Drink up

My dad has entertained various hobbies throughout the year, most of them pretty fobby-- bonzai trees, rock collecting, koi, you name it. His most recent is Chinese herbal medicine.

Every few weeks he comes up with a new concoction that he bottles and tries to convince us is a cure-all. When I visited home with a bad cough, he had me drink a spicy cup of some sort of hot tea with all kinds of stuff floating in it--three times a day.

My mom has grudgingly put up with these hobbies, but she's pretty enthusiastic about this one. When I asked her to borrow some Advil, she said, "You don't need to take. Ask dad for something!"

I don't know if its the placebo affect, or the few Advil I take on the side just in case, but the stuff does make me feel a lot better. I decided to take some with me back to school just in case the cough comes back.

Thanksgiving, our way

My sister and I love coming home for the holidays.

My mom knows how much we love following traditions, so she makes sure everything stays the same from year to year. For Thanksgiving, even though we only eat with maybe five people, we get turkey over 20 pounds heavy. We make mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Each of us have our own special dishes. My dad always makes his famous shrimp with soy sauce, garlic and ginger. I make the candied yams, and my sister bakes a chocolate cake.

We never dress up for Thanksgiving, and we all show up in various Christmas pajamas collected over the years. They all kind of look the same, so we often accidentally wear each others without realizing it.

After dinner, we're way too full for dessert but refuse to skip it, so kind of laze in front of the television watching a random family favorite (like Shrek or The Sound of Music) until we're hungry again.

Over the years, my siblings and I moved out of the house, and my dad was often away from home working. But our simple Thanksgiving traditions remained the same.

This year, my brother's bringing his fiancee to dinner. "I hope she brought pajamas," my mom joked as we lugged the turkey into the kitchen.

Introducing my mom to social media

I just taught my mom the basics of Gmail... let's wait before we start on Facebook:

http://mymomisafob.com/2009/11/29/location-confusion/

She's racist, but not really

The other day, I finally told my mom my boyfriend is black. She started crying on the phone.

I followed up trying to comfort her, telling her he's half Asian, too (he's actually only a quarter Japanese).

"Well, which side more?" she begged to know. "Does he LOOK Asian?"

I tried telling her he’s an architecture student, a rugby player, a good cook.. anything to flesh out his personality and to move the subject on. Somehow she managed not to hear any of it.

“I’m not going to tell your dad,” she said decisively. “He would get heart attack.”

I rolled my eyes and soon hung up the phone in exasperation.

My mom is actually pretty open-minded considering most women who share her background. She's grown to accept and actually kind of like my brother's fiancee (a caucasian from Canada). She always manages to eventually get to know people and give them a chance, as reluctant as she can be sometimes.

That’s something I learned about my mom over the years. Growing up, I was frustrated with her for what I saw as racism, wished she were more accepting of other people’s lifestyles and quirky habits. I thought she was a stickler about everything and anything. But I realized with some serious patience, I could convince her to be a little more understanding of American culture.

Some conflicts arose from things not as serious as dating, but they certainly taught me a lesson. To my mom, sleepovers used to be a foreign concept. It was just strange not to sleep in your own home, and it was just a way to impose on your friends. After a few years, I finally convinced her to let some of my friends sleep over. It took just another year and a half to get permission to sleep at my best friend’s, who lives about two blocks away.

As I hung up the phone, I was too tired to argue anymore, and thinking about the arguments sure to follow made me feel defeated. But I had to remind myself that it may take a few years, but I knew she’d come around. Until then, my boyfriend’s going to be half Asian.

Remember all those crazy stories you heard growing up?

When I was a little kid, I gobbled down my dinner as fast as I could so I could run across the street to play with my neighbors. My mom would laugh at how much I could eat. It reminded her of the boat ride to the States, she would say. Every day, she got an egg and a bowl of rice to eat, and that was it. Sometimes the egg was spoiled, so she would throw it away. And every day, she gave the bowl of rice to her brother, who she knew was much hungrier than she was.

I really thought these stories were normal for parents to tell their children. She told me all kinds of stories about growing up on a farm and going to college in Vietnam during the war. I had an inkling she was trying to teach me lessons with them.

After hearing the rice story, I would always offer my mom a cold bite of my food before finishing the rest and running out the door in an attempt to prove I learned something. Looking back now, I realize how extraordinary these stories were and how much I took them for granted. I also realize my mom has managed to ingrain in me the habit to never throw away food (I'm always storing up leftovers for days) and offer bites of my meal to anyone around me.

Pale beauty

My mom hates it when I tan in the sun.. looks like her feelings aren't rare:

http://absolutelyfobulous.com/2009/11/16/mens-skin-whitening-lotions-for-that-manly-porcelain-skin/

In preparation for the wingathon in a month or so...

I look for inspiration:

http://absolutelyfobulous.com/2009/11/01/tiny-asian-women-with-monstrous-appetites/