Random pics of the village we were at
Just a follow up because I’m getting emails.. Guess I shouldn’t be too surprised the GIK elicited some reaction. GIK behavior is extremely unacceptable to mums I know in Hong Kong.
One reader carefully elaborated how I could keep a hold on to Rockstar for a moment and speak directly to him before letting him go to GIK. Even acknowledge GIK so she wouldn’t have a chance to gripe, but be sure to finish with Rockstar before letting her cut in and undermine. I really appreciate the thought and the time that went into the email. (And btw I don’t even know who this reader is!)
How could I let GIK cut into conversations with Rockstar?
1) I did say something**
2) Straddling Hong Kong and select Malaysian culture, one of the most important lessons I needed was realizing how completely different something can look when seen thru another person’s eyes.
Like The Eye: Blind girl gets cornea transplant. Formerly Blind Girl sees herself in mirror for first time. Formerly Blind Girl has great time celebrating with her friends, takes lots of pictures, develops her first roll of film, and – who’s that in all the pictures? Formerly Blind Girl looks in the mirror. Dead girl cornea donor looks back at her. Formerly Blind Girl realizes the person she saw in mirror along had been the dead girl thru the dead girl’s eyes <creepy music>
But seriously. I would have snapped if I didn’t realize cutting in to another mum’s conversation is not as uncommon (and not considered as heinously rude) as in Hong Kong. Though it’s still rude.
OK, now that’s out of the way, I can bitch.
I never forgot what happened with my dog. GIK’s dad gushed that my dog loved her more than me. Under her dad’s insistence, JD stayed with her while Kings and I went on honeymoon for 3 weeks.
That love affair lasted 5 days. GIK called us complaining how ill-behaved JD was. She had shut JD in her apartment and, supremely bored, JD tried to get out the kitchen window, knocking over a plate in the process. GIK was mad about the broken plate. For some reason it never occurred to GIK she was telling us our border collie missed enough daily walks to inspire an attempted jailbreak out a window 8 floors up.
**So when GIK cuts in, I politely ask “Do you remember my dog JD? Do you remember how much you wanted her?”
Suddenly, everyone in earshot is still. Kings btw, is not around. It’s just GIK’s family.
GIK gushes loudly, “Of course I remember JD! Of course I MISS her.”
Most bold-faced lie ever. You’ll see why in a minute.
“She likes tennis balls – right? Right?”
Which freaking border collie ever doesn’t like tennis balls??
“So what happened to JD in the end, where is she now?”
She bloody thinks I gave my dog up when Rockstar was born. Rockstar was born freaking 3 years ago. That’s how long at least since she last asked about The Dog She Loved So Much She Had To Have Or Her World Would Come Crumbling Down.
“JD still sleeps in our bedroom. I still play fetch with her about 20 hours a week on top of the twice daily walks she gets with our helper.” GIK starts in surprise. In fact, one of the primary reasons we moved to Bel Air after Rockstar was born is because of the big waterfront park nearby. I hoped it was an adequate compromise for the dog when she had to share her time and attention with a baby. And all the other stuff we did to make sure dog and baby got along.
After we nixed the dog-for-GIK’s-birthday idea, someone else got her a rabbit. It eventually went to her neighbors who were caring for it whenever she went on vacation anyway. Lucky for the rabbit. It hadn’t exactly been kept in a tiny hutch, but hopped about increasingly only in a tiny storeroom and got so fat from lack of exercise it didn’t appear to have a neck.
(Not. That I’m a rabbit expert. Somehow I turned the only rabbit I ever had when I was about 8 from a cuddly, woffly-nosed baby bunny into a giant wild…. Thing that snapped at dogs that bothered her. Other people had Beware Of Dog signs in their yards, we had Honey Bunny. She bit. She growled. Once, she brought a huge papaya tree down with her burrowing.
Oklah, my dad was an agricultural consultant and one-time scholar stationed in Sandakan for a few years in the 80s testing minerals in soil, experimenting on crop yields… It’s possible the rural “pet shop” from whence we got her literally picked up a bunch of wild animal babies from the forest… Sometimes I followed my dad to the “office” and there would be a baby honey bear in a huge cage or baby elephant loosely tethered with a dog chain, casuall eating the decorative plants out front and the guide would say something like “Oh we shot the mum in self defense and then felt bad about the baby so here it is”)
Anyway. Immediately following the JD conversation, GIK turns back to my son and asks him to move a little way off with her to play cards. Her entire family is avoiding my eye, as she has someone deal the cards.
I’m not surprised. I have known them almost 10 years. I don’t shy from polite confrontations, I prefer open discussion to everyone pretending not to see the 300lb gorilla sitting in the living room. Even when it takes a giant dump and the stink is making their eyes water. I move over and invite myself into the card game. Wordlessly, the same person deals for me too, without my having to ask.
10 minutes later, Kings arrives back from a last minute errand and we start moving our bags as we leave for the airport. GIK’s dad asks, “So, we can come visit in HK sometime right?”
I don’t answer. I let it hang in the air. As we leave GIK’s family’s home, I notice no one pursues it. Or looks me in the eye when they say goodbye.
Almost as hard as it is for them to admit there is a gorilla and a big pile of crap in the living room.
This is what really gets me. Denying there is a gorilla costs so much. The significance of that conversation cannot have gone unnoticed, yet we cannot fix it because no matter how blatant, no matter how clearly they see it, they will never admit it exists. Even as they watch the gorilla finish its crap in their living room and carry Rockstar away from them and back to his life in Hong Kong.
Yet I’m Malaysian too. At the last, when no one else is around, I gently tell GIK’s parents we’ll come visit when it’s “quieter”. They both know I mean when GIK isn’t in town. “Ok,” they say. No more “It’s not fun without GIK,” which they did before.
Create monsters in your parenting, and you have to live with them.
Ps: I told this story as a metaphor for what continues to cost a lot of Malaysian society.
Pps: Someone mentioned if GIK was in her early teens. She’s not, she’s in her early 30.
