What matters to me
My little nephew is cute, and I’m supposed to be here, watching him do cute, little nephew things, like play some version of basketball with nine other tiny kids where they just run back and forth to the same squares taped on the floor. I’m supposed to be here to support him.
Really, I’m paying attention to my older nephew. He’s standing in front of me, his head about as high as my waist now, reading a comic book. My hands gently grip his shoulders, my thumbs tapping into his shoulder blades. Something tells me to enjoy this moment, because he’s now as tall as my waist—he’s growing up.
The timing is oddly prescient.
“Hey,” a kid comes by—it’s one of his classmates from school. “Do you want to play basketball with me?”
“Yeah, um, okay,” my older nephew says, runs to give his comic book to his mom, and then the two of them run off.
So I’m left with all the other parents, watching their kids run back and forth in this elementary school gym, awkwardly tossing the ball towards the net but almost never getting anywhere close.
This probably my first real pang of the emotion I can only describe is: Oh, he’d rather hang out with his friends now.
All parents go through this. But I think it’s the first time I’ve gotten close to feeling it myself.
It’s not a bad thing. I don’t expect that my older nephew consciously decided that he prefers his friend over his uncle. I don’t expect that he even feels like he made a decision. It just, happens.
It’s also not that big of a deal, and hardly noteworthy.
Other than it being yet another drop into the bucket of painful feelings that have boiled up since I moved back to my hometown two years ago, specifically those feelings of being lost, of loneliness, of change—that somewhere maybe I made a wrong turn, that I’ve been left behind, and that the rest of the world has moved on without me.
Here is what I have been left behind with: my mom and my dad—my two ‘kids.’
On Sundays I take them to church.
Mondays and Fridays, we go get dim sum. We get the exact same six things. The same tea. I check the exact same apps and sites on my phone. I say the exact same things to the waiter.
Every two-ish weeks, the following conversation will take place:
“Jai, I need prune juice,” my mom will say.
“Didn’t I just order you some? Like eight bottles? Two weeks ago or something?”
“No…” she says. “There’s no way it’s only been two weeks. I finished it all.”
I check my receipt. Not to prove her wrong, but just so I have some evidence that I’m not completely out of my mind—a fear that is often on my mind.
Less than two weeks ago, the pantry was full of giant bottles of prune juice. It’s now empty.
So I order more. Like I do, every two weeks before, and every two since.
“They’ll deliver it next to the front door,” I tell her, “between eight and twelve.”
Part of me wonders if that timeframe is too long. The other part asks: “Who in their right mind would steal bottles of prune juice?”
This is my rhythm. This is what has become my life. I could list more details, but they’re equally as mundane.
I often feel trapped, like my life is frozen in time. And it’s only in the small details that I can tell that the world is still spinning.
This isn’t how I wanted life to be, wandering down the streets of my hometown at night, as I often do these days. I’m alone, with my thoughts, weaving through mostly empty streets and passing by the one or two still-open bars. Sometimes I’m at my worst, weak, tired, and alone, and I often wonder—where did I go wrong?
The world’s advice is to do what makes you happy, right? The semantics and wisdom or debate about whether or not ‘happiness’ is worth pursuing is irrelevant to me, and just another sign that I don’t feel connected with the world as I used to know it.
I know what this phrase means; it means do what matters, to you.
Because does it really matter if you’ve been left behind, if it’s because you’ve been left behind to do something that matters to you?
Two years ago, I came home with a mission: stabilize the house, stabilize my parents’ situation. People thought it was a crazy choice. I thought it was a crazy choice.
I also thought I was doing what mattered to me.
Two years later, I’m not so sure.
We called it the Bear Crawl. It was a game based on an exercise called, well, the bear crawl. My nephews didn’t know that. They just knew it as the game where I crawled around on my hands and toes, knees off the ground, doing my best to carry one of them on my back while the other tried to knock me off balance. To them, it was nothing but fun; to me, it was a way to burn off a few extra calories.
“I think it’s my favorite game,” my older nephew once told me.
It was one of the many things he’s said over the years that made my heart swell, knowing that I could just create random games and he would enjoy them.
But his sentence had a part two.
“But we can’t really play it anymore.”
“Of course we can,” I said. “Why not?”
I already knew the answer.
If he sits on my back, his feet touch the ground. If he tries to hold my shoulders, he has to keep his legs up in the air, which he can’t do. The game doesn’t work anymore. He’s gotten too big.
“We’ll always find new games to play,” I tell him at his little brother’s basketball game, as he stands with his head at my waist, reading his comic book. I say this to show that it’s okay that things change. He’s growing up, and I don’t want to hold onto something for longer than I should.
“Like what?” he asks.
I don’t really know. I don’t have a good answer, other than to say that we always seem to come up with new games, so there’s no need to worry. We’ll find something new.
He nods.
And then one of his friends comes by.
“Hey. Do you want to play basketball with me?”
“Yeah, um, okay,” he says.
And then, there’s that moment: He runs off.
I come to learn that these are the moments where I most want to do things to make my older nephew like me, to want to play with me. I want to be the cool uncle, the responsible one, but also the admired one. I want him to remember the times we shared.
But if there’s a lesson I’ve learned, it’s this: You cannot earn someone’s love. You cannot. It cannot be done.
You can, however, do things that reveal something about you. You can go to their birthday parties, you can show up to their basketball games—or their little brother’s basketball games, you can stay by their side and show that you’re still there. You can show up.
Even as they grow up and begin to try and figure out their place in this crazy world, you can show that you are still there. You can show that you do things because those things matter to you. You can show them, that they matter to you.
Even if they’re too young to remember it.
It has now been just over two years since I packed up my car, left Seattle, and drove back to the town I where I was born; twenty-six months, to be exact.
It does not feel that way; it feels like it’s so much longer.
I’ve noticed this sort of time dilation before, but I feel it even more now, because in a way, I feel like I’m finally about to leave this stage of my life. It feels foreign, though, and it feels like I’ve been asleep and now I’m opening my eyes and can see the light and trying to wave my arms, going: “Hey guys, it’s me! Remember? I’m back?”
And when I do open my eyes, I suddenly realize that, the world’s not the same.
Here’s the weird thing. I feel like there’s this gap in reality now, like I experienced something crazy, but compressed into a few years. It was two years for everyone else, but five years for me, or ten to be dramatic.
Most people cannot cross this gap. I don’t blame them. I don’t think I can cross it. I can’t even really explain it, and that’s the problem.
I don’t have the words to articulate what happened to me over these past two years. I don’t know how to explain why I feel different. I don’t even know if I really do feel different, or if I’m just imagining it.
I just think that when I try to go back to the reality I knew, there’s just this disconnect.
Some friends have tried to cross it. They say things, like what a good son I am for doing what I’ve done. They try to help by offering services and options they think I haven’t considered. They say go do what makes you happy.
It’s not that I think they’re being insincere, or unhelpful, or sarcastic. It’s just, maybe I want it all to go away, and it won’t, and it’s stuck, as a part of me, forever now. I don’t know. I don’t want to have to explain it. I don’t want to have to question it, because for some reason explanations seem to lead to less of an understanding, and not more.
It’s frustrating. It’s lonely.
I will never forget, in the early days, when one friend asked me why I couldn’t just explain things to my dad, if I had tried just using logic, going slow and rationalizing with him.
You know, things that don’t always even work with people whose brains are functional.
I don’t blame this friend, but at the time, it made me angry. It made me angry because he didn’t get it, and because he didn’t get it, I wondered if I hadn’t explained it. And maybe if I hadn’t explained it properly to him, maybe he was right, and I hadn’t explained anything properly to my dad.
Maybe it’s not worth it. Maybe, if nobody else understands it, then maybe it doesn’t really matter.
Which leaves me with my parents. They, the objects of my care, they’ll know what I’ve done. When the rest of the world fails to understand why you would leave everything behind to go care for two people, those two people will understand.
Right?
Right?
The answer comes as a whisper, floating gently in the quiet winds of your mind.
No.
My parents are also, the ‘rest of the world.’ And the world has changed. Despite how steady things may seem, so much has happened to them in the past two years that it feels like it’s really been five. Or maybe ten. I feel like that’s being too dramatic, and not dramatic enough.
My dad used to be loud, borderline obnoxious with his random opinions. I hated that, but I hate even more, seeing him sit on a couch all day, ready to yell at me because I so much as appeared in the room, only for him to forget anything happened fifteen minutes later.
My mom used to run around, helping as many people as she could, fulfilling her desire to be needed. I hate that she did that, but I hate even more, seeing her try so, so hard to take care of my dad, adapting to her own deteriorating memory, as best she can—and believing she is doing almost all of it, on her own.
No.
They won’t remember what I’ve done.
And then it’ll be even worse; at some point, they’ll be dead.
Which leaves me with the one and only thing I have left.
I did what I did, not for the world, and not for my parents either. I did it because I will remember—because doing this matters to me.
It’s no secret that I am making plans to move on. I don’t know specifically what physical geographic location that means, and every time I try to leave, I seem to get derailed by something. My life might feel frozen, but like I said, there always seem to be exceptions. My dad needing to stay in the hospital. Random holidays. My mom’s upcoming surgery. My immune system failing me, as it has repeatedly in my time here.
But I think, soon, it might finally be time. It’s close, I can sense it. Or so I hope.
I wonder what I will remember most, when I look back on this time, wandering down the streets of my hometown at night, as I often do these days. I’m alone, with my thoughts, weaving through mostly empty streets, one man underneath the lights draped across buildings, a shadow passing in front of empty stores. I’m often at my worst, weak, tired, and alone, but still holding onto a conviction, a faith, a belief:
That two years ago, I came home with a mission to stabilize the house, stabilize my parents’ situation. I have done that. I have succeeded. I have done, what matters to me.
For all my doubts and skepticism, I hold onto that belief, a belief made stronger by that very doubt and skepticism. Like the tension and weight I put on my physical body at the gym, to make my body stronger. Like the callouses I press into my fingers on the guitar, to make my fingers stronger.
Like the thought I’ll allow myself to have: the thought of if I will regret this time, this choice to come home, as I often, very often do. I’ll allow the thought, because I know what the answer is, and I know I’ll be stronger once my mind gets to it.
The world may not understand. My parents may not remember. Truth be told, it doesn’t really matter.
Because when the sun sets and you’re alone, wandering the empty streets of wherever it is that you are, the only person whose judgement is worth listening to, is also the only person who can truly know what matters to you: yourself.
Are you free tonight?, my brother texts me.
‘I just told mom I’d cook dinner, but yeah.’
Ok the boys want to know if you can come over.
I can, and when I ring the doorbell, the two nephews scream as they usually do to come greet me. We play board games—which is usually just me doing whatever it is they tell me to do, play videogame Super Smash Bros., play real-life Super Smash Bros., and then I remind them that they need to clean up.
It’s short, it’s sweet, and I make it a point to be in the moment, to just enjoy each second of it.
And then it’s time for me to go.
“Aww…” they groan. “When will we see you again?”
“Thursday,” I say, turning to the younger nephew, “I’m coming to your music show thing, remember? I’m bringing nai nai too.”
“Yay!” they exclaim.
“Now go brush your teeth,” I laugh, and they run off for the bathroom, while I head for the front door.
“Thanks for coming over,” my brother tells me with a smile, and I’m reminded that his kids asked if I could come.
I make a pitstop at a friend’s place before heading home, and it’s surprisingly late by the time I do. I’m alone, with my thoughts, driving through the mostly empty roads, passing a lone car or two before taking the freeway exit home.
I wonder if my parents will be asleep already. By now, they usually are. But on occasion, my mom will still be up, and the following exchange will happen:
“You’re back,” my mom might say.
I’ll grunt.
“Can you come say goodnight to your daddy?”
I’ll groan and ask, “Why?”
“He asked about you.”
Weird. But he has asked this before, a few times actually, when I come home late.
Does it really matter to him, if I go in and say ‘goodnight?’ Maybe, I don’t really know. What do I know anymore.
But it seems to matter to him, so I’ll play along. If I get home and he asks about me, I’ll go in and say ‘hi’ and ‘goodnight’ to him.
That’s what I’ll do.
Because that, is what matters to me.