even if she does vent.
The problem is that while she does love us, she doesn’t actually take the effort to understand us. She makes unsupported assumptions about us based on her own fears and experiences, and seems to turn jealousy into a weapon. She seems to enraptured with the idea that Family Comes First, that she doesn’t realize that maybe we learned it differently in our heads.
Western countries tend to be successful enough to take basic survival needs away from the main area of concern in people’s lives, and so they go on to think about more noble things, like equality, rights, and such, which leads onto personal independence and the experiences of the individual as an important life motivating factor. Asian countries still focus on the responsibilities of a person to help his parents, and work hard to provide for his/her future children.
It might be my Western influence, and maybe I might regret the attitude later, but given the way most of my family has treated me, I don’t give half a damn. I feel that MY experience is important, that what I go through in life is important because I’m the one who’s experiencing it. If Cogito Ergo Sum, then I make my own universe, and the sum of my experiences and fulfillment are important.
However, I don’t really believe all of this, because existentiality is pretty trivial when it comes to life. That’s why I try to be there for people, and help them as I can, because I believe in living for people, regardless of whether we share a surname or not. And if I’m a very in-the-moment person, I’m more concerned about the people around me.
And all this is in the backdrop of my final project that I’m still behind on, and saying goodbye to all the friends who’ve really brought me a sense of center in the last year or two, because they never ask me to be anyone other than who I am. Maybe they don’t actually care enough to do so, but even so the relationship is comforting. My parents seem to always want me to live up to some family ideal that I’m just not comfortable with. And that, I guess, is the crux of it: It’s Just Not Me.
… And I was wondering if I was a terrible person, because so many TCKs I meet have such close relationships with their parents, so maybe it’s not a TCK thing at all, eh? Even though I keep trying to tell people it’s an extremely multifaceted experience where there isn’t just one kind of TCK, I wonder if I’m just a terrible human being.
March 14th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I saw the film in an Asian Culture class I took in Michigan, actually. It informed me a lot of the Asian-American psyche that I didn’t feel all that familiar with… but there were some links indeed.
After all, I feel more Asian than quite a few of the Asians I met in the US. I did live there, after all, but not quite, as the TCk experience goes.
My parents generally speak a mix of Vietnamese and English. As a child, they often spoke to me in English to encourage my skill in it, but also spoke in Vietnamese to encourage me there. Given that I went to school in English, they currently focus on developing my Vietnamese… but even when they speak it, they mix some English words in, liberally. Even with each other.
In a lot of ways, they’re Westernized. Compared to quite a few of my Asian friends, I did have it comparatively better regarding the freedoms I had growing up, particularly as a teenager. Now as an adult, I still feel like I have more opportunities to be independent than some of my Asian friends… but while it may be better, it’s not necessarily good, or right.
My parents haven’t read the TCK book yet. I did give it to them, but then my sister got a hold of it and hung onto it, because it affected her significantly too. My sister had talked to them about it… but in a way that’s natural early on when discovering you’re a TCK. She blamed them for the emotional instability that she’d been feeling for years, and the lack of normalcy… Which frankly turned them away from examining it in more detail, though not permanently.
What I find interesting is that they wonder if they’re TCKs too. My mother lived in Malaysia in her youth, aside from Vietnam, and moved often even while in Vietnam. My father had had a basic French education, and did his last year or so of high school in Paris, before being told by his parents to meet them in Boston because they had no more money to support him.
Since I live away from home, they haven’t had a real read of the book, though my dad did start reading it while I was in Zürich sometime.
And that just complicates things too.
(Is this spam?)
April 26th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
My parents live in The Netherlands, I live in Canada.
My mother sees me as me. She addresses me as a human being, an adult, and she is interested in my perspective of the world. Her position is one of respect and of understanding. I am quite connected to her and we talk often. We talk in-depth about what makes us tick, what our experiences are on various levels. My mother visits as often as she can, and understands that we (myself, my husband and my children aged 6 and
do not have any interest in coming to Holland. She helps out and supports our parenting style (which is an amalgamation of Dutch, British, North American and Middle Eastern beliefs, values and experiences) and understands she had her chance and now it’s ours. She wants to experience OUR lives and is interested in how WE experience the world.
My father doesn’t see me as me. He sees me for who and how I should be, how I should communicate with him. During a phone conversation he tells me where he’s eaten and with whom. He tells me how important he is and why. My answer to his ‘how are you’ better be along the lines of ‘fine, thanks’, or else he has to go do something important that requires him to hang up. My father “tries” to come every other year so that the children can get to know him. He’s not here to get to know the children - they need to get to know him. When he comes he expects our lives to come to an abrupt stand-still so that everything can revolve around him. He isn’t interested in our lives, or how we experience the world. There is no *connection*.
I am loyal to connection when I feel there’s an *exchange* and when I feel valued, appreciated and respected. My father doesn’t, my mother does. During my traveling childhood I was dependent on my parents, but they couldn’t relate to my experiences since they weren’t TCKs. As a child, my first impulse was to find an anchor, a connection, in my new environment and I’d run with that. No anchor, no connection and I’m outta there again. The connection is mutual or I’m outta there again. I believe that this is a fruit/response to having traveled/ being a TCK. It’s not up to you to please your parents with a connection. Your upbringing has made you into the very specifically independent person you are and it’s up to them to accept responsibility for your very specific independence - not denounce it or judge you for not depending on them enough.
(Is this spam?)
April 26th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
(the smilie is a transformation of my other son, aged 8, and a closing bracket)
(Is this spam?)