Family Shackles

Dear involuntary wedding guests,

I'll get to my Commie-leaning stance tomorrow. Today's post is about a random sore subject endemic to my immediate family, and possibly other Viet Catholic or Viet or Asian families: the obligation to go to family events.

Mama came up to my little den area, my brother's old room which I had redecorated with my TV, sofa, and weight set. There is a 2nd floor communal area which would probably be a more appropriate area for a TV, but it is visible from the street. Though we're in the suburbs and the street does have a moderate traffic flow (unfortunately with some idiots banging their muzak or revving their crappy midlife-crisis bikes), you can't have anything nice and visible in a major metropolitan area. Even in the suburbs. 'If people weren't poor, they would not need to steal.' Not true: poverty and theft are not perfectly correlated.

Some neighborhood kids broke into one of our cars to steal floor mats. Floor mats! So no, my TV is not to be visible from the street.

Mama has never understood the concept of privacy or of respecting personal space. When my bedroom door is locked, she jimmies it until it opens, thinking it must have been a ghost who moves the knob from horizontal to vertical. But the door was open this time, since you have to let the heat dissipate from the room when the thermostat has a hard-floor of 83 degrees.

She's smiling. She's always smiling whether she's sad or happy, whether she's angry or elated, whether she wants to put a kiss on the cheek or the switch to the backside. She disarms a lot of people but not me. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

'Oh, you have the internet on?' She doesn't wait for my answer; she sees the USB cord hanging from my laptop to my phone. 'Hey, my friend from work told me about this 18-month old who smokes 2 packs a day. Can you search for it?' She knows I can search for it, not because I'm some tech nerd but the fact that I'm under 25.

So I search for the stupid thing which had been on the news all the while thinking, 'Who the [copulate] cares?' and found the kid's name, then youtubed it: Ardi Rizal. 'Haha,' she laughs. 'Do you think it's real? Do you think he's 18 months?'

'Sure it's real.' I refrain from a metaphysical explanation of the reality of things shown on Youtube. 'They show it on TV; it must be real.' I pick the simplest, albeit fallacious, explanation to facilitate my ends: getting her to stop bothering me while I'm watching the NBA Finals.

'It's not in the U.S. right?' she asks.

'No, it's in Indonesia,' I respond easily, taking the word of some uncredited source on the internet. 'You can do whatever you want there.' I continue to leave my critical thinking on cruise control; ignorance is bliss as they say. It's easy and pleasant to be ditzy, and I can turn my hair blonde on-demand.

She watches me a little further, while I continue paying my bills online. She glances at the TV, hoping I'd say something more, to continue a dying conversation. But I had learned to be withholding from the pro sitting to my left.

She buckles, 'Hey, there was that news story about my workplace. Can you pull it up?'

I search grudgingly, then earnestly as I wonder if it was possible to find the news story. But I lost interest, and made up an excuse, 'It was a news story?'

'Uh huh, they came to the company and we had to wear uniforms. We never wear uniforms.'

'What happened?'

'Nothing, just something to get attention I guess. My friend had found it on the internet after they showed it on TV.'

Like that means anything. I make some more faux searches, and then point at the TV. 'You see that commercial there? You see it now, and you can probably see it online somehow, but it's going to be difficult.' She senses my irritation. She's really good at sensing non-verbal cues, but she's even better at ignoring them.

But she gives up this time. She starts up from the couch and probably caught my half-smile that signified my victory. Halfway to the door, she casually asks, 'Did you find those car rental prices?'

'No.' I might as well get it over with. To delay something that may take care of itself tomorrow is a potentially profitable way to procrastinate. But to delay something that will only come back tomorrow is plain lazy especially when the tools to do the job are in your hands. I should follow my advice more often.

alamo...national car rental...avis, et al all go one by one into Google's omniscient, omnipotent bar. Then I get smart and do a Priceline search to show all the rates at once. Channeling the voice of an old African-American sage playing dominoes at the park, 'Think long, think wrong.'

'Bossman, two out of three ain't bad.' (the one out of three being my inefficient searching).

I imagine him responding, 'No it ain't, son, nah it sure ain't,' while wondering if he thought what had been the two out of three I had gotten correct.

'Mama, you can save $5 if prepay now, but if you cancel you have to pay $5 cancellation fee.'

We get into an discussion about the prepay discount. 'When your aunt reserved it, you can cancel anytime you want.' 'I understand that, but I'm trying to save you some money.' 'What about the others?' I echo, 'What about the others?'

She continues to waste my Lakers vs Celtics time. 'You're not going to cancel, right? You're going, right? So it'd be cheaper if you prepay.'

'But I might not go or she could find someone else to bring her.' Finally, the crux of the matter. My family has a habit of complaining (as you can see from my own belly-aching).

'Don't go then. Why do you have to go?'

'It's your grandmother's brother's kid, Dad's cousin. Your grandmother has to go, and I have to go because none of your aunts and uncles want to drive her there [New Orleans].'

'Who cares? The groom or bride won't care, probably won't even remember Dad even if he were to show up. All they want is your money [Viet wedding gift], so send it and be done with it.'

'But they invited your grandmother and Dad, because he's the oldest child. Your great uncle felt obligated to invite them because it wouldn't be right if he hadn't. And it's not right if we don't go.'

'What? You couldn't just lie and say you're not in town? It's not like you've never done that before. See? Easy.'

She's frustrated. As independent of a woman she is, she is still shackled by the conventions of family and family obligations. I had thought about how we didn't have grandfather's portrait on the wall of the house, and thought how unconventional the absence had been. Then I realized that it was because we just haven't hung it up post-Ike; it had been in the living room of our old condo. The Catholic missionaries had not squashed our ancestor worship, and the somber black-and-white portraits in every older Viet Catholic's home is ever present next to the Christian altar.

She backtracks, using ad hominem attacks, 'Your aunts and uncles are disgraceful. None of them will go, and so I have to go.' I sit in silent agreement. 'Your brother would go. He said he'd drive as far as Lake Charles and stay there while I drove on to New Orleans. But not with your grandmother in the car, never with your grandmother.' Grandma had called my brother a 'gangbanger' and had basically disowned him once grandfather died.

Mama says that last bit to try to cajole me to offer to drive her and grandma to N.O. Nice try.

We talk some more about the prepay discount, and then she drops the car rental subject. 'Maybe someone will be going there too, and I won't have to drive.' Not likely.
--

It will be the death of her, this family business thing. America is not like Vietnam. In olden Vietnam, there's nothing to do but live in your little village doing your bit of subsistence farming, while enjoying the little weddings and such that intersperse the daily drudgery. But these things are only grudging obligations in this fast-paced society of Google, Facebook, iPhones, and silly videos of an 18-month old smoking on Youtube.

You can't live in two different worlds and maintain consonance. You cannot serve both God and Mammon, except in this case you don't know who is God and who is Mammon (though a bunch of people think us Americans as Devil spawn).

Well, she'll go to that wedding and I won't. And the next. And she'll smile all the while hating that she had to be there. And I'll smile sincerely as I sleep away that free weekend.