It's that time of the year again, with Chinese Lunar New Year (LNY) just round the corner (in a little more than a week actually). The time of the year when families get ready to come together again for a reunion dinner and that once-a-year visit to show respect to their elders.
My father's side of the family is an empire of traditional aunts, uncles and grand-persons, who believe in strict adherence to such traditions. Most of them have given up on ever seeing me on these important holidays except for two aunts who always like to call around this time of the year to hound me into joining them for the all important eve of LNY event, the reunion dinner.
Reunion dinners are fun for extended families, and I remembered that they were when grandma was still around. I would so look forward to the feast. Grandma's crispy fried chicken wings. Grandma's delicious cold vege dish. Grandma's wonderful fishball and cabbage soup. Grandma's awesome meatballs and white carrot cake. Nobody in this world can cook like she does. And although she did past her recipies onto her daughters, my aunts, they just aren't as good.
I suspect that this has nothing to do with their cooking skills. I suspect that it is likely due to their presence and their stiffness that has caused everything to become dull and boring, and even rotten.
These two aunts are my father's second and third sister. In the family, they have deemed themselves, "The Rulemakers" - always having their nose up in the air and dictating what people should and should not do. They hardly have anything good to say about anybody. They like to pry and they like to comment on things they have no business commenting on. You can think of them as a bunch of ignorant old ladies who do nothing except majong games and shopping in Chinatown and making sure that the furniture in the house is arrange optimally and kept in scratchfree state - one of them is a rich old lady who never worked in her life and the other is a spinster. Now try to picture them trying to comment on the state of the world like they know something, trying to tell people how to raise their children, trying to advice people on matters of work and dreams.
Can you imagine trying to swallow food in their presence at the same time?
They once asked me what I do, and I told them. Their comment was of how 'dirty' the job may be and how unsafe. They proceeded to ask about my salary. I gave them a very round number. (I answered these questions back when I was still very young and had to show respect, which of course, now, I've lost all respect for them.) They think the pay was too low. Their real attitude is that the job is too low class.
They didn't like the way I dress, they don't like the way I talk, they don't even like the way I walk. I'm an adult and they choose to continue trying to put me down.
Being around them is probably not a good in general. They attack everybody. For example, I think they are responsible for my break in good relationship with my first cousin. We used to be close but as we grew up, I noticed that he seemed to be colder and colder towards me and I notice the way they like to compare us, right in front of us sometimes. "You see what your cousin is doing, science. What about you, what useful thing have you been doing lately.) Another example would be the time they tried to gang up against a grandaunt whom they deem damaging to the family, for whatever she did (I can't remember.).
When they couldn't get my attention anymore, they tried to attack my mother, accusing her of being a bad mother because I was being disrespectful to them and ignoring them. They caused my mother and I to quarrel. I was able to reason with my mother in the end, I told her, that I was an adult and I will make my own decisions and that she should not be intimidated by them nor take their side just because of the things they are saying to other people.
It came to a head many years ago when I decided to cut my ties with them and so I've never spoken to them again since. There were a few phone calls but I gave them one word answers to every question they ask. I was rude too.
I feel that I'm justified to be rude and so I don't feel bad at all about it.
I don't really give a damn about my father's side of the family anyway. I don't like most of them but they don't bother me as much as these two aunts. They think they are rich and so they can say anything they please. Just because my dad died when I was twelve, they think they can make me their charity case and that I should appreciate them (or rather owe them) for their so-called help. I rather rot in the gutters than to accept their help but my mother had accepted their help, so by default I somehow owe them. (In my mother's defence, she was thinking of me and keeping good family ties when she did that. But I was always of the opinion that we could have done well even without their help.)
Trust me, you do not want to be helped by these people. It's like getting help from loansharks, except that you owe them your life or something. Or at least they make it sound that way when they talk to you.
There was one year about five years LNYs ago, when I decided to forgive them and go to the reunion, but at last, they didn't change one bit. There was just no way to talk to them. But they continue to hound me every LNY, because of "family ties", even though I told Third Aunt that I don't care and I will never eat with them again. I'm short of telling them to go fuck themselves and die. They are quite old, touching 70's. And I'm mean enough to think that if one or both of them died, I will celebrate and break out the champagne or something. I am never the one to feel bad when people I dislike die.
I'll have a nice little dinner with my mum on LNY eve. My mum isn't as great as my grandma when it comes to cooking, but at least we can eat in peace and enjoy a pleasant conversation while eating.