“Bought you these - you like?”

“Uh, thanks Mom - but you should know

That’s not quite Pocky”

On Sunday, picked up Mom at Seatac on her way back from New York, then shipped her back to Vancouver on Thursday. She had wrapped up a cross country vacation by staying for six weeks there with various of my cousins, so I got to hear about their lives over the last week. The decade older than me/married with 2.5 children/minivan owning lives, that is.

Mom: “You know, none of those families seemed really content to me.”

It was interesting to hear about their lives, not because they’re kin, but because they’re part of that group of people, one half generation removed, that I grew up in the shadow of, and am still being constantly compared to: paragons of virtue, filial piety, etc. It’s a little (guiltily) reassuring to hear about things like difficult in-laws, job loss (and how to hide it from your parents), health breakdowns, marital unhappiness, and the travails of child rearing - the sticky issues that didn’t come up when role models were being set up.

Then again it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation with a parent who mentions she went out of her way to visit the Soup Kitchen Nazi, only to find it closed. This coming from a woman who I swear has never seen a single episode of Seinfeld.