All the Horrible Girliness

My dad is wrong about things a lot of the time. He freaks out and stresses for months, years at a time. I used to live like that. I thought that was all there was. I thought everything had to be stewed over, simmer, boil, then burn all up, then start over again. I found out today my grandmother, his mother, has been harboring a grudge against me for years. My transgression? Not once, but twice, I forgot to cash a check she sent for Christmas. Utterly fixable. If, years ago, she'd given me a call and said, "This hurts my feelings," it would have been fixed. But she and my father are exactly alike, and they love a grudge. It's the only way they know how to relate with people. They chew on them like cows.

It was very, very bad for my dad to be wrong when I was growing up. Even if he was wrong, absolutely red-handedly wrong, it was death to point it out. Rarely would he admit being wrong, and it was always a very sad thing, like the twin towers falling down. It was easier to just agree with him, to assume you had seen it wrong, or didn't have all the information, somehow.

Now, I see that he's often wrong. Not on purpose. He's misinformed and stubborn, that's all. For the most part, he is a good, strong person. He was a good father. He still is. He struggles, always, to know what that should mean.

When I was about to move my in-laws in, though, he flipped. I have made very few decisions in the last fifteen years that he's agreed with, but usually he stews about it where I can't hear, with my mother or his mother. That time, though, he called me. He told me it might be fine for awhile, but mark his words, it was going to fall apart. Mister Aran's mother was not going to let me be the lady of the house. She was not going to be able to stop parenting her son, and she would want to parent mine. He didn't have anything specific to say about my father-in-law, which sounds odd until you realize what he was doing: transferring.

He wasn't talking about Mister Aran's mother. He was talking about his mother. He was talking about my mother's mother. My family life is like nothing he's ever seen or known.

"It's a completely different culture," he said. He does not, as a rule, trust other cultures.

He was right about that, though. It is. It's a culture that comes from a place where it's too hot to argue. People generally let things pass.

It's a culture rooted in Catholocism, and people are likely to forgive one another if only because not doing so hurts you, not the other person.

It's a culture where people work hard and have babies and take care of their aging family members and adopt more babies; it's a culture where people know and take care of their neighbors.

It's a culture where people don't stress about what to get people for Christmas. No matter what they get, they're grateful and they laugh, and most importantly, they're together.

In my opinion, it's a culture that has too many babies, I admit. It is a culture with problems. But it is also a culture of artists, singers, musicians and dancers.

I sit at my dining room table and read Esquire. In the kitchen, my mother-in-law cooks something involving pork and, probably, masses of oil. I hear dry rice hit the bottom of the rice cooker pot. She and her husband converse quietly in Tagalog. When I lived in my dad's mindset, I would have been insulted. Now I know, what they're talking about might have nothing to do with me, and they're just more comfy in Tagalog. Maybe it has everything to do with me; maybe they're saying I should wear a bra with this shirt and my hair is a mess and I made lasagne again even though they never eat it. I doubt it. But even if so, they keep the house peaceful.

In two years we have never had an argument, even through the tough house-buying time, when everyone was stressed and tired. Besides that wicked ninth month of pregnant hormones, I have been grateful for their place in my home every single day. They are my family. It feels completely natural to have them here.

posted by Samus @ 8:20 PM