Lessons in the word 'maa faan'
“Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“I think I am going to cancel my surgery.”
I drop whatever I’m doing. “Why?”
“I just don’t want to do it. I don’t think I need to do it.”
“But your knee hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I can live with it. Surgery is just too maa faan.”
I think about explaining to her that her knee has been killing her, and that she will have to have her knee replaced at some point in the future; she might as well do it now, while I still live with her. At some point, I do explain this to her.
But right now, I’m just too tired and I go get something to drink. Probably whiskey.
“Please don’t cancel it,” is all I say.
My cousin Sean comes back into town, ostensibly because he’s here for a work conference. Really, he’s here to help me take care of my mom while she recovers.
We had to come up with this lie because when we first raised the idea of him coming to visit, my mom went ballistic.
“No!” she whined. “Don’t tell him to come.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s too maa faan,” she said. “He has his own family to look after.”
“Why is it maa faan if he wants to do it?” I challenged, which was my first mistake.
“It just is, Daniel,” she said with a glare that means any other challenges to her authority will be recorded in history and forever used against me in the future.
So we lied and told her that Sean is coming for business. For exactly the same number of days as her surgery and recovery period.
“Oh, how convenient. It will be so nice to see him,” she said.
Eyeroll, please.
Sean and I go out to breakfast after we drop my mom off for surgery in the early hours of the morning. We catch up, talking about work and family—specifically, his daughters, and how some of them still know Chinese very well, but his youngest doesn’t quite have the grasp of the language he would like.
“She didn’t spend enough time in China,” he sighs. “Too much time in America.”
I feel like there’s a slight attack on me a few layers underneath, and so, as if to show off, I switch to Cantonese, and I’m not as bad at it as I thought. I mean, I’m not good, let’s be clear. Just, not bad.
We joke about how the Chinese language fundamentally influences the way Chinese people think.
“For example,” he posits, “if I was your boss, how would you answer the question: Do you have any free time?”
I think about this for a couple seconds. “What do you need?”
He laughs. “See? You are Chinese!”
I mean, yeah. I know.
He goes on to explain how Chinese traditionally don’t like to answer questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and in this instance saying ‘yes’ would lead to accusations of not working hard enough, and saying ‘no’ would lead to accusations of insubordination (because “I’m the boss, how can you not have free time for me?”).
I know all this already. But I let him explain it to me, or explain it for his own sake. Because this is also a bit of Chinese culture. And yes, it’s a little—as my mom would say—maa faan.
The word maa faan looks like this: 麻煩. It essentially translates to “too much trouble,” though it also carries a little bit of “inconvenient,” “bothersome,” and “annoying” to it too.
It’s one of the few words I like to interject into my English so long as other people around me know what the word means. It’s just simpler to say.
Maa faan, is taking care of my dad while my mom is in the hospital. Before she underwent the knife, she tried to tell me exactly how to take care of my dad, which is funny because I also already know all the details because I’m the son that supports her. And because she’s my mom and I’m fine being all American with her, I cut her off.
“I live in the house mom,” I told her. “I know what to do.”
“No, you don’t,” she laughed. “You’re too stupid.”
At least she still has her sense of humor, I told myself.
But once I’m home, I prepare lunch for my dad (some breakfast sandwich from Costco), clean out his coffee pot and take out all his trash.
Later in the day, I make sure he takes his medicine, drinks his prune juice, and actually eats. That last part is a little hard, because he’s now in the state where if he doesn’t want to eat, he just doesn’t eat. If I bug him to eat, he just gets angry about it (“Can’t I eat when I want!?”).
None of this is hard, but I can’t get over how troublesome, much of a pain, frustrating, maa faan this all is, made even more difficult because my dad’s responses feel so random. Sometimes he agrees, sometimes he doesn’t. I try to be all scientific and control for time of day, word usage, my physical appearance, and none of it seems to matter. And after a few tries, I just don’t really care enough to keep putting up with it, not in the way that I need to.
When I reflect on it all, it’s that last part that stays with me for a while: I just don’t really care about my dad the way my mom does.
Suddenly, I understand something very simple about her.
In the past few months, as I’ve been figuring out my plans for rejoining the professional working world and where I want to live, I’ve discovered something important about myself: I like to live as if I’m picking up missions—assignments—things to complete, and then move on from.
This should be obvious; it runs in my family, and it comes from my mom. She’s the one who made it possible for my cousin Sean, and his family, to leave their tiny hometown in China. She’s the one who went from church to church, bringing me with her, just because there was “a need.” She’s the one who bought a minivan for the sole purpose of being able to ferry car-less people around.
It’s probably not a coincidence that she started complaining about being (more) depressed at the same time she stopped driving. She’s essentially locked at home, unable to do much, unable to take these missions and live life with the purpose she so wants. She used my dad and his ability to drive for a while, but in the end I think that made their relationship worse.
And then my dad started getting sick, and over time, my mom seems to have gotten better. She seems to have found another mission: my dad himself.
I used to think that my mom did all these crazy things to feel needed, to fill some void of self-worth—and I do think this is somewhat true. But, I can’t help but wonder if maybe part of it is genuine, that maybe she actually does get value out of living life this way. It’s how she finds meaning. It’s how she finds joy. It’s how she wants to live.
Doing all these things, taking care of my dad, it’s not maa faan to her, which is why she does it.
I still think she could use more help (hello, youngest son still hanging out in the background over here).
But I think I get it now.
Because when I pour prune juice for my dad so that he actually takes a shit and have to fight him on it because he thinks he knows what’s best for him, I want to toss the cup into the air and burn the house down.
And when my mom does it, well, she still has to fight him on it, but she brings a patience, persistence, and quite frankly, love, that I just don’t have.
Or at least that’s what I hope. For her sake.
It only takes a day for my mom to come home from the hospital, and we hold a bit of a celebration. My cousin Sean is still here. My brother brings his family over. Some other cousins come.
My mom tries to play host. I try to get her to sit down.
“I’m fine,” she says, “I’m fine.”
“That’s the pain killers talking,” I tell her, pulling out the closest chair at the dinner table. “Please, sit down.”
“I’ll sit next to your daddy,” she says, pointing to the chair across the table, and she’ll have to walk all the way around to get there.
“Just sit here.”
“No! I want to sit there.”
My first sigh.
We help her all the way around the table to get to the chair she wants, and when she grabs the seat, part of its wooden back gives out and crashes to the floor.
My mom is fine—she’s holding on to the table too—but she starts to kneel to pick it up and she shouldn’t so I start yelling at her to stop because you’re not supposed to kneel post-knee-replacement-surgery but she yells “no it’s fine!” but my cousin starts trying to stop her too and my mom keeps yelling and everyone comes to help her.
And suddenly my dad’s all, “DOES EVERYBODY NEED TO BE HERE!?”
And I’m like no not you too, shut up. This is crazy. I can’t handle both my mom and dad and I’m about to swear and tell my mom to sit her fucking ass down but my nephews are here and my designated role is still the child of the family. And that filter is hard to overcome.
Still, my emotion escapes me and I think everyone knows what I really meant to say.
My mom gives in and finally takes her seat, but not without complaining. “This is so maa faan,” she grumbles. “I might as well just die.”
But I don’t even let her have that.
“That is not a helpful thing to say,” I seethe. “You either stay in that seat or I’m not taking you to church tomorrow.”
I realize I should have played this trump card sooner.
She doesn’t move.
A little later one of my cousins—my mom’s niece—whispers to me. “I understand everything so much better now. I think this anxiety is something that runs in the family. I do it too.”
I hope for the world’s sake, that this is not one of the things I’ve inherited from my parents.
In the coming days my mom swings between better and worse and back again. I continue to have to force her to stay seated. Her knee is still bleeding, and every day I unwrap and rewrap her bandages, and I wonder if someone else would think this whole ordeal is maa faan and it sort of is, but I guess that doesn’t matter. It needs to be done.
“I think your knee is doing a little better,” I tell her, pointing out that there’s less blood now.
“So I’m fine then, see?”
I sigh. “Because I forced you to sit and stop standing and walking around.”
I try to tell her that she can do whatever she wants when it comes to taking care of my dad, and if she doesn’t want him in a nursing home or assisted-living center, then fine. But I draw the line at her physical body.
“It’s fine though,” she says.
“It’s clearly not,” pointing at the blood still leaking around her new knee. “You need to sit and relax so that it gets better.”
“But it is better.”
I sigh again. “Because I forced you to sit.”
I appreciate my mom’s persistence and stubbornness. I’m sure I have it. I just hope I have something to balance it out.
And then I have no idea why I do this, but I finish wrapping her knee back up, and give the top of the bandage a little quick kiss.
It’s the night before my cousin Sean is supposed to leave when he suddenly says: “Let’s share some whiskey.”
“Absolutely,” I say. “When?”
“Now.”
“Perfect.”
I play some music on my phone and tell him about my dreams of maybe opening a bar with classy cocktails and live jazz music.
He tells me I should do it. I tell him “not yet.” The timing just doesn’t feel right. I know this because when I think about the details of actually doing it, I just get annoyed, think it’s too much trouble, inconvenient, and what’s even the point. You know, it’s just too maa faan.
But one day, it won’t be. I’ll just want to do it. And that’s how I’ll know it’s the right time.
Just like my mom, who I can hear in the kitchen behind me, still moving around, pouring prune juice for my dad, simply because she wants to.