We're All Hypocrites

I remember the intense disdain I would have as a kid listening to my mom lament about my friends who she disapproved of.  It would always, and inevitably end with a judgment about how the friends' parents must be to blame.  In Chinese, we have a phrase 没教养 méi jiào yǎng which roughly translates to the child lacks parental discipline.  I grew tired of hearing this phrase all the time, wondering if I should go out and rebel just to make it so that I was also one of those kids, as ultimately the blame would be on my parents, and not me.  But I never had the courage to do much besides talk back.  Though I was the Queen of talking back, that was where my reign of power seemed to end.  I never ditched school (without my mom knowing), I never snuck out of the house, I never snuck around behind her back doing things she would disapprove of, I never really did much to warrant being grounded except come home with less than perfect grades, like a C in PE when I was in the 7th grade which resulted in a spanking with the rubber slipper.  Curse that red dirty rubber slipper!  I was a pretty good kid you could say.  Obedient.  In Chinese, the word 乖 guāi meant good.  Surprisingly close to the word 怪 guài which meant strange.  The difference, just the inclination of the tone utilized.  An obedient child would often get praised openly for how 乖 guāi  they were.  Little things got this praise: addressing the adults in the room politely before reminded by your parents, accompanying grandparents to weekend dim sum with a smile, and allowing your parents to boast of your grades and extracurriculars without any eye rolls.  These were all things that came naturally to me, so of course I always fit into the classification of a 乖孩子 guāi háizǐ or good kid.  And even despite me always embodying the ideal of a perfect Chinese daughter, I never attributed it to my mom's influence.  Well... that is until I became a mom myself.  

Now as a mom, I still don't believe that my kids are always going to listen to me.  But I blame myself if they do something bad or wrong, while acknowledging my children have their own choices to make.  It's the ultimate paradox of parenthood.  But anytime I hear about a classmate who is being difficult, or I encounter a friend of my children's who I believe is being a little rude or off putting, try as I might the phrase 没教养 méi jiào yǎng creeps into my head.  Curse thy childhood Chinese judgment!  Try as I might, I simply do not want to belittle the parents by assuming the same errors of my mom.  But try as I might, she may have been onto something.  Bold and unforgiving a judgment, it does 90% of the time fall onto the parenting situation that put the child in a bad situation, or gave the child a bad influence, or ... you get my point.  

So in the end, we're all just hypocrites.  I am trying my best to abandon that phrase from my vocabulary, but in private with just my best friend on the phone, we find our secretive conversations often leads to the same thing: judgment of other parents.  Us not understanding how others do it, how others discipline or don't discipline and then us determining that's definitely the reason.  No nature, but 100% nurture. And while I don't take credit for any of my kid's successes, the moment they're met with a failure, it's hard not to blame myself for it.  So how do we stop this vicious cycle or do we all just admit we're all hypocrites?  

  

The Things We Believe In...

From a young age, I knew that leaving my hair wet to air dry would result in headaches.  My mom and aunt both stressed how important it was to always blowdry one's hair.  When you didn't, that's where the headaches would come from.  As I ridiculed such insanity, I also grew up and began consistently and obediently drying my hair accordingly.  In my defense, the hair follicles seem to stay clean longer, when I air dry, it gets oily faster.  But alas, the blow dryer became my best friend.  And simultaneously a symbol of my filial piety and one of the Chinese wives tales I subscribed to.  As an adult, I sometimes wonder if it all traces back to my first blowdryer.... 

Growing up, we didn't do Christmas big.  We had a Christmas tree most years, of course my mom won't let me forget that I donated our one fake Christmas tree to the middle school's decor supply when she said we could borrow it but I thought she meant they could have it.  "Do you know how much Christmas trees are?!" she had demanded.  I had, in fact, not known the value, and now all of a sudden the look on the teacher's face of gratitude when I advised her of my mom's donation made sense.  At the time, I also racked my brain as to the last time we even set it out, and it had been years earlier, so I figured we were over the whole decorating for Christmas tradition. Traditions didn’t apply to us immigrant kids anyway! 

As an adult now, I know that all fake greenery is in fact quite expensive.  Oddly enough, my uncle was a fake greenery export import guru and had a business called Amazing Green, which I also got the opportunity to intern at one summer, where I learned all about greenery, invoicing, and the warehouse department.  But I digress.  

One of my core memories from Christmas besides a few cool Barbie dolls (the bubble shaving cream one and the 1993 holiday barbie with velvet green lush puffy sleeves), was a red blowdryer my uncle got me for Christmas one year.  Since we didn't really "do" Christmas, the presents under the tree were usually gifts for the family given to us by friends,  which meant blue tins of Swedish butter cookies or See’s chocolate candy boxes (even though Asians don’t love sweet things, we encountered these two gift options quite often during the holidays)- and my uncle, who at the time was new and wasn't sure if we were doing any traditional American Christmas stuff.  He had just immigrated from Hong Kong to establish a home for his family and wasn't sure how we did things.  That was the last gift I remember from him, so he caught on pretty quickly thereafter that we didn't do anything.  I think he was also grateful that we carved space for him at the dinner table every night while he was alone trying to pave the way for the rest of his family.  But I was one of those immigrant kids (I've also since learned that all immigrant kid experiences may be similar, but not all are identical, and my experience is mine alone even if it may resonate with others) who didn't really celebrate Christmas.  

Despite not celebrating Christmas, I still loved all the sugar, the twinkle, the smell of pine, the mall decorations, the Christmas programs we'd prepare and sing for at school, the excitement and anxiety that I only knew from the white characters in all the tv sitcoms we watched. For us, Christmas was just a long break where we’d sit around and finally get to watch tv until midnight (we couldn’t watch TV on the weekdays normally but TGIF happily coincided with the weekend). We did always have a big family dinner complete with roasted duck, stir fried noodles, and lots of vegetables. If my mom had time, we also had fried spring/egg rolls. The name varies depending on who you ask but these were the golden wrapper ones fried in deep oil. Yum.  We didn't have stockings by the fireplace, or hung up at all, and we certainly didn't wake up to run to the presents under the tree with some from Santa like I had seen on television.  And if we made decorations at school (like the wreath made of soda pop loops) my mom usually tossed it complaining it was tacky. Go figure. 

When my brother, six years younger, became an adolescent, I of course assumed the role of Santa as I had witnessed on tv, and got him gifts that he mentioned wanting.  Seeing the look of pure awe and joy was enough that I kept playing Santa for years.  The only reason I never did it with my own kids is because years later, while I was a working adult in Corporate America, I would get a phone call from my mom asking what Pokemon was. Apparently, my much younger cousin woke up crying Christmas morning. She was about 8, and her immigrant parents missed the whole letter to Santa asking for Pokemon and explained she was saying she was on the naughty list. My brother and I raced to buy any pokemon toy we could muster on Christmas Day but her ideal of Santa and her ability to believe in magic had died that day.  We hid the toy and even wrote a fake letter explaining the snafu but we were too late. The immigrant ignorance has ruined any semblance of an American traditional Christmas, yet again. After that experience, I swore I would never deceive my own kids, or buy into this nonsense that some immigrant parents are unfortunately unable to participate in. And I never have.