I never really thought I'd say this, but I will miss my family very very much. Everyone--from relatives on both sides, to my own, including my mother.
Honestly, I have no more reason to be bitter or estranged from anyone; everyone's gotten older, wised up, or calmed down. My mother has been nothing but kind and helpful this year. I feel like a jerk for holding grudges from the past. From a time when I was impetuous and young. Things change, and people age, and don't want to keep rifts.
I feel that fuzzy feeling now, when I talk and see my aunts, uncles and parents. I wish I could have been closer--but I know that's retrospective impossibility. I think if I had been closer over these past years (that I've been gone from home), I wouldn't feel this way now.
My aunts and uncles love me. My parents love me, and because of our history, I think they do not know how to approach me or become involved in my life. They fear losing me, and this makes me feel ashamed and sad.
Now, it's a little too late for me to come home more often; I started off and set this course of traveling, flying to so many places, making my home not in LA. I feel guilty for the family I abandoned. But nothing is ever too late.
My grandfather's funeral involved a long ceremony with monks and singing/chanting. My father's speech was very good--he was calm but not neither too collected/poised or emotional. His cadence was soothing and touching. I've always been proud of my father and have looked up to him. It makes me proud to have some of his qualities (his smile!). I also feel proud to have some of my mother's characteristics, as well. They are good people. No one is perfect.
My grandmother always asks for me--I am the one grandchild who is hardly ever in LA, and she only gets to see me once a year at Christmas. I love her very much, and every time she asks for me--or when one of my aunts or uncles tell me she's been asking for me, I feel guilty. She is proud. Actually, all my aunts and uncles and grandparents are proud of me.
Everyone seems to think I'm brave. I don't feel very brave. I feel like I complain all the time, and I'm pretty sure I'm a mean person. I don't really like to admit that, though. We're all good people, but not perfect, I guess.
I met my grandmother's sisters, whom I only vaguely remember from when I was very very young--one of them, the one I don't remember at all (probably because she lives in Dallas), immediately changed out of her monk's clothes from the ceremony at the restaurant into a really trendy distressed tee (like something a 19 year-old would wear at the mall), and some pretty hip looking baggy shorts-which-almost-look-like-a-skirt. She's probably in her early 70s, but she looked really good.
After dinner, in the parking lot at NBC Restaurant in Monterey Park, she told me how she bought those shorts in Beijing, and how I should go there, because it's such a hip and cool place with awesome nightlife for youngsters such as myself. She said she went there and to Shanghai and some girl who wanted to practice her English took my grand-aunt around to all the "happening" spots underground in Beijing.
My grand-aunt also told me to do well at Columbia, and marry a senator who will one day be President. She said, "Now that Obama's president, it's possible for you to be first lady!" or something like that. Her thoughts aren't so different from my mother, who told me (after I signed the lease on my apartment) that I should start looking for suitable partners and that "It's okay to get married while you're still in school."
There's all this push from my relatives for me to get married. It's really bizarre. I don't really share my love life with anyone in my family, mostly because sharing personal information with my mother has never been a good thing, and second, because I don't want to jinx what I do have. I don't want to share it.
But have I mentioned how lately, in the past two years, I've really been hearing my biological clock ticking? It's weird, I know, but I keep thinking about my future child/ren. It's so real that it's palpable. I don't really understand it, especially since I feel young still, but the impulse persists and never diminishes. It's strange to me that I think about my child before even thinking about marriage. I think I'm scared of marriage. Or, scared of a wedding, and scared that whoever is crazy enough to want me will eventually leave me, or turn into a stranger out of nowhere one day. That terrifies me. How will I never know?
I want a happy ending, or like, a solid ending, but I'm not sure if it's possible.
I realize that my parents' families are full of so much love. My mother has eleven siblings, my father, nine. My father's mother, whose sisters I remet today, didn't have many children. But when I looked around the restaurant today, and saw all the kids, the couples--I could see all the love between my now-deceased grandfather and grandmother, how it has been passed down and is shared with all of their children and grandchildren. What a lucky life my grandfather lived. To have given the gift of love over and over.
I want to be a part of this. I don't want to begrudge anyone. I want love in my life. To give, and foster love throughout my bloodline.
I write this just as I'm about to head to the airport, where I'll fly alone to NY, and then move into my new apartment, where I'll be alone (at least until Mindy comes).
The loneliness I bear, is the loneliness I bred.
