Thoughts about The People in Our Lives

Recently, Mama's grandmother passed away. 

To be very honest, I have very few memories of my relatives. Our nuclear family has never been very close with the rest of the familial tree due to conflicts on each side, and after we moved to the US, we did not really continue to keep in contact with them.

Or at least, we the kids didn't really do that.

I think in some ways, we were more Americanized and accustomed to the modernizing developments in Taiwan that we didn't really quite get to slow down and get to know them very well. I remember never really relating to my cousins, uncles, aunts - what have you, as I remember most of our interactions as "oh, look at the American girl in our family!"

But I was also always very socially awkward, so maybe that played a part in that.

To my mother, her grandmother (my great grandmother) has always been a phenomenal part of her life. She was raised by her grandmother primarily, and it was her grandmother that supported her to obtain higher education, both socially and financially. As a traditional woman of the times, it must not have been easy for my great grandmother.

I have rarely seen my mother cry. I recall two times, to be exact. She has always been a woman of strength and private sufferings. Hearing her tearful voice over the phone made me realize that she is just as fragile as I am.

Fragile and human - like me.

From childhood, we see our parents as omnipotent and powerful. They are the strong bastions that we can rely on and lean into as we grow and make our mistakes in life. With maturity and the rapid societal evolution from technological advances, it becomes increasingly clear with each year of my life that idolized perfect framework of my parents is starkingly different from what reality is. Perhaps age has allowed them to ease up on their strict, powerful authoritarianism, perhaps it is the choice to be more of themselves now that they not longer have to always assume the parental positions, but watching them show helplessness and frustration under duress has stirred some sort of light within me, I suppose. In some ways, I feel that this parent-child relationship has  suddenly shifted away from the dynamic that I have known so well, and it frightens me a little. It reminds me of our mortality and how close to it we actually are. I imagine it like walking on a strung rope bridge. The plunge down is quite real and frightful - extremely achievable with an accidental slip of footage, but we are blindly assured and protected with those guard rails. They may not do much, but they provide us with an immense amount of security to allow us to function, to explore, and to thrive without the constant threat of the inevitable end.

I guess our parents have been my guard rails of my life for so long that it feels foreign and eeriely scary when I realize these protective guide rails are just as fragile as I.

Just as human.