饅頭 (Man Tou) Chinese Steamed Bun Recipe

I have been wanting to learn how to make man tou for the longest time.  When I went away to college, it was one of the few staple frozen items I dared try to squeeze into my dorm fridge (ice cream just doesn't fit!)  Whenever I was feeling homesick,  I'd take one out of the dorm fridge, microwave it for 30 seconds, and then eat away my sadness in what I'd like to describe as fluffy heavenly Chinese wonderfulness.

Flash forward to my current life with kids.  My three kids absolutely LOVE the soft tenderness of man tou and we often come home from the Chinese supermarket with some frozen ones.  They're always bummed when we run out, and we have been known to wipe clean the little basket of man tou at the local Chinatown Buffet whenever we care to visit.

I just knew I had to learn how to make man tou at home.  It was the easy and obvious answer, plus I'm always searching for ways to preserve my Chinese culture and introduce my kids to more Chinese traditions and food, this seemed like an obvious thing I should learn.  I hesitated only because well... I'm really not very good at cooking to begin with... chances were it wouldn't even turn out.  Bleh.

Well, with Chinese New Year coming up, I finally decided to get off my slothful Chinese butt and try making them!  Plus, I was too lazy to drive with my three kids to the local Chinese super market.

I'm still trying to figure out the elevation adjustments with living in Salt Lake City, but these turned out pretty dang fantastic.  I may or may not have consumed three in one sitting since I am starting another round of the Fast Metabolism Diet tomorrow...

Ingredients
wet ingredients:
1/2 cup warm milk
1 cup warm water
T active yeast
2 T vegetable oil
dry ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of unbleached flour (or bleached if you want it super duper white) - I just kept pouring flour on until the mixture became dough-y.
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix wet ingredients starting in order listed, mix and let sit for yeast to activate
Meanwhile, mix dry ingredients.
Slowly incorporate the wet mixture into the dry mixture, until it becomes a ball of dough.  Knead for about 5 minutes, cover in a bowl and let sit for 1 hour to rise.
Knead again for about 2 minutes, let sit for another 1 hour to continue rising.
Roll out dough with a pin, then roll it up, cut about 1 inch pieces, put in steamer lined with parchment paper and continue to let rise for 30 minutes.
Steam for about 10-12 minutes until cooked.  Remove lid slightly to let steam escape but continue to let cool for another 5-10 minutes.
Snap a photo of the beautiful creation made, then proceed to consume in one sitting.

I actually used this video.. but I'm not going to lie, her accent really bugged me and made it hard for me to repeat - so I'm sharing her video and detailing the recipe above so I can just link to my own blog for future reference.  Enjoy!

Double Eyelids

Plastic surgery is not a big deal in the Asian culture.  In fact, double eyelid surgery is one of the most common surgeries Asians undergo in an attempt to have bigger eyes.  Ask any white person what it means to have “double eyelids” and you’ll get a blank stare.  Ask any Asian person what it means to have “double eyelids” and they will tell you it is great, it is lucky, it is beauty!

All my life, I heard how unfortunate I was to have fallen into the category of single eyelid Asian.  Not as pretty, not as lucky, not as privileged as those with the big crease in their lid Asians.  I had one girl cousin growing up and she had some fat double eyelids.  I would hear, well she has double eyelids, you have long legs.  You got the consolation prize of long legs but she got the double eyelids.  But hey, you can’t get surgery to make your legs long, you can get surgery to make your eyes big! Yeah, they never said that but I’m sure that’s what they were thinking. 

For as long as I can remember, my aunt was going to “gift” me double eyelids as part of my high school graduation celebration.  This way, my eyes would be double by the time I got to college and nobody would remember from high school and nobody would know from college.  Except anytime I see an Asian girl walk by with fake double eyelids, I can spot ‘em like fake tits at a girls’ neck that have not yet fallen with gravity.  I just know they’re not real.  Most of the time, the crease is made so high above the eye that the cut is just poorly done and only camaflouged with some serious eye make-up.  It’s sort of like boob jobs, nobody goes in to get boob implants that are small A’s or even B’s – go big or go home!  So nobody really goes in to get their eyelid surgery asking for a smaller thinner, less obvious lid.  And the lengths we will go to sport a double eyelid if we do not already have one! 

In 1996, my freshman year of high school, someone mentioned something about tape to create a double eyelid in math class.  I was intrigued, and then I was hooked.  There was no going back.  I had to know more.  I had to get myself some.  This was too good to be true.  My best friend had heard the same thing.  So we both asked around – who said it first?  Who used it first?  Does it actually work?  And what kind of tape was it?  How did you cut it?  How long did it last?  Did it really work?!

A bunch of older sophomore girls had experience with the so called tape.  They let us in on the secret.  It was so simple.  Why hadn’t we thought of it first?! 

Scotch. Freaking. Tape.  It was uncomfortable.  It was itchy.  It was probably not sanitary.  It was a temporary solution.  But let me be the first to tell you, it was incredible, extraordinary, and absolutely amazing!!!

I remember the first time I busted out a pair of scissors to cut out a small rectangle just the perfect width of my eye, with enough height to create a fake fold in my eyelid.  It took a few tries, but once I snuggled the tape onto my eyelid right at the base above my eyelashes, it was incredible.  Well, as long as I kept my eye open – it was incredible!  Big eyes!  Round eye!  Like white people!  So so beautiful.  I stood in front of the mirror on my closet door perfecting the cut of tape.  I still remember the little shreds of tape I practiced cutting that sat on the edge of the mirror as I attempted, one after another, to find the perfect one that would fit on my lid, stay in my lid when my eyes open, and hopefully not poke out too much when I closed my eye.  Most of the time, I’d blink and the tape would fold outward… with extended wear, the tape would start to wear off and it’d come off at the ends and I’d have an awkwardly hangnail of a scotch tape on my eye.  I tried not to blink often.  If only I could just keep my eyes open longer.  People would politely tell me that I had some tape on my eye.  Not immediately though, after staring closely at my eyes everytime I blinked because of the shine that would catch from the scotch tape. 

“There’s something on your eye.” 

“Wait, is that TAPE on your eye?”  The questions were always asked disbelievingly so. 

As if I had stepped into an asylum with a diagnosis of “wanting to be too white and have larger round eyes.” 

But guess who got the last laugh?  A few months into taping my eyes (yes, I did it every morning, and sometimes I redid it during the afternoon… it was high school after all), a natural super thin crease found its way to my eye all on its own.  I remember blinking in disbelief, looking at my own reflection of a double eyelid thinking – maybe I won’t need the eyelid surgery after graduation after all!  I took special care and made sure to wash my face gently as to not disturb the lid fold, in fear it would disappear on me if I washed too hard.  I felt good about the fact that I wouldn’t have to go under the knife.  I mean, it was a routine surgery, completely normal and almost expected.. but it was still surgery after all! Girls I knew would go to Taiwan for a quick trip and come back with some huge eyelids and some professional photos (more on that later too)!  Sometimes, girls would say it was because their eyes were too small and it was corrective, not cosmetic surgery.  Kind of like how white girls who get nose jobs blame it on a deviated septum. Every. Single. Time.  Whatever.  They looked good, especially with make-up on.  They made eyelid surgery very tempting except now I had one lid fold and only had to tape the other… so, how would the surgery work? 

            When my dad and mom caught on to my newfound love of scotch tape cut into little rectangles that sat atop my eyelids, they told me that I could get precut tape from Taiwan easily. 

            And they were holding this coveted information from me for how long?!  For almost sixteen years, they said nothing of the sort to me at all!  There was no mention of this incredible magical “tape” that was already PRECUT!  I was absolutely floored.  I couldn’t wait to get my hands on some.  I had all my friends who visited Taiwan annually get me some, I told my aunts and uncles who lived overseas to bring me back some in the summer, and I bought enough to last me a lifetime the summer of 2002.  Yes, I used tape from 1996 to 2002 and some….   

            The legit precut Taiwan eye tape was just as obvious as my DIY-Scotch tape version, only it was less itchy and because it was precut, I started to get creative with putting black eyeliner on it before taping it onto my lids.  But still, every time I blinked, this huge black thing would stick out of my eye, making people think I had some weird thing on my eye.  Except the other Asian girls who did the same thing, they always understood and silently approved and fist bumped me in the air every time we walked by each other. 

            My best friend was one of these so called Asian gals.  We couldn’t get enough of taping our eyes.  It was free plastic surgery with no pain (the itchiness that came with the tape grew on us and we honestly never felt any pain from the rough edges of the tape when we used the tape dispenser’s knife). 

            And then one magical day, a few years into our college years, our eyelid lives got even better when I stumbled across … eye glue! 

            It was absolutely transforming.  We went from taping our eyelids everyday to gluing our eyelids everyday.  The packaging was direct from Japan, land of more Asians probably taping their eyes – but since Japan was on the verge of all fashion outbreaks even before Taiwan, they already had eye glue!

            The bottle looked just like a mascara bottle.  Only there was a funky little rake that came on top of the lid (this would be used to rake the eyelid into a double lid once the glue was applied).  Inside, it was glue – think eyelash glue, with a little brush that could be used to apply it softly across your lids.  Then, you’d utilize the rake to fold your eyelid in  and boom – you had double eyelids! 

            The downside to eyelid glue was that it was glue.  Glue is sticky.  Glue is unforgiving.  Mess up your fold and your eyelids would become victim to harsh rubbing and prying to rid the eyelid of the glue which would do its job and guess what?  Stick on!  Sometimes eyelashes were sacrificed.  Other times the folds were done too drastic and the eye would be WAY TOO BIG due to a humongous eyelid fold.  Most of the times though, it was absolutely wonderful. 

            Grace and I used eye glue everyday on our one lone eye without lids (she also had one lid miraculously show up after using eye tape for a few months).  We confessed to each other that we weren’t sure how this would play out once we had a serious boyfriend.  Would we let them in on the fact that one of our eyes was *gasp … a single eyelid?!  Or would we always make sure our eyelids were glued, even after marriage – we’d wake up in the morning and glue our eyelids before our husbands saw our heaven forbid – single eyelids?!   

And then a funny thing happened in my 20’s.  The left eyelid, the one I glued everyday.. it became more permanent after each gluing session and slowly, I had hope that it might one day become permanent!  I’d glue my eyelid every morning for a week, and sometimes, it’d still be there in the morning at the end of a long week.  I’d go by months before waking up to an eyelid that didn’t disappear.  But these few instances of a double eyelid on its own gave me hope.  Maybe I could get one without glue one day!  In the meantime, I kept at the eye glue.  Every single day.  I never work make-up religiously, but my eye glue?  I wouldn’t go out without it.  I even carried a little bottle with me in case I had to wash my face and the glue off and would need to reapply.  And with time, it slowly became more prominent of a lid without glue. Instead of months between an eyelid that stuck around in the morning, it’d become weeks, then days… and then one day, it just stuck around.  

they may be small folds, but they be folds regardless

I Wanted to Be White

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be white.  I blame much of that on my own ignorance and assumptions based on watching TV and just the lack of Asians in the media.  I can recall the moment I watched Boy Meets World and an asian girl was on the show.  I'd later find out she was actually half, but even that was sufficient for me.  My best friends all felt the same.  She was the most beautiful Asian girl we had ever seen.  To this day, she's the only true celebrity I follow on Instagram and I still absolutely adore her (it's Lindsay Price for inquiring minds, she'd later go onto Beverly Hills 90210 also).

I think part of the desire to be white rang even louder for me because I was so Chinese in every sense.  I learned Chinese as my first language, we watched Chinese soap operas and sitcoms at home, and we ate Chinese food every single night.  My immigrant parents had moved us from St. Louis to the suburbs of Los Angeles in an effort to be with more like-minded, black hair, brown eyed, Chinese peoples.  Even when we ate out, it was mostly at a Chinese restaurant, where they cooked fancier stuff like lobster noodles, crabs, and fried dim sum or other delicacies that my own mom would not waste her time in the kitchen on.  Looking into the white person's world was so foreign to me.  The only taste I'd get was an occasional spaghetti from Bob's Big Boy or a hamburger from McDonald's.  It wouldn't be until I was older that we'd go to an American restaurant (or non-Chinese) every Friday as a family to venture out into the world of food from other cultures.

The other thing was white people seemed to do fun stuff like go to the beach or amusement parks or camping or cabins for the weekend with their families all the time.  My parents definitely took us out a lot on the weekends, but we did a lot of swap meets, malls, and a few parks here and there.  They took me to Disneyland when I was about 2, and we took my brother and cousins once when I was in the sixth grade.  I don't think my own kids can count the number of times we've taken them, but it's not because my parents didn't care, they just didn't find it as fun as we do now.  It was always kind of a drag for them, they still did it though, and later as we grew older, they'd always willingly chauffeur 45 minutes times four to shuttle us to Six Flags or Disneyland with our friends.  We ventured to the beach a few times with family growing up on vacation, but it wasn't a weekend thing, more like a special occasion thing.  The first time I went camping was with Andy after we were married.

I get it, it's expensive and a lot of work, and to be honest, none of it is truly associated with the fact that my parents weren't really American, it was probably more of a do we have enough money to do that or they didn't think it was as important as us doing piano, dance and taekwondo lessons, but as a kid, I just assumed it was because those were American past times that we weren't accustomed to.  It didn't help that my other immigrant children friends all had similar experiences.

Luckily, as I've grown up, matured, and gained new perspective on my childhood as an immigrant child, I've come to appreciate and be grateful for the different experiences.  Despite not loving Chinese school every weekend for 3 hours, I'm glad I speak pretty good basic Mandarin and can communicate in secrecy with other Mandarin speakers as I choose.  I'm grateful for my open and inviting palate and love for different textures, trained by weekends of odd dim sum delicacies like pig's blood, pig's ear, chicken's feet, and stomach lining.  I'm grateful for the way my parents pushed me to excel, even if it was by traditional Chinese means.  I wonder what it would have been like to do a sport growing up.  Or to not get grounded and spanked for getting a C in PE in the seventh grade.  Or to have parents who might say, "grades aren't everything."  But really, it's not so bad.

I still sometimes want blonde hair and blue eyes.  But there's hair dye and colored contacts that can solve that.  In the meantime, I'm grateful for my black eyes and brown hair, but moreover, for my Chinese culture and experiences.  And for my love of fried intestines.  I was a bit in shock when I realized they were actual intestines, growing up I always used the Chinese name and never really thought to translate to English.  I didn't know what actual intestines (in Chinese did), but when I connected the two.. I was a tad bit grossed out by it.  Really I was just sickened by the raw white ones we grilled at an AYCE BBQ with my Asian friends, the fried ones already cut thinly and eaten with salt?  Awesome still!!

The Struggle Was Real

#TheStruggleWasReal #ChineseMomSay #immigrantchild #foblife

One of those uncomfortable “trying to be more American” items I can happily add to my list of Things I Will Teach My Daughters is, “Shave armpit hair upon puberty.” 

I didn’t have a lot of non-immigrant Asian friends.  The only one I did have could never understand my family background and upbringing.  In sixth grade, she invited me to stay for dinner at her house as we finished up a school project.  I was shocked.  It was unheard of to not eat with your own family for dinner.  We might not have sung songs together as a family in the car on roadtrips or embraced in family group hugs, but we did eat dinner together every single night at the table without any distractions except each other.  I was intimidated at first, but I asked my mom anyway, chances are she’d say yes since the school project would commence after dinner.  Plus, she was impressed with my friend because her dad was a surgeon general and they all spoke perfect English without accents.  We barely knew any doctors though we knew many parents who expected their children to grow up and become doctors, so this was a good and impressive relationship to have.  My mom agreed. 

When it was time for dinner, I half expected us to gather around a large table, hold hands, and bow our heads in grace like I had seen the white people do on television.  I was sorely disappointed when I realized their family didn’t even eat dinner together at the table much.  Her mom had prepared dinner and was upstairs somewhere, her dad was still working, her sister was with a friend around the house, and the two of us sat with our dinner and the TV on.  The television!  In our household, my mom had strict rules about television watching.  It was prohibited from Monday through Friday morning.  Once school was out Friday, I was glued to the television until 11 PM.  I’d record Saturday morning shows and cartoons while I was at Chinese school, watch it in the afternoon, and continue my television binging on Sunday.  So here at my friend’s home, watching television on a school night as we ate dinner was unbelievable.  I couldn’t flipping believe it.  What a life she had!  Then she offered me dessert.  In our family, dessert was normally some fruit and we rarely had real sweets like American cookies or cake.  We went out a lot for Thrifty ice cream, especially since it was next door to a coin laundry we used a lot when I was younger, but that was the extent of our dessert experience.  It wasn’t anyone’s birthday, it wasn’t a dim sum morning either (so many sweets like egg tarts and mango pudding at dim sum!), so the idea of having dessert like the characters on television shows I binged off of and lived vicariously through on the weekend, was absolutely glorious. 

It was really fun to have an Americanized friend.  And if it weren’t for her, I might still be walking around with a lot, and I mean a LOT, of armpit hair. 

We were in the sixth grade and during class one day, I raised my hand to answer a question. I was wearing a black and beige knit tank top with black cotton shorts.  It was one of my "cooler" and American outfits we had gotten at Ross, not some hand me down from Taiwan.  My friend gave me a look, one I thought meant you have the wrong answer but I’d later learn at lunch that it was a look intended to say, What the freak is that under your arms?    

At lunch, she had to explain it to me in detail, and I tried my best to feign indifference instead of ignorance as she asked me about my armpit hair.  I think she knew I was clueless, but the little bit of pride I still had clung on to the fact that it just didn't matter to me, but perhaps it should.  I was grateful for her advice, but also mortified.  Had anyone else seen?  It was as if everyone was suddenly whispering and pointing fingers at my hairy armpits.  I grew smaller form the mere thought of it... I was absolutely mortified.  Also.. I was mad.  Why didn't I know?!

My mom had no idea when I came home with the news.   For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed by my mother’s lack of knowledge and American pop culture.  I resented the Chinese soap operas we watched together and all the rice we ate every night.  How could she let me be the pit of everyone’s jokes?  Why didn’t she know I was supposed to shave my pits?  What else was I completely clueless about because my mother was an immigrant?! 

To make matters worse, she told me I couldn't shave.  There was nothing wrong with me, armpit hair was natural.  She even showed me hers, and then said, "see, it's normal to leave it long."  Is it Mom?!  Is it?!  I'm not sure!  Until today, I didn't know any different.  For a second, I thought maybe she was right, but I couldn't shake the lecture I had received at lunch, the over emphasis at how wrong it was to have armpit hair and how necessary it was for me to shave it immediately.  They made it seem like it was a diseased thing I had to get antibiotics for asap.  I might have only been 11 years old, but I sensed they may have been onto something.  At the same time, I wanted my mom to be on board, I had to have her on board, there was this sinking feeling that if she wasn't in agreement with me, I would always be bothered.  

I argued with her.  In many ways, the difficult of being the immigrant child helped me develop a lot of the negotiation skills I still carry with me today.  Silver lining, eh?  

“Asians like us don’t needing to shave,” she told me. “We don’t having lots of hair.”  

My sad eleven year old puberty infested armpits claimed otherwise.  Though I had started applying Teen Spirit the summer before the sixth grade, thinking I was so American and using the brands just like I had seen in Seventeen magazine (years more mature than me!), I missed the memo on a clean armpit free of hair first.  

I persisted.  I begged.  I reasoned.  I told her I’d come home with straight A+s instead of just As.  I told her I’d start tennis since she had been bugging me about it since Michael Chang became a thing.  The violin I quit a few years ago?  I’ll pick it back up!  Anything to shave my armpit hair!  

She didn't believe me and she couldn't be bribed, nor would she even listen to me.  A few times, I paused, afraid she might raise her hand and grab the rubber slippers and lay one on my butt.  I'd continue once I knew she wasn't about to hit me.  The struggle was also within me.  Part of me wanted to be the obedient good Chinese daughter that always received praise from the elders, but part of me just couldn't patiently obey anymore.  I didn't want to be laughed at.  I didn't want to be the fobby girl that didn't know any better.  I wanted to be cool.  I wanted to fit in.  I wanted to be American!! 

“What’s next?  Your legs too?” she asked me.  “No, never,” I told her.  “Good, because it’s forbidden and any good Chinese daughter not shaving her legs!” she said very clearly with a tone of doom if I ever chose to disobey her. 

I knew my mom would never concede to shaving my legs, but there was some hope with the armpit.  It would just take some time. 

There’s this weird Chinese superstition that shaving a baby’s head at one month will guarantee a full head of hair.  All my Chinese girl cousins had the same buzzed hair before we were one.  That same logic was applied to the fact that shaving my armpit or legs meant more hair would come back in its place.   It took me a week of begging and refusing to wear tank tops to school, but I remember it felt like an eternity.  She finally relented and told me I would be allowed to shave my armpits, but only if I conceded to using my dad’s shaving cream and razor with the caveat that if she ever found out I shaved my legs, she would hit me until I died (a phrase often used by Chinese parenting, not meant to be literal, it makes us all respond accordingly).  #thestrugglewasreal

Tears streamed down my face as I used my father’s Barbisal and blue hand held razor for the first time.  I remember staring at the mirror, not quite sure how to do it and wishing I had someone to ask.  I told myself then and there, I’d teach my daughter how to shave her armpit hair when the day came.  This would never happen to my child. I would always be supportive of her desire to shave armpit hair.  Always. 

It's a funny story when I look back at it now, but at the time, the emotions were a lot more raw and real.  I know my mom still has some influence on me, especially since years later, I've still only shaved my legs about 20 times my entire life.  To be honest, it's because the hair is so light and thin, nothing at all like my armpit which would endure surgery to remove a cyst, multiple ingrown hairs, and three even four follicles of hair in a pore.  The doc who removed my cyst told me I should never shave my armpits (guess mommy dearest was right), but instead have it waxed or professionally removed by lasers.  Yes.. it's that bad.  Perhaps that's also why it was such a big deal when my friend saw my armpit full of hair back then.  I suppose my other immigrant child friends never had any issue because their armpits always had light typical Asian hair, light and hard to see, much like the ones on my legs. 

 I often wonder why I never asked my likeminded immigrant child friends about their armpits.  I think it's because I was too embarrassed.  I asked my BFF once about how she knew to shave her pits and legs.  She learned from the magazine ads in YM and Seventeen which seemed to convey it was necessary, and she also can't remember her mom shaving.  In fact, she's pretty sure she never told her mom she was shaving, if she did, her mom probably would have forbidden her to do it.  She's Korean though, so maybe it's an Asian immigrant child thing.  Who knows.  

I'll Never Understand My Mom

We went back to California for Christmas break and spent some time with my mom.  She said that my skin looked great and I had lost a lot of weight.  It made me happy to hear these things, partially because I have been stressing about it for so long knowing that the moment I saw her, the waterfall of criticism would come pouring out.   I had even begun to really talk to my kids in Chinese about 50% of the time, which let's be frank, is really hard (especially when one kids responds "can you speak English Mom?" about half the time).  To her credit, they do understand a lot more than they let on but it's still hard when you're the ONLY person speaking Chinese to them all day long in a world of English!  I had begun getting facials monthly, with the disgustingly dry weather in Utah, even drinking half my body weight in water and slathering on body oil and lotion after showers hasn't helped much.  So I've been getting professional help so my mom doesn't remind me how old my skin is getting.  Lastly, in an effort to slim down from having my third child, I did the Fast Metabolism Diet which lasted for 28 days.  I lost 12 pounds and 4 inches off my waist and felt like I looked better than before I had Bubba and I weighed about 5 pounds less than I do now, then!  So I was doing everything to prepare myself for success with my overly critical mother.  It should have been wonderful to succeed.

To be honest, it wasn't as fulfilling as I expected.   I thought the acknowledgment that I am indeed trying my best to teach my kids Chinese would feel good.  I thought the reaffirmation that I am taking care of myself physically would feel better.  I thought that being mommy's good little girl would be satisfying.  Sometimes, when you live your whole life to make mommy proud (think Joy Luck Club), success can not only feel fleeting but a little artificial, like this isn't going to be enough, I just know it.  I guess it was an omen for me, because I should have been happy with what I had.  Sure enough, it all went downhill quickly.

A few days later, as we caught up on all my friends with our normal gossip session on what everyone is doing, she told me how relieved she was that I was married with kids in my 30's.  Of course all my friends who are unmarried and in their 30's have moms who are freaked out, or so my mom says. I tried to explain to my mom, maybe they are making the most of their single 30's and doing good things.

"Hopefully they can still have kids that old."

All the stars do it, I told her.

"Stars are not real people," she reminded me.

It's really sad that she is sort of right, and I hope my single friends in their 30's have indeed given thought and thought about freezing their eggs, but according to my mom, "You know, even if they don't admit it, they want a husband.  Nobody wants to admit they want to get married, but everyone does."

I'm not saying she's right, but she's entitled to her opinion and she is certainly vocal about it.  To provide some perspective, I told her, "Well, they seem to be having fun and enjoying their life, meanwhile I'm going to sleep at 10 this New Year's Eve."

I'm not a huge feminist, but I suppose the bit of me that is, is outraged.  Our worth, defined by a husband and kids?  Shouldn't it be by what we accomplish on our own?  I get it, everyone wants a family - whether that be a husband or friends or just people who care about you and plan a life with you to grow together and encourage each other, call each other about good things, etc., but a general statement that everyone should get married might not be the end all.

Sometimes I am in admiration of my single friends, 20's or 30's.  Drunken escapades, party photos galore, traveling spontaneously (cuz we know a lot of people who do travel with family, but always planned, always a vacation, etc.).  But then she says the worst thing ever, and that is this, "If you weren't married by now, I'd be so stressed and depressed," and it's the biggest backhanded compliment if I ever did hear one.  I'm not sure if I should say, thank you!  Or smile, or say, "whew, me too!"  but either way, it doesn't quite sit well.  Would it mean there's something wrong with me if I were 30 something and not married?  Maybe it just means I'm more picky than most people.  My mom would say, "no, you're just too anal.  Chill out and stop expecting so much, what are you... a queen?"  My mom doesn't believe in soul mates, love, or any of that.  Coming form a world where betrothals were normal, she's a true believer than it can always work because you make it work.  Her generation is much like that, in the sense that they all went through tough trials and then they just made it work and came out more in love than before.  

A few days later.. after I forget about it all... we're watching my kids run and crawl around and she tells me point blank that she can't believe this is my life....but not in a necessarily good way.  Not in a, you're so lucky, you're so blessed, but more in a seriously, you should hire help you have too many kids, how can you still want more? *disbelief, kind of attitude.

Ugh, my mom is so complicated.

Of course, the moment we returned home, she called and said how much she missed her grandkids.  And me, sorta.. it sounded more like a "are you still taking care of your skin and staying skinny?" than a "I love you" but I guess that's her way of saying I love you.