Sharing Feelings With Mama and Papa Fung

My parents don't pressure me about getting married and settling down, and have respected the choices I've made in my life. Still, they're not immune to the worry that I may end up alone, and they would like to see me loved, supported, and taken care of. I'm not immune to that worry, either. In spite of preferring to take care of myself, of knowing that I will always have the love and support of friends and family, of being capable of creating a fulfilling life with or without sharing it with someone, I'm still, at the end of the day, a romantic who still hopes that that someone exists.

My parents and I don't talk much about our fears and our hopes, though. We've never had that kind of dynamic. In my family, we manage to avoid topics that involve feelings, love included. So when my parents check in on my love life, they usually talk around it, posing questions like, "Do you do anything other than work and practice taekwondo?" and "Have you made any new friends lately?" Because assuring them that, yes, I do make time to maintain a relatively active dating life would make for a super awkward conversation, and because they probably don't actually want to know the details of my "activities" anyway, I'm kind of okay with letting them believe that I write books by day and kick people by night.

I admit that there's a part of me that wants to commiserate with my parents at a more intimate level. I love them, and I like them as people. I'm also constantly learning from them, so why not ask them for advice on love as well?

Here's why:

In a recent conversation with my parents, I explained to them that the reason I was single didn't have to do with my lack of trying to meet men, or even getting dates with them, but that, quite simply, it's hard for me to meet men with whom I share common interests. When you're a 30-something-year-old woman with a PhD, whose idea of a fun time is to sing songs from RENT at karaoke, make costumes even when it's not Halloween, and point out things that are racist, you're probably not compatible with too many people.

My mother's response: "Who told you you had to be so weird?"

My father's: "Who needs common interests? Your mom and I don't have anything in common and we get along okay."

Sharing feelings is going to take some practice.

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."

Teaching Advice from Dad

At every end of term, my dad urges me to be easy on my students while I'm figuring out their final grades. Here's why:

Dad: How are your students' papers?

Me: In any pile, aside from the two that are excellent and two that are disastrous, they're generally mediocre-to-bad.

Dad: Do you ever give your students Fs?

Me: Only if they don't turn in the work. So long as they do the work, even if it's awful, they will pass the class.

Dad: For the bad students, don't give them Ds or Fs, okay? A C is a good enough warning.

Me: Dad, that's grade inflation. C is supposed to be average. But yeah, that's usually what ends up happening anyway. I stick in so many easy assignments, the average usually ends up being a B, sadly.

Dad: Good. Because when I was at the University of Chicago, one of my classmates got so mad at his professor for not passing him on his thesis, that he shot and killed the guy and then shot himself.

Me: ... Uh...

Dad: So don't be too harsh on your students. They might kill you.

END.

This is How You Find a Husband

My mother, like many mothers who have a 30-year-old single daughter, is worried that I'll never get married. Whenever the topic comes up, I get a little snappish, so she's learned to employ a code question: "Are you making any new friends?" She used to be much more explicit in offering advice on what I should be doing to fetch myself a husband. Here is a conversation from when I was in graduate school. I'm chatting with my mom and her sister, whom I call Ee Ma, which is my phonetic rendering of "Second Aunt" in Cantonese.

Mom: So your friend, D, is married?

Me: Yeah.

Mom: How did she meet her husband?

Me: She was an undergrad at Davis, and he was a law student.

Ee Ma: Davis has a law school?

Me: Yeah. And a good one, from what I hear.

Ee Ma: So Davis has a business school, medical school, and law school.

Me: Yeah...

Ee Ma: Then why is it so hard for you to find a boyfriend??

Me: ... uh... What am I supposed to do? Walk into the medical center with a head wound and go, "Help! Help! I need a doctor! But wait-- Are you single?"

Ee Ma: No no no. You find out where the medical students go to eat lunch, and then you go there, too.

Mom: Should be simple.

Ee Ma: That's what Auntie Mimi did.

Me: Who's Auntie Mimi?

Mom: You know, your cousin Amos's mom.

Me: I have a cousin Amos?

Mom: I've TOLD you about Amos! He's very funny. His wife is a doctor. They just had a baby.

Me (still not having any idea who these people are): Um. Okay.

Ee Ma (cutting in): Anyway, Auntie Mimi and her friends would go to the place where the Stanford medical students would eat lunch, and she would whistle at them.

Me: WHAT?

Ee Ma: Yes. She would whistle, and that's how she got Uncle Gerard's attention.

Me (seriously impressed): Wow. But wait... I thought Uncle Gerard was married to Aunt Vivian.

Ee Ma: He is.

Me: So he and Aunt Mimi dated?

Ee Ma: No no no. Mimi was interested in Gerard, but he didn't want to date a Shanghainese girl. So Gerard introduced her to his brother Raymond.

Me (thinking, "What's wrong with Shanghainese girls?"): Oh really!

Ee Ma: And at first Mimi hated Uncle Raymond, probably because she was still mad at Gerard. But eventually Mimi and Raymond started dating. And then they got married.

Me: Huh.

Ee Ma: So that's what you should do, too.

Me: You mean whistle like this? *Demonstrating my best suggestive whistle*

Ee Ma (laughing): Yeah!

Mom (cutting in): Where did you learn to whistle like that?

Me: Don't you know, mom? I got mad skills!

Mom: ...

Ee Ma: See, so easy, right?

Me: So I guess I'm ready to find myself a doctor now!

Ee Ma: Don't go by yourself! Go with some friends. Or people will think you're weird.

END.