What I've been up to, Part 3
Or: Let me try to explain elderly, immigrant parents as a series of bullets (7 min read)
Ring ring goes the cellphone.
“Hi, mom,” I answer.
“ER-NIEEEEE,” she sing-songs in English, before switching to Mandarin like always. “Your father is moving in your room today.”
“Okay.” I prop my swollen foot on a chair, switch to speakerphone and mouth the words FUCK ME to the ceiling fan because it usually means she’ll be talking for a while.
“What am I going to do?” she says. “He hired some Chinese people, and he had me park the car to the front of the house. I don’t like it when I can’t park my car inside the garage.”
“It’ll be fine, mom.”
“You should know that just because your father now lives in this house doesn’t mean you shouldn’t visit us when you come home.”
“I’m not going to not visit you just because dad’s in the house, mom,” I say. I find a fixed spot on the ceiling to stare at while I say this.
A week or two ago, I suggested when the time comes to visit her I could just, you know, stay at a hotel, or with friends. You could literally hear my mom recoil over the telephone -- what kind of Asian mother does she think is, not being able to host her own son? All of this went unsaid, so when she lets out an emphatic NO in English that causes my eyes to roll to the back of my head, we both drop the subject.
“I will simply sleep in the living room or the den,” mom says, “and you will sleep in my bed.”
I remind myself of the phrase 吃苦, eat bitterness. She’s definitely helping herself to seconds at the bitter buffet.
“Let me come first, and then we’ll work something out.” I love how she’s freaking out over the details of plans not made yet. It’s something I do as well.
“You have no energy,” she says. She usually tells that to me when she can tell I’m pissed off or cranky over the phone. “Make sure you get some more sleep.”
“Okay, ma.”
“Oh, and give your friend my regards.”
“Okay.”
Since I've last blogged, I mentioned my parents were moving back in together, right?
Did I mention they got remarried a couple of months ago? And dad is 88 and mom’s 80? Seriously, there's a LOT to unpack for anyone who has zero context. Basically:
When my parents divorce, Mom gets the house. Dad buys a condo a mile and a half away.
Dad visits the house often: someone has to drive Angela to get her monthly check-ups and shots. But Angela moves to a boarding and care facility, and once it becomes obvious dad is getting old, it’s apparent he’s coming over for food and company. Mom doesn’t mind, so long as they don’t fight.
Dad has been getting senile for a while, although senility is just a fun little way of saying dementia.
One such example: Mom is having problems being able to pay the mortgage as Dad is forgetting to send his share of the payments. Because mom and I are Asian and, thus, non-confrontational, I pay mom's lease for a couple of months until it’s pretty apparent dad hasn’t been paying the mortgage.
Around this time, I get a message from my aunt over WeChat, the preferred messaging app for Chinese immigrants over the age of 65. Come home, the message says: Your father is having problems with his memory. He bought three phones at once. He's writing incoherent letters to the AARP because he thinks the junk mail he's receiving are threats.
I put on my dutiful Asian son hat, and I fly back to California: once in February, once in July. I try to come up with a series of plans: have him sign a TDD form, a power of attorney form so I can handle his finances, a primary health care directive so I can make the inevitable health decisions family members have to make.
I have no idea how senility and the aging brain works. But I swear on a stack of bibles he suddenly remembers a lot more since my February trip. He is definitely confused and paranoid though, and I convince him not to march down to a local AT&T store with his engineering credentials because he was talked down to and he will not be disrespected. I try to go through the mountain of forms and papers lying on coffee and dining tables in his apartment. “Don’t touch that,” he yells at me. “It’s important.” They’re all important. I help sort out one piece of junk mail he misinterprets as a threat. Between that and the language barrier, it takes the whole day.
I call dad out for not paying his share of the mortgage. He goes into a 45-minute rant: how mom is utterly incapable of acting as a capable human, listing out every single person my father doesn't trusts which consist of the only people my mother interacts with. By the time he finishes, he is out of breath, but mom has stopped freaking out to me about the mortgage not being paid.
Dad, however, clearly has his way of doing things. He refuses to sign the Transfer of Deed on Death forms. I learn Dad thinks my partner -- who he's never met in person -- has put "bad influences" on me and is trying to steal his property. I am "no longer Chinese” and surely, I’ve been corrupted by evil homosexual American influences.
Nothing is signed, nothing is notarized. I ask my father’s realtor to explain the TDD form in Chinese and he still refuses: “Why does he want my property so badly? I’m not dead.” He shows me of a health directive form he previously filled out, giving directive to my uncle and aunt for health guidance. “I didn’t put you on the list because you live in Florida,” he says. “That’s fine,” I respond.
His solution to all of this: get remarried. Remarried! I mean, it solves mom's financial situation, and as a bonus, there's at least a safeguard he won't die alone.
Mom initially hates this idea -- dad has property on his own, and she explicitly wants it known she wants co-ownership. There’s probably more to this, lost in translation. In any case, the very idea triggers daily screaming matches most of the duration I stay there.
There are three “false starts” when they get married. An appointment is set, an argument erupts hours before the date, the meeting is abruptly canceled.
I tell dad getting remarried is a bad idea. Living together was clearly a non-starter, and he's better off moving back to China or Taiwan. "So who's going to take care of your mother?" Dad asks. "What, is she going to move in with you? To Florida?" I look at him in the eye. "I'll deal with it when it happens."
They don’t talk about it for a couple of weeks, so when dad asks me to drive the both of them to an office in Oakland Chinatown catered to Chinese immigrants to handle administrative things, I assume they would be working out property management, or deed ownership. After all, the phrase both of them use in Mandarin was handle business. As in, “make sure your father is at the house at 11, so we can get the business done.”
I’m only 100% certain they’re getting remarried when the woman asks my parents if they were there to get married and if I was to be the witness.
For the next three hours, we all file the necessary forms. A Mandarin-speaking officiant marries my parents in the chapel room at Oakland City Hall. It takes fifteen minutes. No one gives anyone else eye contact. My father is so confused as to what’s going on during the saying of vows I blurt out "dad, she wants you to repeat after her" in English, and the officiant turns to me and asks, "oh, does your father not speak Chinese?"
Once they are done getting remarried, we walk five blocks to a restaurant, but in the wrong direction. Dad's legs are giving out and mom is mad her favorite restaurants aren't open — it's the staff meal between lunch and dinner — so we go to Cantonese Dim Sum. Everyone is angry. Dad thinks Cantonese dim sum is too fatty, mom is outraged because she can't have the soup she wants. I couldn’t even tell you which of the seven stages of grief I was on at this point.
I drive them back to Fremont, drop Dad off at his apartment, and nothing immediately changes, except they’re married. The End, I guess.
So basically, I fail all the tasks I give myself. I psyche myself up to be the noble adult child that must take care of his parents; instead, it all gets akidoed, and I’m the son mindlessly following orders of a parent who I love but don’t like. I hate how much of a pushover I am, how much that flaw has shaped my adult life. I tell myself none of this is my fault. Then it all repeats in my head, over and over again.
Coincidentally, that's when I give myself the time out: go on my sabbatical, spend some time writing and traveling.
One thing will never change though: so long as the sun rises and sets and all parties can do so, Mom will call every day.
We will talk about everything and nothing. It’s like when she first called when I moved away for college, except now I remind her to take her heart medication, the one she takes to prevent her heart from beating so fast. She asks me when I’m coming home and I reassure her I'll visit again, yes, even with dad in the house. I repeat this to her so many times I almost convince myself this as well.