The Parental Questions You Wish You Didn’t Have to Answer, But I Suppose I Will Since I Don’t Have Another Topic in Mind

I wrote most of this about a year ago.

And:

It should go without saying, but Dorkus and mathgeek—you show this to the parents and you are no longer welcome in the nation’s capital on my dime. Just sayin’.

Sometimes, when the mood is right and she’s feeling maudlin, my mother will ask all of her children if we think that she and my father were bad parents. It’s intended to be a loaded question, I think, to drive recriminations and accusations out of us into the open for her to agonize over, but the truth is, no, they weren’t bad parents. Were they weird parents? Yes, very much so. But bad? No—if I were to have children, I’d probably model some of my parenting on their example (being how it’s the only one I know, but I suppose the future father will have some input).

My parents tried their best to give us everything we needed, and it’s worked so far: three of us are graduates of the University of Michigan, no small feat for a household of first-generation Mexican kids raised in the United States (I hate to use the term Mexican-American because, simply put, I’m not Mexican-American, just Mexican—it’s just how I identify). The fourth kid is wicked smart and probably close to the top of his class if not at the top given his difficult classes, excellent grades, and debonaire style. Academically, they did a hell of a job, producing four kids who were or are always bringing home academic honors and striving to learn more even when we’ve been ceremoniously kicked out of school (um, that was a commencement joke). We grew up first (to my recollection) in a small house we called the Small White House, then a tiny apartment, a supposedly haunted house in Mexico, and finally a pretty nice split-level house in the suburbs of Ann Arbor. Materially, they’ve also given us a lot; besides a few rough years after my father built the split-level house, we’ve were mostly on solid monetary ground. I can’t complain. But the questions still come, and I’ll answer them here.

1) Are you embarrassed by us?

Here’s the eternal question, the most sensitive question of all, but it’s very easy to answer: No, I was never ashamed of my mother or father. They’ve worried that their accents are embarrassing (I’m sorry, but I don’t hear one in my father’s voice, sorry—Mom has spent less time here, so her accent is there), that their jobs are less than ideal, that they couldn’t provide us with the getaways and material goods that our classmates had. Addressing their accents, who cares? Why would we want to blend in, anyway? It’s not necessarily a contradiction to their insistence that we learn Spanish, but they wanted to be rid of something produced by the very thing they wanted us to retain. That doesn’t make much sense, but the accents were a part of the whole “Mom and Dad” package, so of course I was never embarrassed—actually proud. Proud that they could speak so well with so little exposure to the language in their youths. And still speak kick-ass Spanish (but I didn’t like it that they insisted on kicking my ass [not literally] when I didn’t speak Spanish at home). Addressing their jobs, puh-leeze. So they’ve picked fruit in fields (I’d like to see your mom and dad do that for you, upper class snot whose parents were emotionally unavailable and who thinks immigrants are the spawn of Satan and are taking your resources), so they’ve done whatever they needed to in order to provide for the family. So my mom cleans, so my dad assembled shit for Ford. It provided a paycheck, didn’t it? My mom cleans one of the dorms I stayed in, actually, and she constantly worried that I was embarrassed by her presence. Nah, of course not: In fact, my friends loved my mom and envied the close relationship I had with her. And were we embarrassed that we couldn’t fly to Disney World and to island destinations and what have you? I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: The road trip rules all.

2) Were we bad to you?

This one’s a bit more complicated. As I said, they weren’t bad parents, but they were weird. The Mexican deal also threw in a very strong presence of patriachal hypocrisy that affected me disproportionately. While my older brother was allowed to run wild, my activities were always measured by the scale of “But will this make her a shameless whore?”. So while they weren’t bad, they were very strict when I compared them to my friends’ parents. Even when I first started dating IP at the age of 23, I kept it hidden for a while—my parents have never been keen on my dating even though they insist, in the words of my father, that they “don’t want [me] to become a nun”. So, it’s quite obvious they were trying to keep a chastity belt on me, and they exercised this control without much regard to my feelings or, you know, age. We’ve gotten past that, especially now that I’ve moved (though my father is put off by the thought of me staying with my boyfriend when they come to visit and stay at my place in order to avoid paying for a hotel—however, that could be because I don’t have a TV and he needs his fix, man), but there were times when their fierce guarding of my virginity weirded me out and pissed me off. I was not going to jump into bed with the first man I dated. I saved that until the third or fourth guy. ;)

3) And finally, the ultimate question that’s asked of me nowadays: Do you miss us?

Erm . . . how do I answer this diplomatically? While I look forward to visiting when I finally have a ticket purchased, I am not pining day-to-day for my family. I love them, they’re fun to hang out with, but my existence long ago ceased to be focused around them. My focus has shifted, and it is entirely selfish—I’m focused on me, the boyfriend, the career, and the future. Looking back has never been, and I hope it never is, my thing—I used to have a college mantra of “No Regrets”, and that’s how I’ve pretty much been since the age of 19. My not missing them, not having my heart ripped to shreds the excruiciating need to see them now, does not mean I don’t love them. Of course I do. Again, though, life’s just gotten to the point where it’s not really a requirement or necessity that I be around my parents, and I’m perfectly content with that. They’re not, as evidenced by my mother’s parting “I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssss you!” each time we speak on the phone, but they realize that I’m just getting on with my adult life. Wait until I get married and maybe have kids—I’ll call even less and then where will that leave me?

So, those are the top three questions that my siblings will eventually have to tackle when they move away. And do it soon, you fartknockers, so I can have some of the attention deflected off of me!