Mama Fung's Pep Talk

One of my favorite movies from adolescence is the 1994 version of Little Women. It's a beautifully rendered adaptation of one of my favorite girlhood novels and appeals to my geeky fondness for period dramas. Also, featuring pre-klepto Winona Ryder, pre-grumpy Christian Bale, and classic-cry-face Claire Danes, the movie is so wonderfully 1990s.

The older I get, the more I realize that what I really love about the film is one short scene in which Jo, after turning down a marriage proposal, rails about how she's restless for a life she can't see yet. Marmee (played perfectly by Susan Sarandon) tells her, "You have so many extraordinary gifts. How can you expect to live an ordinary life?" That might be the best thing a mother could ever say, and I realize more and more how much I needed to be told this when I was 14. Should I have a daughter one day, I hope to impart the same message.

My mother has her own version of this advice whenever my life has taken a turn for the unexpected: "A strange girl like you, hard to find someone who appreciates you. Better to be single and free."

Care Package from Mom

My mom calls me today to say, "I made some Chinese New Year cakes and I will be sending you one in the mail. Also in that package, I will send some tea that helps with constipation. Oh, and it's good for your skin... What's so funny?"

Life of Fung

I took my parents to see the movie Life of Pi, which turned out to be a fitting family activity, given that this past year has given us both great challenges and great blessings. Afterwards, we had dinner and chatted about what we got out of the story.

Papa Fung: "The story is about hope, obviously. Even when the boy thinks he's going to die, something good happens, and he's saved. I thought the movie had a very positive feeling."

...

Mama Fung: "That is what marriage is: being stuck on a boat with a tiger."


END.

Revoking My Model Minority Card

Mama and Papa Fung have been looking after a brother and sister pair, ages 8 and 4, a few times a week. Perhaps because their parents once lived a cosmopolitan life that included living in Japan for a while, they want their kids to become immersed in different languages and cultures from an early age. They have sent the kids to Chinese school, and their previous nanny also spoke to them in Mandarin. As a result, the kids are remarkably fluent, and their accent is spot-on. My parents reinforce their education by speaking to them only in Mandarin and by teaching them some easy words to read and write.

My mother has been reflecting on why she hasn't been as successful in instructing her own children. She had to drag me kicking and screaming to Chinese school when when I was a kid, and quickly lost the struggle to maintain a Mandarin-speaking household the second I started preschool and jabbered in English. (It doesn't help that my father speaks Cantonese, so that was the dialect I was more exposed to growing up.) As a result, I speak Mandarin with the fluency required to order food at restaurant. My Cantonese is only good for petty gossip. And the little Chinese that I can read and write I retained from college, when I finally valued my mother tongue enough to attempt to learn. In sum, my Chinese language abilities are pathetic. My brother's are worse. 

So when Mama Fung told me about these kids she's babysitting, she could only lament: "Can you believe it? These two white kids speak Chinese! WHITE KIDS! What kind of mother am I?" 

My father, however, is a bit more forgiving of himself and of his children. In the time that he's spent with these kids, he has discovered that they have absolutely no musical knowledge. They don't know any songs, and have trouble singing notes on a scale. From the time my brother and I were able to make any verbal noises, we were singing. We sang Mandarin songs my mother taught us, Disney songs, songs we learned from preschool, Beatles songs, Motown songs, songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. Together with our cousins we could have been the Chinese American Von Trapp family. We also all learned musical instruments-- My brother and I both took piano and voice lessons. I played the flute in the school band; my brother played the trombone. There is not a single tone-deaf person in our family. 

Of course, this is just a testament to what constant reinforcement can do. My father, always one to believe in the power of genetics, says to me, "Come to think of it, you and your brother are smarter than these two white kids anyway."