or let me tell you about myself by the way i tell you about my dad.(do not read this at all unless you read the entire thing. i'm very serious.)
for the few of my friends that have been unfortunately blessed to meet my dad, they can all testify that at some point, gan sr. has made them feel so unbearably uncomfortable it's made them question their friendship with me. but at the same time there have been instances where my dad's made them laugh from pits of their sense of humor they didn't even know existed.
this is what i thought: 1989. when i was a baby boy around four years old, my mom temporarily left my dad and i in beijing to go to grad school at purdue university in west lafayette, indiana. during that time, i remember very few things, all of which are very near and dear to me but are irrelevant to what i'm communicating right now. i will say they were neutral and seemilngly insignificant. the only one i will mention is that i do remember sitting on the handle bars of my dad's bike, riding through tianamen square during the protests and riots and seeing the tanks and fire all along the streets. that's interesting enough i suppose. the serious point here is that i terribly missed my mom and couldn't understand where she was. it was on a basic level like what you see with animals on the discovery channel. i knew my dad was there but this awareness only magnified the fact that the other half was gone. this is all in retrospect of course, at the time i only felt but couldn't describe. well finally, when i was five and a half, my dad and i sat on a big plane and landed in a different place in a different time and i found mama again. i mean i really found her. out of a big crowd and all. i saw her before my dad saw her and before she saw me. i'll never forget seeing her and immediately running towards her, no conscious thought just pure animal instinct. i remember my mom having tears because i'm sure she was afraid i wouldn't recognize her or something crazy like that. and i didn't understand why i hadn't seen her for so long but when you're hugging your mom at an airport you don't have to ask questions.
as joyous of an occasion as our reunion was, it was the definitive moment everything changed between my father and i.
we lived in indiana from when i was 5 and a half until i was 7 and a half. we were more poor back then than anybody i've ever met since. and the older i became, the more my dad had to remind me. after a while, i realized we weren't going back to china and be with my huge family of cousins and relatives. it was indiana fields and white people and unexplainable isolation from now on. not only that, but my mom and dad were hardly around anymore. mom had to work on her masters and dad had to make money. i had to go to kindergarden and come home alone every day. our whole family lived in a single room in the basement of a big victorian house. we basically lived in a college dorm while my mom was going to purdue. we had a share a bathroom and a kitchen with the rest of the basement tenements. most of the time when i came home from school, i was too afraid to walk down the dark steps that led to the outside door of the basement. so i would wait outside until one of the neighbors came home. sometimes though, i'd wait for hours until my dad came home on his bike. he'd immediately yell at me and get mad at me for being such a coward. he yelled at me for many things. i cried a lot too. i always have. i still do. i appreciate it terribly though. i think there's something very wrong with people who don't cry. life is filled with nothing but crying and laughter, it's the only two things that are honest and matter. my dad laughs once in a while, but he doesn't cry. anyhow, so all of a sudden, at age 6, i felt extremely uncomfortable and had to grow up fast. children shouldn't be forced to adapt at such an early age. worst of all, i had to do it without my busy parents for the most part. being a neglected child is not an excuse. it's a reason, and it doens't always have to end up making a mess. it takes a while to get there though. when i started stealing toys from stores, my parents finally caught me and my dad beat me across the floor. i'll never forget me scrambling on all fours as he kicked me off of them. but this isn't about me though, this is about my dad.
he worked in restaurants in indiana, washing dishes and sometimes helping with the cooking. even when we moved to kentucky, my dad worked at the french quarter hotel until he cut almost his entire finger off and couldn't work anymore. he didn't have a car neither, always rode a bike. but when he'd come home from work, especially the time when he cut his finger, he seemed miserable. it didn't feel like a mood, but an actual trait. he always had this look of shame and regret on his face. it was something i'd never seen back when it was just me and him. we still spent time together, we had to with such a small family, but that constant unfamiliar look of shame and regret on his face disconnected us, especially because he'd never talk to me about it.
soon those looks on his face transfered over to my mom. the worse was when my parents fought, and naturally, i always thought it was my fault. i mean, who else could it be if i'm the only child? since as far back as i could remember, my dad would always get mad at me if i wasn't doing so well in school, and he'd always blame my mom. he'd always mention that we came to america for her and for me so i could have a better education. said she spoiled me. and maybe she did, to compensate for the guilt she might have felt for leaving us in china to pursue her career. but during all this though, my dad never once gave a reason for why
he came to america.
life is long and a lot if you pay attention, and this general relationship i had with my dad stayed the same if not worse until i graduated high school. i was a terrible academic student in high school and my dad took it the hardest out of my parents when they realized i wasn't the type of student or person they thought i was going to be. i wasn't going to a good college, or any four year college for that matter, through the route our education system has us believe is ideal. you can imagine the balancing weight of guilt collapsing inside of me when you hear your whole life that your parents came to america so you'd get a better education. this guilt, whether self-induced or influenced or both, started to build to a monstrous and dangerous level. and i started to fight back.
one thing you must understand about my dad is that he's always underestimated me. i know that sounds like a common teenage statement of angst, but ever since i could remember, he'd always call me the worse names in chinese, almost always jokingly, thinking i didn't understand. but i did, and for the most part, i understood he was joking, but hearing it still makes you wonder. he also underestimated my awareness of him, as a father and as a person in this society. when i was about twelve years old, my dad decided to quit his job as a manager at an importer company to start his own business. for over a decade, he's been trying to buy things for wholesale from china, such as shoes furniture lamps folding chairs, and selling them here for a profit. he's always worked alone, and it hasn't been too successful. in fact, he hardly makes any money doing it. however, everytime he's talked to me about his "business", he's always put up this proud insecure front like he was doing something very important and was very successful too.
when i finally decided to fight back, his "business" is what i focused on. and before you formulate any judgements, i am man enough to admit it when i was being childish and wrong. but we all do the only things we can do at specific points in our lives, and it's reflecting and learning from them that makes us better, and that's what this is about. all this happened in the latter half of high school. i started patronizing my father, purposely asking him about his "business" and making him try and pretend like it was going well. i played dumb and acted like i believed him, hoping he'd feel guilty or foolish for lying to his son, and to himself. we hardly spoke at all anymore, it seemed like any communication we had was to either defend ourselves or attack the other person. i felt like my dad honestly did not love me, and genuinely believing that can lead to some bottomless pits. i felt like he was bitter for coming to america and he took it out on me. this naturally made me say things to him that, taken objectively and out of context, are horrific and unjustifiable. i became a fever to his attitude towards me and did whatever i could, said whatever i could to feel better about myself at his expense. the climax came when i started looking him in the eye and telling him that he was stupid.
stupid. the 18 year old son of his, the one that he invested his one and only life in, was looking him in the eye and telling him he was stupid. the irony was even more heartbreaking, as i can only imagine now, that while my dad processed my hurtful words into something greater, he might have realized that maybe i was right. maybe he was stupid. stupid for having a son like me, stupid for giving up his life to wash dishes for me. stupid for thinking i'd be grateful. stupid for all the regret he's managed to feel.
there's tough, and then there's being tough.
my dad was
being tough for as long as i knew him. i've never seen him come close to a tear. unknowingly, i might have wanted to break all the chronic callousness, even if it meant hurting him. i thought maybe if i saw my dad cry, even if i was the one that caused it, was better than never seeing him cry at all. or maybe i was just turning into an unstoppable asshole that let his defense mechanisms get out of control. whatever it was, i pushed my dad to the tipping point.
it was a saturday morning and we decided to all go out and have breakfast at a chinese place, and such an outing, or any outing for that matter, was a rarity i should have been grateful for. an argument arose in the car between my mom and dad, and as we pulled up to the place, i couldn't stand the fighting and took my mother's side. i told my dad to shut his mouth, because he was 'stupid and didn't know what he was talking about' (it's hard for me to even type that). he looked at me and asked me what i said, knowing exactly what i said. it might have been him giving me a chance to take it back. instead, i repeated it with even more bravado. my dad gave me a look that i now refuse to turn the lights on to in my head because i could die in my chair right now seeing it again. he said not a word and walked out of the car. and he walked, away from the car, away from the restaurant, and away from me. we were about four miles from my house so i assumed he'd just leave for a while and come back. my mom didn't scold me or say much, we just went inside and ate our sad bowls of rice and fried appetizers. when we came out, my father was nowhere. my mom told me he probably walked home. i was in denial and disbelief. we drove home and my father wasn't there. i ignored the situation thinking it was nothing, until my mom came into my room and said my dad was home. and that he had cried. i couldn't believe it.
when things reach a certain point of negativity so low, it either dies altogether or gets better. i never really believed my father was stupid and never meant any of the insults i said. things don't die when you don't mean for it to.
it took us to that point, to those extremes, for us to finally be honest with each other, because there was nothing left. after a few days of silence, i asked my dad to sit down and talk with me. i don't even remember if he agreed to do it, but i knew it had to be done and i didn't care whether he wanted to or not. you have to have these talks during the times they need to happen, or you else you'll look past the core issues and settle for creating a different relationship that person. you'll end up learning to adapt in a realm of politeness and pacificity, denial and neuroticsm, and that kind of relationship isn't honest to me, even if it's comfortable and easy. we must communicate. we must, communicate. when your mom and dad are all you have, it doesn't matter how scared you are to talk to them during dying times. i remember sitting in silence for minutes, trying to muster up the courage to say things that should be easy to say because they were honest right? hah. being honest, i learned, was harder to do than anything else when it comes to communicating with someone you care about. because you have to be vulnerable, and you actually have something to lose. and you admit that to the other person. but my god, guarding that honesty prevents you from gaining anything worth anything, i promise you that. it took me 18 years to realize that with my dad. after minutes of echoing silence, i finally started. i began with an apology, and it was odd. it was like we were meeting for the first time, and in a way, it was true.
i told him that i didn't mean what i said, but i also told him that i couldn't handle the way he treated me. i said it in the most non-threatening way. you have to put away all your pride and that competitive ego to "win" during talks like that, you can't be threatening if you want to meet somebody in the middle, which is the only way to win an argument. eventually, he spoke, and he spoke to me for what seemed like the first time. my dad was calm but forward with me. he was ten times more uncomfortable with it all than i was. it wasn't something he was brought up to do. we didn't have anything really specific to say. i apologized for calling him stupid, but i told him i didn't care what culture he was brought up in, i don't think a father should be able to call his son stupid if his son couldn't say it back. more than anything, i wanted neither of us to call the other one stupid. i wanted mutual respect, which was something he was unfamaliar with. sitting there with my dad and watching him listening and considering my words was something so surreal to me. right then i knew we had been doing it all wrong for the past eighteen years. there's always that segment of getting things off your chest, and when you realize the other person is actually embracing your words with their guard down, you start to feel comfortable and begin trusting them. and that's when the best communication comes. those glowing moments afterwards when you're past the problems and are talking without motives or secrets. just, talking. it felt like it was the first time my dad and i just, talked.
and it led to me learning
what i now know: my father is the greatest husband my mom could have asked for, and accidentally became a great father to me. let me tell you about my father the way i see him now.
he's is one of the most sensitive people i know. because of it, he's spent a lifetime building up ways to protect himself. i'm proud that i'm probably just as sensitive as him, but i don't hide it. it's helped me to ironically become stronger i think. people are afraid of their sensitivity and hide it away instead of embracing it and understanding how it flows within themselves and other people. we're all as sensitive as the next person. my dad's had a hard childhood. he's the youngest of his brother and sister, and the son of a very cold mother and tough father. he has serious affection issues.
and there are a million reasons and connections as to why he is who he is, but the simple core of it all is that he loves my mom in ways you only hear about in movies and books. whatever reasons made him feel so insecure about himself to overcompensate with that ridiculous exterior means nothing when you see the sacrificies he's made for my mom and i. and THAT IS WHAT MAKES A MAN. not money not a job. i could care less that he is unemployed. he's earned it, and is more of a man than any business man who's better at making money than making his wife happy. and you can argue that giving up everything he had (he already had his master's in china and had a great job. he was involved in international politics and teaching) and coming to america to support my mom in her career wasn't a good sacrifice or compromise since i've spent the first half of this explaining how miserable he's been. but you have to understand what people need, and as much as my dad thinks he's miserable and wants to believe a job and money makes him a man and would make him happy, what he needs is to make sure my mom is happy and do whatever he can for her. he needs to feel loved and wanted, respected and dependent on. it's what happens when you grow up with such little self-esteem- you decide that helping others is more satisfying than helping yourself. it's not a bad thing. you have to balance it, and this was the best balance his emotions could afford. being with my mom, he's the luckiest man on the planet as far as i'm concerned, and i'm pretty sure he knows that.
one of the valuable things i learned from my father is to not define people by their exteriors. not in a physical sense, but in the conscious way people express and defend themselves through their words and behavior. this is not something he knew he was teaching me, i learned it by observing him. i know now that my dad loves me just as much as he loves my mom even though he's never told me or talked about it. even through his actions, he never used to show me when i was younger. that or i wasn't aware of the ways he'd show me love. there's a good balance now that isn't corny or presumptious. most of the time, i hear it from my mom. when i was a junior in high school, i played lenny, one of the leads in 'of mice of men'. to my face my dad told me acting was dumb and a waste of time, and that he wasn't going to come see it. my mom went however. during the play, she said she went to the bathroom and saw my dad standing in the back watching the play. my mom never asked him about it, but told me later. when i screened 'the electric city' at usc and aftewards received the loudest ovation of the night from the fully occupied theater of 400 people, my mom said my dad almost cried and had the goofiest smile on his face. he never once told me he thought it was good. but he doesn't need to. those are just words.
i hope i'm not making my dad out to be some robot or something. my dad also has an amazing sense of humor. it's retarded and childish, a certain level of sophisticated absurdity not many people have. it takes intelligence and sensitivity you can't find or look for. you either have it or you don't. he only shows it when he's comfortable, and ever since we sat down and talked when i was 18, my dad's become one of the funniest people i know. we're starting to have a relationship he and my mom had when they were younger. i can really see now what my mom sees in him. he makes my mom laugh in ways no one else can, and my mom's just as funny, so it's saying quite a lot. the best part is, he
knows he's funny. it adds to the absurdity of his tough, arrogant persona.
he also has an amazing will. anything he chooses to do, he will do it. his 'business' speaks volumes about him. my dad's not a successful business man because he's too honest. it's the truth. he never cheats anyone and will meet people 90% to their 10%. these are admirable traits when you are dealing with people you know and love, but the business world is about getting money any way you can. in some respect, i'm glad his business isn't a success. i appreciate him much more as a father and a great husband to my mom. he has an iron will though, and has worked hard for ten years on a business that doesn't really have much of a money payoff. he works hard because he wants to be honest and wants to feel that he's earned the right to be the man of the household. i wish he knew though, he's the man of the house for better reasons than money.
since we've both let our guards down, we've been able to accept each other with more of an open mind, now that we finally know what it is we're accepting about each other. no more walls. art and writing is something completely foreign to my dad. i am the complete opposite of him in many ways. but he's slowly becoming more and more interested in my ideas and what i do. he admires my spirit and deep down, believes in me and in the things i want to accomplish. knowing this is giving me the strength i never knew i needed to succeed, and the confidence i need to pursue it.
more importantly though, i learned to treat people right because of my dad. especially women. because of the way he treats my mom, and the sacrificies he's made. although i don't think i am capable of making as many sacrifices as him, since i am a different person and am a combination of both my dad and my mom, being able to see what a real man is and what a great husband is, it gives me a high standard for myself i'm very grateful to posses.
it's also nice to know you've had a help in your dad's life too, in making him feel more secure about himself. to give him a better understanding of who he is, and for him to keep developing as a human being. it's so tiring making up for your insecurities your whole life, i'm glad my dad's able to rest a little better now. we finally treat each others as equals. only in behavoir of course. i will never forget that he is my father.
overall, my dad's a ridiculous fool, and i love him. i tell him that once in a while in a joking voice. he never says it back, but he laughs now instead of scoffs. and i finally understand what he means.
