parents just don't understand. or do they? it's so strange, to hang out with a normal interactive functional family. not to say that my family wasn't normal or anything. i don't want to go down the "we're dysfunctional" route since my family was pretty functional. but there is something very different between a family that has clear cut parent-child battle lines and just "people who happen to be related." in making a broad generalization, most asian children i know have experienced the same sort of family lives that i've known. parents as parents, not as friends. your dad was your dad and your mom was your mom. they were, for various parts of your childhood, your support, your motivation, your enemy, your wallet, your conscience, your parents. dad may have been slightly aloof and found it hard to ever say "i love you." and you can count the number of hugs you've received from him on one hand. mom was the caretaker who was nagging beyond belief. you almost never saw your parents exchange physical contact or god forbid, kiss. this wasn't my life exactly (i don't think my parents were terribly typical "asian" parents) but it's the stereotype of asian parents that rings true in conversation after conversation.



dinner time with the family was sitting around the table chit chatting about nothing. if there was even chit chat. we personally moved to dinner time in front of the tv a long time ago. talks with parents were always a form of fencing, with a strike strike parry parry routine. nobody felt like their parents understood them or got them. or they didn't bother to share things with their parents. the things that parents needed to know were "what i'm doing in life and what i need from them to achieve such things."



and then to take all that and sit with, or live with, another (presumably non-asian) family is almost an extreme form of culture shock. when i used to go to mike's house down the street, we took part in family dinners and board game nights and watched movies and talked about various topics that interested mike's parents. when jimmy came to visit me in england and stayed for a weekend with my family, the thing we commented on most was "wow, look, here's a real family." when we went to lilly's house yesterday, we were entranced by lilly's parents and we were marvelling at how she interacted with her parents. real conversation? jokes? stories? what's going on here? moms that are so cool you wish you could hang out with them daily? what is that?



i'm sure none of us would exchange our parents or our childhoods for anyone else's but it's so interesting to see a family that seems like a family. where the phone call from home isn't a warning bell and conversations concern more topics than just "how's school?" i wonder what kinds of effects this has on us, to have these asian parents who have this significant connection gap with their kids. i think this is something that the asian american culture bonds around, the idea of having parents who were very much separate from friends. maybe as i grow older i'll start to think of my mom as a friend instead of as mom, but that time isn't now or in the foreseeable future. it's just shocking to see and interact with parents who don't vibe off like parents.