Folks

This past weekend I was over at my mom and dads' new place. They just moved into a smaller house. At the other place it was much bigger, and my eldest sister and her family were staying there, a nice thing - to keep my folks in good company.

I was over to set up the computer, and by far my dad is not computer savvy, me neither really, but I get by. Last month I bought him a new computer, the other one that he had was a dinosaur [wait, that's right, my dad's the real dinosaur! heh!]. Anyway, I've been my dad's technical support for the past 3 years almost, and this past weekend I was asking him if he knew how to do a 'Save As', and he answered with an animated smile: "No!"... GRRRRRRR [I rolled my eyes!]... But hey, I guess that's okay cuz he's my dad, right? He's bright enough to retrieve and send out his email, do a little surfing here and there... That's plenty good for a man his age. He doesn't really need to do anything else I spoze! But believe me, when he calls me every few days and I try to egg-xplain things to him over the phone, it ain't an easy task for both of us. There were times I would speak REALLY loudly in Chinese, repeating the same thing like 5 times as if he's hard of hearing, and next to me Alec would be like: "Whaaa??" or "O stop screaming at your dad!"... ugh!

Wait, what was I trying to say? Oright. So I was hooking up his computer, deleting all the crap that's been pre-installed and installing what is needed, etc. Getting his email to work and so forth. My 3 year-old niece was there and she was sitting on my lap. My other sister was there too and she took a picture of my niece and I with my cell phone and wanted a copy of it. So I sent the image to my sis via my phone and cc'd one to my dad. A minute later, there it was, right on the screen. My mom was there standing next to me and she was simply astounded...

"How on earth does it... How does the phone...?!?" she asked me. I told her briefly what went on and a few seconds later she simply nodded. I think she got it, more or less. She's always been the 'handyman' in the family. My dad's good with books and numbers, and my mom's tough[er], she works well with her hands and likes to solve things. [She used to be the head-seamstress for good ol' Mr. Blackwell for a few good years!]

When I was much younger, I've always thot that my mom was real hip, the hippest woman in town... She was very slim and she looked really good in those Chinese cheungsam [from old photographs], but as I grew older, in my eyes, she sorta transformed into this 'other' woman... Seemed like her tastes in clothing had changed... Her mannerism is not as 'classy' as she used to be... hard to explain. She just seemed a bit - 'outdated'. Terrible of me to say such things, but I remembered thinking of these things. Couldn't help it. She's my mother, and I love her just the same.

She doesn't really need to know how the picture from my phone got into the computer. She needn't care to know about Google, Martha Stewart... not care about gay marriage or even who's gonna be our next President of the United States in this November election [tho I do think she's actually more interested than I am cuz she reads the Chinese newspaper religiously!]...

She cares about the little things... Like how much salt to put in the dishes that she's preparing for us to have for lunch... She cares about the weather to see if it's going to be warm or cold, so she knows how much clothing to put on my little nephews and niece... She cares about if we're hungry or not every hour on the hour, even though I just ate and I'm almost forty and being the youngest kid in the family...

My dad is 75 and my mom's going to be 72 this year. In general, I think the older the people get, the more childlike quality they [re]possess. A lot of times my folks do the strangest things, and to them, somehow their illogical behaviors become logical. I'm very fortunate to have them as my parents, and that they're still around and healthy for each other... and for me! Of course my mother still nags and I get all frustrated over the phone at times when my dad calls with his technical questions, but I don't care... I once heard my ex brother-in-law said something about my parents: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks!", that may be true, but maybe sometimes it's better to just simply love them for the old ones, for who they are... Someday, if I'm lucky, I'll turn out to be just like them.

Love. Always.

Posted by robert at March 10, 2004 08:08 PM