My parents

I think I know my parents very little, because I did not live with them too much. I probably put most I knew in my previous blog entries about them already. However, the good thing is that I am knowing them more and more. As I gained the financial indepednence and called my own shots all the time, they began to let down their guard and allowed me to peek into their psychology. Also, as I understand human relationship better than before, they can barely escape my scrutiny. By the way, this blog is in no way to criticize or evaluate them. Rather, I try to describe who they are.

First of all, my parents like to save money. It made evolutionary sense, because the past always left traits on you, genetically or mentally. My parents used to be quite poor. After the reform, they were not able to take new economic opportunities and were further left behind. They just purchased an apartment with all their savings, so they felt even poorer. If I gave them some money, they would just save it, feeling happy and peaceful with the money in the bank. I sometimes felt bad for them, but well, the life style could not be changed over night. It actually took me a while to feel comfortable spending money beyond necessities. Like father, like son.

My parents are not good at parenting (according to US standards, of course). Now my sister has this daughter, and it kept my parents occupied. I think my parents must be very lonely before. The little girl really could cheer them up. However, my parents often like to yell at the girl, or do things against her will (I still remember that my dad used to like wipe my face with a hot towel after meal. I did not hate the hot towel, but I hated to allow other people to dictate my schedule and habits). My mom barely smiled at her (to be fair, after the stroke, my mom rarely smiled at all), and my dad was always impatient. When the little girl cried, my dad would tune himself out by murmuring words to himself, as if by talking to himself, the crying no longer bothered him. Fortunately, my brother-in-law is a great father, so the little girl actually is doing quite well. One day last week, my mom commented on my dad, "you are more patient to her than to Songhua before." My dad said, "yeah, that's because I was not retired that time." I said to myself silent, oh my god, I was lucky that I did not grew up with you two. Hey, no hard feeling.

I can tell my parents are getting older. My dad gained some weight, and my mom walked even slower. The new apartment is on the first floor, and it gave my mom a very hard time. I feel bad for that. My dad did not get the visa earlier this year, and that might be a downer for him. But overall, my going abroad worked out great for them. Hear me out, because I do not believe that is my self-rationalization. At least for my dad, now he had a lot of events to attend and also was learning English. He had a lot of "mianzi" because I am earning dollars. And some bastards who would otherwise never give a shit to a nobody like my dad now tried to maintain good relationship with him, just in case that their children need to go to the States and need me to take care of them a bit. For my mom, she would otherwise worried me so much if I was around (jobs, money, girfriend, marriage, children), but now she only need to worry maybe once a while, as her target son is so far away as if the worry no longer felt real any more.

My parents are very responsible and not very selfish at all. They take care of Niangniang very well (though sometimes they do not want to spend too much money). They have a great attitude towards life and death. I was surprised to hear that they can discuss their parents' death with great ease, as if they were talking about a TV pregram. it could be their emotional detachment, but it also could be that they tried to desensitize me with the topic so that a possible Niangniang passing away would not be a big blow to me. I would like to thank them if their intention is the latter.

As I know better, I try harder to keep them happy. For example, this time I made an effort to stay at home for meals as much as possible. That makes them happy. But overall, I viewed them as distant, and they viewed me as distant too. One night, they came in my room and asked about my new job. I was not very interested in talking about it, so I just kept doing my work and whatever. They ended up talking between themselves for twenty minutes and then left. I think I am a bad son.

Two final thoughts:

1. When I was in Shanghai yesterday, my friend tried to analyze my personality. I think he is right by saying that I have a combination of liberal individualism and moral self-righturousness (I summarized it with my own words). I think the individualism is because I grew up with my grandparents, but the morality, honesty, responsibleness are probably from my parents. If that is true, I really get the best of both worlds.

2. For some reasons, I really want to have a boy myself now. It is difficult to be a parent. I do not think my parents are good at parenting, but maybe I am just being hypocritical here. Though I do not know when I can prove it one way or another.