|
The children wake us up at 6.30 AM. Marcus pokes my eyelids and yells: "Wake up, Mahma, wake up, Bahba; it's morning!" I'd been coughing all night and fell asleep around 4.00 AM. I pull the covers over my head and want to cry, but Yiu-Yin has to get ready for work. How I wish I could ask my parents to come over to help me, but they are thousands of miles away in England. I take a deep breath, gather myself together, stagger out of bed to make breakfast and the day begins.
During my "girl about town" years in London, it seemed such an effort to take time out of my busy schedule to visit family for the weekend or go home to celebrate the festivals. Now I wish my parents were only a simple train ride away. I admit raising children away from the family network is very hard. Marcus and Lauren don't see their grandparents physically for long periods and we don't have any physical access to them. (I miss hugging my parents.)
Yiu-Yin and I have chosen the harder road to travel by being in the United States and away from family ties. Our story is no different to many others who have moved away from home because of migration, marriage, ambition or employment. We came to pursue our dreams and part of us loves the independence that we have here.
Susan... Call home  What's for dinner, Mahma?
We've become very resourceful out of necessity. If we want something like a familiar home-cooked dish, we find a way to make it happen. Hence, much of our cooking is done with the phone to our ears (Yiu-Yin is a really good, self-taught cook). This is how family recipes get handed down, but with a twist. Remember, our parents never learnt to cook from a book: It's all down to touch and taste, and hard to replicate. Yiu-Yin has made "char sui pork" many times, but there was something missing in the flavour. Recently, we found out his mum had forgotten to tell him about the garlic!
When I lived in London, I never bothered to learn to make traditional dishes as Chinatown was a hop and a skip away. Now it takes almost three hours to drive to New York City's Chinatown. Although we have three restaurants in our area that serve dim sum, the food isn't half as good as in Chinatown, and they don't have many of the home-style dishes we eat, catering instead to the wider American market.
At home, I make replenishing Chinese soups (bou tong) - my mother and mother-in-law would be proud of me, and my siblings and cousins would certainly do a double take at my transformation. We've become creative about learning to cook traditional dishes. The last time my in-laws visited, we used the camcorder to film my mother-in-law making Hakka-style braised pork.
 When's dinner ready, Bahba? With Yiu-Yin at work, it's down to me to be our children's teacher, playmate, referee, nurse, cook and chauffeur. There have been days when I've longed for another pair of hands, but with no family around and not wanting to impose on friends too much I've broken down in tears. I remember a "déjŕ vu" conversation with my mum. She recalled a time when we were little and living in a rented room in an old house in an inner-city area. There were four of us children then and my father was working at a big restaurant in the city centre and was gone most of the day. My mum was stuck in that room with us and two of my brothers had measles at the time... she cried and cried.
I don't tell my parents or in-laws when I'm feeling low because I know they'll worry unnecessarily. I confess, at my lowest points, I've felt some resentment towards family members who live near our parents and can get help anytime. At such moments, my innate positive attitude kicks in and I stop myself wallowing in self-pity. In this day and age, we can't expect parents to be on hand to help.
We miss our families deeply around the public holidays when there's an expectation to be with extended family. Then I wish we could win the lottery and fly back to England every few months instead of every other year.
In our parents' footsteps Yiu-Yin and I have inherited the hard-working ethos and indomitable spirit of our forebears, and, as such, we try and take each new challenge and experience in our strides. We are very much the pioneers that our parents were in the 1950s and 1960s in the UK.
I was writing my blog for a local newspaper: http://spotlightnews.com/blogs/coffeemates/archive.php?month=06&year=2007. My piece was about food shopping on a budget and I mentioned my parents' frugal lifestyle as I was growing up. Now it's my turn to feed my family on one income. What must it have been like for them to find familiar ingredients in a strange land in the early 1960s? Fast forward forty plus years and I'm facing my own particular challenges. I may as well be speaking another language when I have to say zucchini instead of courgette; eggplant instead of aubergine and corn starch instead of corn flour.
I get it now when my mum says she never stops being a parent. She worries about me much like she worries about her grandchildren. My mother in-law worries if we miss our weekly phone call. Conversely, we worry about our parents' health and them getting older, and yes, sometimes, we feel pangs of guilt because we are far away.
We're conscious to make the most of family time because it's limited. We create lasting memories when we get together. It's like having all the weekends we would have seen our families, if we lived in England, concentrated into one big chunk of time. Also, our families get to experience new things by us living away: Things they might have never imagined doing before. Our parents came to America for the first time when Marcus was born. They visited New York City for the first time after Lauren was born. My mother met up with her school friend in New York City, whom she hadn't seen for over fifty years.
"I get by with a little help from my friends." The Beatles It's essential to make friends when you live away from family networks. Last winter, I had to rely on my friends when I was sick with severe tonsillitis, the children had eye infections and Yiu-Yin (who, also, had the same eye infection) was away at a conference on the other side of the country. They brought over food and played with the children so I could rest.
We've chosen to be independent and that comes with consequences: The way we deal with them determines the quality of life we live. Despite the difficulties of being far from family, we make the most of our life here. We've created our own networks and, every day, we enjoy each other, our children and the opportunities that living here offers.
We continue to celebrate our cultural festivals, like the mid-Autumn festival and Chinese New Year, and incorporate new holidays, like July 4th and Thanksgiving, into our family traditions. Last Chinese New Year, we celebrated with local friends and I made "Nin Go" (glutinous rice flour New Year pudding). Over the years, I'd watched my parents make it, but this was my first attempt following my mother-in-law's directions over the phone. I was amazed it turned out so well.
The future Our endeavours in the U.S. will provide our children with choices beyond those that we had. As we consider the future, one of our goals is to buy a place in England so we can live there part of the year in our retirement, just as many of our parents' generation have bought property in Hong Kong for that same purpose. Ironic, don't you think, but not surprising when you think of our history?
Similar experiences? Let us know by posting your comments below. You can also email Susan directly here:
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
|
