Diplomatic Immunity

If you say “eggs with ketchup” I’ll puke a little in my mouth. But “eggs and tomato” and I think of this Chinese comfort food dish which is exactly what it sounds like—scrambled eggs and sauteed tomato.

I don’t actually know if it’s really Chinese. I’ve had it the small Chinese town I taught English in once, but somehow I’m not entirely convinced. A quick Google search turns up an article about a dish that has connections between both Arab and Chinese communities. Nothing super definitive.

“Did you eat anything like this when you were younger?” I ask my parents, placing my version of the dish in front of them.

They stare at it, watching the little pillars of steam waffle back and forth.

“I don’t remember,” my mom says.

Damn. I turn to my dad.

“HAH!?” he mumbles loudly.

Nevermind.

I scarf my food down, not really treasuring the time I get to eat with my parents. The sooner I finish, the sooner my duties are over and I can get back to doing some work or spending time not awkwardly sitting at the dinner table.

“Everyone, please take your time to eat,” I say in Chinese just for kicks. It’s a phrase I used a lot as a kid, which you use when you’re done with dinner. It better translates to just “excuse me.”

“Where are you going?” my mom asks.

“To get ready.”

At the moment, I’m referring specifically to packing my bags so I can head to a coffee shop to get some work done. But I also mean getting myself ready for my cousin, who’s arriving tonight and staying with us for the whole weekend.

Sean, which is the closest-sounding English name I can find, makes me nervous. My parents’ life is already unpredictable, especially my dad, and the last thing I want to do is introduce even more variables to the situation. Also, as far as I understand Chinese culture, family visits are always a big deal. They’re all pomp and circumstance, full of going out to eat (bad for my dad), sightseeing (bad for my mom), and worst of all, underhanded politicking (bad for me).

I was supposed to pick Sean up at the BART station, but he’s decided to rent a car. I built my day’s schedule around picking him up, so that’s strike one for him. But because he rented a car out of San Francisco (sigh), at five pm (literally peak rush hour), he’s now sitting in traffic and I’m at my parents’ house waiting a couple hours for him to get home. Which means he’s late for dinner and now my dad is grumpy about not eating. Strike two.

I get it. Sean thought renting a car would be nice since he thinks he’ll be able to drive my parents around. It’s supposed to be an act of generosity and goodwill. He can be very traditionally Chinese in that way.

This also means that once he finally arrives and we get our “wow you look so good you haven’t aged a bit” pleasantries out of the way, we have to go out to eat dinner, which means the Chinese dinner game.

“Please, let me pay for dinner,” he says to me as I hold the restaurant door open for everyone.

“Sure,” I tell him. We both know I’m lying.

The Chinese dinner game is where every party tries to one-up everybody else and pay for the meal. It can get fierce, like people standing and literally fighting to hold on to the check, fierce. It can also get really dirty. Anytime someone says “I need to go to the bathroom,” you send someone to follow them because they might, in fact, be going to pay the bill in advance.

My mom used to be like this, downright yelling and demanding that she pay the bill and that it was unjust if she didn’t.

“Why don’t you just let them pay this time, and you can pay next time, and just take turns?” I asked innocently once.

Oh boy, did I hear about it that night.

“Yeah,” my brother smiled at me, “don’t ever do that again.”

So when I tell Sean, “sure,” suspicion is in the air. Nobody gives up that easily. And anybody who does, is just trying to fool you.

Naturally though, I win. I know this game very well, and unfortunately Sean, this is my neck of the woods son. I know all the tricks.

“Shoot, I forgot something in the car,” I say, carefully waiting until after someone’s texted me and I pull out my phone, which makes it seem like an emergency. “I’ll be right back.”

I slip my credit card to the waiter on my way back, plop back in my seat, and no one is the wiser.

“Did you pay?” my mom asks me, her body noticeably shaking. I wonder if she gets extra anxious about still being able to play this dinner game.

I nod, and when the check comes, my card’s in it and has already been charged.

“Oh no,” Sean sighs, seeing that he’s been beaten.

Sucker. At least he avoided strike three, and I, for one, am glad. My dad’s happy because he’s full, my mom because we paid, and me, because this exercise is over. Sean may not have gotten what he wanted, but ultimately, I think he recognizes this is probably the better way forward.

“You can buy me something later on the side,” I offer as a token.

I have always found myself to be a diplomat in my family. Everyone has my ear, while I balance various tensions in an attempt to find a path we can commit to. That’s sort of my personality. I take sides, but I take them carefully. I can’t help but wonder if it’s in my DNA.

It might be something Sean has a little bit of too, as he realizes maybe he was overambitious in his dream of putting my parents in his rental car and going sightseeing. Instead, he suggests we go to the cemetery of my grandparents. It’s a brilliant idea and I don’t know why I hadn’t considered this. I visited their grave a few years back when I randomly happened to be in the area, but I can’t remember the last time I went with my mom, or when she even last went at all. It pains me to say it, it’s almost as if I’d forgotten my grandparents were even buried here.

And so we go, and suddenly it’s like I’ve jumped into a time warp and I’m back in high school. The visual is the same: my mom standing in front of me, my dad holding her, a few flowers with yellow and white petals peppered among the green grassy fields with some dandelions releasing their spores into the wind. One thing that’s different: I can read the Chinese that’s on the tombstone, and suddenly I feel more connected to my past than I ever have.

I expect to stand here for ten or fifteen minutes, so I’m startled when after only two or three pass, and my mom turns around and says, “Let’s go.”

I close the car door and pull the car keys out of my pocket, when I take a quick glance at my mom in the rearview mirror, and something in me senses that she wants to stay longer. I don’t want to say anything, and instead take several deep breaths, as if I’m scanning the horizon before starting the ignition.

“How about we stay a little longer?” my mom’s voice says just above a whisper.

I look over my shoulder, smile, and nod.

My dad stays in the car, and it’s just my mom, Sean, and me. My mom is still shaking, but a little bit more still than usual. She seems sentimental, and I wonder if she’s thinking about her own mom.

I never met her. My mom always spoke about her, of her, and how much they loved each other. There are many things about my mom that I don’t know about, but sometimes I find clues in her past, in the characters who’ve influenced her life. History is perhaps the largest component of who we are, and we have literally no control over it. And yet, it’s even part of the makeup of who I am today.

I wish I could have met my grandmother, because I think that would help me understand more of who my mom is, and therefore, more of myself.

On the drive home, Sean and I chat about the random times we’ve seen each other over the years: when he first went to Canada for school, first moved back to China, and even when he came to visit in Chicago on a business trip. It’s fun, talking about memories I thought I’d forgotten but instinctively go “Hey I remember that!”

We even talk about my grandfather, who I do remember pretty well.

“You know,” Sean starts, “and I remember this very vividly, grandpa said wait until you're thirty-five to get married.”

“Really?” my mom interrupts from the backseat, “He said that?”

“Yes. He said it in Hong Kong before I went to Vancouver.”

“Huh,” I mumble.

“Yeah. You know, he was very wise. I think he understands the time it takes for men to be mature. Or something like that.”

“So, you know I’m not married yet, right?” I flash a grin.

Sean laughs. “That’s because you are wise.”

Later at night, Sean suggests we have a drink. Earlier in the day we had stopped over at Costco—naturally—and bought a bottle of scotch.

“Does your brother drink?” he asks me, pouring some into a plastic cup. This is my parents’ place; we don’t have real glasses and I don’t know if I want to spend the money to buy any.

“No, I don’t think so,” I sip, cringing a little at the scotch’s bite.

“You didn’t drink before you went to Seattle?”

“No, not really.”

“That is a good change.”

I sheepishly grin, and take another sip. We talk on and off about various things, including his job, his kids, Hong Kong politics, things I don’t usually talk about and I’m wondering if I’m even the same person when he’s here. It’s weirdly refreshing, as if he’s another human with the same level of cognitive capability and so I just want to talk about anything and everything. I realize, I’m starting to not just accept Sean’s company, but actually enjoy it.

Which is too bad, because the day passes and now Sean is getting ready to leave. We go out for one more meal. I choose the one and only dim sum restaurant closeby, which I’m intimately familiar with now and have no problem taking my parents to.

We order the usual Guk Boh tea, the usual dim sum dishes. What’s different is the conversation Sean brings to the literal table. My mom asks him about his parents, and he talks about how his parents are living on a farm in Canada, how it’s a rough life with a lot of manual labor.

“They live cheaply. Even their clothes are old,” he says. “I want to move them into a bigger apartment.”

“Isn’t it good that they can do things though?” my mom objects. “Doing nothing isn’t living. It’s actually being able to do things. And it’s nice that your parents can live with the two of them together.”

I pause at my mom’s argument. It’s one of the longest, and most coherent things she’s said in recent memory. I don’t even think I stop to wonder if I agree or not. This level of passion just seems to have come out of nowhere, and I’m wondering if my mom is talking about Sean’s parents, or if she’s thinking about her own life instead.

I’ve been wanting to talk with my mom about the possibility of her and my dad moving into a nursing home, but now clearly seems like the wrong time. I can see, more than anything, she wants to fight. She doesn’t want to just sit at home. She wants to keep ‘doing things.’ She wants to keep living.

What is not different are my interactions with my dad. I pour him a little bit of tea and he taps his finger on the table, which is supposed to be a sign of respect but really I’m just annoyed. I still have not recovered from the other day’s emotional explosion and have been sort of flat out ignoring him. He’s not very lucid, but I’m sure it comes through somehow. Like babies and kids, I imagine elders can understand deep concepts on an emotional level, even if it never comes across as to why they might feel that way.

When we finish eating, I lift the dinner check into the air as a signal that we’re finished and ready to pay. Someone promptly comes by and picks it up, although my dad doesn’t seem to notice. He keeps his hand raised and flails it around, trying to get somebody’s attention. My mom turns to him and taps him on the shoulder and he jerks around and scowls at her.

"What the hell are you doing!?" he yells very loudly.

“Someone already took the check,” she says gently.

My dad slumps in the chair, as if he’s lost another argument and is once again, wrong.

I focus on breathing, in and out.

"My dad is like this too,” Sean chuckles, trying to soften the situation, “my mom complains about it."

I glance at my mom, and see a mixed look in her face. She seems, tired.

I glance back at Sean, and suddenly I understand the real reason why I’ve been enjoying his company: He gets it. I’m not alone.

It doesn’t make being with my parents any less lonely. Which sort of goes against the whole “Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I’m lonely” schtick that singers love to write lyrics about. I still feel lonely, but I don’t feel alone, which is a weird paradox and is strangely comforting. Maybe, it’s not that bad.

Family is always special. Maybe not especially good, but it is special. Whether they’re your allies or not, those connections are worth honoring. They’re a part of you, and maybe that’s why Sean is here. Even if it means throwing away the ambitions of what he hoped to accomplish. Even if it just means being here.

I’m glad he is.