Ten nights ago, on New Year’s Eve, I walked up a hill at a quarter to midnight to watch the countdown fireworks from a corner of the road facing the neighbourhood shopping mall. One after the other, they were set off, shooting up high into the night, racing each other with piercing shrieks before exploding in kaleidoscopic flames. With one hand in my husband’s, and my phone in the other, I snapped clumsy photos, scrambling to text my parents and little sister.
In those last fleeting moments of the year, on the brink of a new chapter, I wanted nothing more than to feel connected with the people I love the most.
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A week ago, the world ushered in a new year. How quickly time is passing! Two weeks ago, I was still marking my diary entries with ‘ ’23 ', and thinking of life in terms of the past year. Now here I am, nine days into 2024, and writing my second blog entry.
Lately I’ve been reflecting on my childhood years, and specifically, my relationship with my father. For most of my adult life, I have been trying to develop a relationship with him that didn’t exist as I was growing up.
It’s not that I don’t love him; nor do I think he doesn’t love me. On the contrary, he cares for me like any parent would, and would go to great lengths to protect my wellbeing. But, like most Asian parents, it’s difficult for him to communicate and express things emotionally.
Politics, the weather, the woeful state of the home wifi connection — those sorts of topics are easy enough for my father and I to hold a conversation. But on personal matters to do with family, emotions and things of the heart, he prefers to remain evasive and reticent, deflecting questions and keeping me (metaphorically) at arm’s length. All attempts to engage him in any such talk are typically met with short replies, or none at all.
The truth is, feelings are rarely discussed when we talk. Most of the time, whenever they are brought up, it’s always in the context of someone else’s situation, not our own.
He just isn’t the sort of man to wear his heart on his sleeve.
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The brick wall I encountered in trying to connect with my father on a deeper level used to frustrate me greatly when I was in my ‘20s. On the surface, I pretended that his rebuffs didn’t matter, but truthfully, I resented the lack of reciprocation, and over time, this grew into feelings of sadness, disappointment and hurt. After all, no one likes to feel rejected.
I’m older now, and view things a little differently, though it’s hard to place my finger on the reason why that is so.
There wasn’t a lightbulb moment, a point at which the switch flipped and I was able to move out of the former mindset, into a different way of seeing my father. The most plausible explanation I can think of is that my own mental understanding of things shifted as I grew older, and started putting myself in his shoes. To consider his own history, and how his upbringing and lived experiences have, for better or worse, shaped him into the kind of person he is today.
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A man who grew up in the post-war generation, in the backwaters of a rural state north-east of the Malay peninsula. Born into a large, poor family, the second eldest of nine siblings who, at the age of seven, was already helping his Hainanese grandfather serve buttered toast and steaming cups of black coffee to customers in their kampung’s lone Chinese-operated kopitiam. A boy who won prizes for coming in top of his class in primary school, and was rewarded with accolades whenever the local clan association gathered. A determined, studious student who, through merit, earned a scholarship to study at the Royal Military College, an institution that was regarded as top among the elites, and where positions were reserved mainly for the majority race, with limited quotas for Chinese and Indians.
A graduate who turned down an opportunity to pursue an engineering degree overseas on a scholarship, and instead took a job as a clerk in an accounting firm (the same firm that he would meet, and eventually marry, my mother — a story for another day). A job that would help with paying his family’s bills, support his parents and put his younger siblings through education. A job that pushed him out of his comfort zone, working for foreign professionals with clipped accents and rubbing shoulders with upper middle class city folk who were far richer than he was, and sneered at his grasp of English.
My father started off in life as the proverbial underdog. Like most folk of his generation, good things certainly did not come on a silver platter for him. His circumstances taught him the value of grit- a refusal to surrender in the face of hardship, and to instead fight relentlessly, driven by an insatiable will to succeed in his chosen career.
And succeed he did. It was a challenging environment which he not only endured, but adapted to and even thrived in. He would devote a great deal of his life to his career, pouring massive amounts of time and energy into work, rising through the ranks to eventually become a firm partner.
While these successes came with great meaning and reward, the trade off, perhaps, were the less visible sacrifices at the altar of work- somewhere down the line, a gradual displacement of time, attention and mental space to engage in bonding with family.
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Without meaning to generalise, being a child of Asian parents can sometimes be a struggle. Whether it is dealing with unfiltered criticism, well-meaning but unsolicited overbearing advice, or emotional distance, figuring out how to relate to them without getting emotionally entangled often feels like treading water in a murky peat bog.
It’s taken almost a decade of treading for me to grasp this truth: that my father simply is who he is; a man shaped by his own experiences and personal principles. The problem was not all about him, but more so, my expectation that he would change to fit my personal framework of an ideal father figure.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that people, even your loved ones, will just change for you. Just as easy as it is to feel let down, self-victimise and blame them when you realise that they can’t and won’t.
There are no easy solutions to evade the peat bog, I’m afraid. What can help is learning to take power and control over your emotions back into your hands. Sounds easy, but in reality that’s often not the case … it requires a willingness to employ empathy and patience, and to practise adjusting one’s perspective away from wounded indignation, to see what lies behind the other person’s actions, and why they behave the way that they do.
In my own case, it’s helped me understand where my father is coming from, and not take it personally whenever he fails to respond to my overtures.
These days, I try to work on finding the tiny positives in our interactions, while accepting his capacity for expressing affection and trying more non-verbal ways to build a connection with him- sometimes, that looks like accompanying him on (mostly silent) morning walks. Other times, it might be buying him persimmons (his favourite fruit, second only to papayas), or sending the occasional casual text to ask if the wifi signal in the house is stable.
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There are things in my head that I grew up with, distant memories of my father when I was little, that I want to preserve. They exist mostly as flashback scenes— riding crossbars together with Pa on a rickety blue bicycle; him towelling my hair dry after a shower and giving me tickles and tummy blowers to get me to wake up for school; being spoon fed porridge – he had a habit of running the spoon around the edges of the bowl to scoop up the cool bits.
Perhaps I’ll write these down in detail one day. For now, here is a snapshot of us both — a rare, lighthearted moment shared together, two years ago, on a crisp autumn afternoon stroll through the streets of London.
