What’s in an Age?

At my sister’s graduation a few weeks ago my aunt, mother and grandmother were talking about my great-grandmother, known in the family as “Nanny.” Apparently she had a life-long habit of lying about her age—a trait my mother says I’ve inherited.

Sure, a lot of people, jokingly and otherwise, lie about their age—when a teenager wants to buy alcohol and shows a fake id, or a forty-something pretends they are still in their thirties. However Nanny did it for most of her life, and most of the people around her didn’t even know.

My aunt had jumped on the genealogical research bandwagon and dug up records from when Nanny had first arrived in the US, on a White Star Line ship from Ireland, in 1909. In the records my great-grandmother claimed that she was 22 years old, single and traveling alone, and had a few dollars in her pocket.

In subsequent census records she claimed to be quite a bit younger. We guessed this was to make her more marketable—who would want to train a maid or cook approaching a marriageable age, and lose that investment to a ticking biological clock?

She worked as a cook in the Rockefeller household for nearly twenty years, and left in her forties to marry and have her only child, my grandmother—at the age of 46! According to census records, at that point she made herself even younger, claiming she was still in her early thirties—which would have made her about 9 years old crossing the Atlantic by herself in 1909.

My aunt speculates that she made herself younger because my great-grandfather (according to the census, after calculating Nanny’s “real” age) was several years younger than her, and it was a social taboo for an older woman to marry a younger man. It makes me wonder if my great-grandfather even knew her real age. When she died in 1979, even my aunts, uncles and grandmother didn’t know, until now.

“It’s annoying,” my grandmother said, “It makes you think. If she lied so much about her age, what else was she lying about?”

“C’s no better.” My mother chipped in, “She lies about her age all the time, but unlike Nanny, she makes herself older.”

And it’s true. I’ve been lying about my age for most of my twenties.

I think it started in college. Most of my friends were international, and it felt like a good majority were older. P was—he is about three and a half years older than me even though he was only a grade above me at the university. I felt like I was surrounded by older people most of the time, and I didn’t want to feel like the baby of the group, so I didn’t advertise my age.

When we left undergrad and moved on to P’s master’s program, again his graduate student friends were an older crowd—mid to late twenties, some in their thirties, I didn’t want it to be known that I was only twenty-one. I was worried (probably needlessly so) that my opinions wouldn’t be taken seriously, or that my commitment and relationship with P wouldn’t be thought of as serious.

Then during my first post-graduation job I worked with high school kids. Nothing makes you feel like you need an age buffer to validate your authority than working with high school kids. And on my first day I made a terrible mistake. One student asked how old I was, and I answered honestly. I only worked with them for three weeks, but after that, I think it was tough for them to consider me as the group leader, instead of a buddy, even when I wasn’t trying to be a buddy.

That kind of solidified it for me, I just started lying about my age or keeping silent on the subject. On my birthday we didn’t talk about what year I was turning, if someone asked I added a few years, or said “I’d don’t usually share.” I even made details of my stories a bit ambiguous so people couldn’t reason out my age.  I finally internalized my lie so much that I started to forget how old I actually was. Sometimes I’d try to answer honestly and be off by a year.

At one point, many of our friends started turning thirty, and while at a friend’s birthday the group was trying to figure out when the rest would hit the thirty mark. Finally it fell on me. They were asking, “C—when will you turn 30?” and my ambiguousness only made the detail more enticing. One guy asked if I didn’t share my age because I was “really that old?” (I imagine he thought the reverse was true–that I was several years older than P) Another friend, at a different time, stole my license to figure it out.

However I’m starting to realize that I’m finally getting old enough, perhaps I don’t have to lie anymore. The new phd students in P’s program are now mostly younger than me. A lot of my graduate international students are younger than me. Some of our new friends are younger too. Perhaps I’m also feeling less sensitive because the older you get age difference doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal.

But perhaps I still have a bit of Nanny in me, because I can’t help but continue to keep my age under a veil of ambiguity. Like I’m used to not talking about it.

While looking in the mirror this morning I caught a glint of silver on the side of my head. I said to P, “I have a white hair!”

His response: “You’re the one who wants to be older.”

“Good Indian Friend Shanta”

I was talking to my grandmother the other day. I like to call her every few days on my drive home from work just to see how she is doing and what she is up to.

During the conversation she mentioned that her friend Shanta sold her house and was moving from New York to southern New Jersey to live closer to her youngest daughter. Shanta was going to come by with her husband the following day to say goodbye. “I think there will be a lot of tears” my grandmother said.

My grandmother is of the generation of Americans for whom diversity and multiculturalism didn’t really register.  Most of the people she interacts with are neighbors or members of her church who tend to be Irish-American-Catholics. Most of the people she talks about have names like “Shea,” and “O’Brien,” and “Corcoran.”

But there is one name from her stories that always sticks out—her “good Indian friend Shanta.” (That’s usually how she references her in stories).

Before my grandmother retired she worked for many years at a pharmaceutical company. She was part of the cleaning staff that worked scrubbing test tubes and glassware for the chemists. A lot of the scientists looked down on the cleaning staff assuming they were unintelligent or not on the same level. However one chemist in particular developed a warm friendship with my grandmother over the many years they worked together in the lab. She was a Christian Indian from Chennai named Shanta.

They would share lunches together, and stories, and pictures of their kids and grandkids. They would giggle like school girls, and watch each other’s backs, and exchange Christmas presents (I think my grandmother must have gifted her every book about Mother Theresa ever written). When my grandmother finally retired they kept in touch. They would meet for lunches in town, and send each other Christmas cards. Shanta called my grandmother faithfully every single St. Patrick’s Day.

I remember one story my grandmother told me about how when Shanta first arrived from India she was studying in Minnesota or Wisconsin (or some other cold wintery state). She was a newly married woman, and had arrived in the US dutifully wearing saris every day (Shanta was of that generation too). However once, during the dead of winter, her science class had to go out into the field to collect samples for the lab. She had to trudge through the snow in a sari, freezing and wet, and afterward decided her clothing choices would have to favor practicality over tradition.

Even though my grandmother has loved P since the beginning, I somehow feel that Shanta helped her be more comfortable with the idea of a South Asian in the family. Even if they didn’t discuss the topic, although I’m sure they did during one lunch or another, having a friend from that part of the world opens one up to different ideas about culture, relationships and people.

“I’m really going to miss her” my grandmother said, “I’m sure we will still talk on the phone, but it won’t be the same. You know, I’ve now known her longer in my retired life then when we worked together in the lab? She was so good to me. I enjoyed our lunches together, and she always insisted that if I ever needed anything I should call. I didn’t want to bother her, they had their own stuff going on, but if there was a snow storm Shanta’s husband would come by and shovel for me. They are such good people. So loyal and kind.”

“I know what you mean,” I responded, “our Nepali friends are the same way. They would be there for us, no matter what.”

“I think there will be a lot of tears when they come by tomorrow to say goodbye” she said.

Never Ever Ever Ever Ever Live There…

“I hope his document problem is resolved. You were born in this country [the US], the best country in the world, where we have electricity and running water. You could never ever ever ever ever ever ever live in that country [Nepal]. Why on earth would you want to? I’m not sure what you will do if he can’t get his documents. He should never leave this country again!”—quote from my grandmother a few nights ago.

“Enough with this ‘traveling to Nepal’ business. You need to stay in one place and start saving money for a house and a family. You can’t just go off gallivanting to the other side of the world, it’s not safe, and I don’t like it. This is your last trip for a long time.”—quote from my mother prior to my departure for Nepal. A similar thing was said by my grandmother around the same time.

I’m going to come out and say it.

Yes, I’m American.

Yes, I grew up in the United States.

But– I’m not against the idea of someday moving to Nepal.

I don’t know if it will ever happen, or how long we would be there if we did. I have to admit that I struggle to imagine living in Nepal forever, but I certainly would actively encourage our household to move there for at least a few years.

Why?

I don’t think I’ll ever truly learn the language properly unless I live there and take classes and interact with people in Nepali on a daily basis. Language might not be important to everyone, but it’s important to me, and even though I’ve struggled to learn the language on my own, prompting some to question my true passion to learn it, I hate nothing more than sitting in a crowd of Nepali speakers and being the only one not able to properly communicate.

I also believe living in Nepal would be a great way for me to learn much more about the customs and culture, like  how to properly celebrate holidays, and get to know P’s gigantic extended family more intimately, while having a chance to know Kathmandu and the rest of the country much better as well.

As my passport is filled with stamps from various countries considered “off the beaten path” by many, I think my family fears I might “get the idea” to move to Nepal someday. It’s not totally uncommon for my grandmother to slip in a casual comment here and there that goes something like, “America is the best country in the world. Everyone wants to come here, that’s why you have so many foreign students at your university! Why would anyone want to go anywhere else?” or “Sure, P was born in Nepal, but you can tell he wants to be American. Look at how he dresses and talks, how he carries himself. I’m sure he wants to stay here for the rest of his life.” Yes—not so subtle “subliminal messaging.”

I’m sad to say that I know if and when the day comes that P and I might decide to move it’s going to be a huge fight. I worry my grandmother, whose opinion differs from mine on a great many things, but whom I feel very close, might never talk to me again. I’m sure my mother will completely freak out, and probably say it is a plot for me to punish her—especially if we decide to move if and when we have kids and she doesn’t get to see her grandchildren that often. Although I don’t see my dad much, and he is much less vocal, I am sure he too would be disappointed, and quietly express his feelings as well.

I certainly don’t want to hurt my family, but I don’t want to feel bullied or pressured into not following through on an opportunity if one came along. Why should P’s family be the only ones to “suffer” on the other side of the world destined to be separated from their children simply because America is more wealthy and powerful than their country?

I don’t doubt that there would be major challenges to living in Nepal, I’m not that jaded—the distance from home for so long would surely be difficult, the infrastructure problems would cease to be “adventurous” after a few weeks—with electrical shortages and bucket baths common, travel on degraded congested roads difficult, and strikes bringing the city and country to a standstill more often than not. Even being around P’s family all the time would certainly have its stressful moments, and I can see times where I would feel suffocated from lack of independence or solitude.

But I see a lot of positives too. Being back in Nepal this time I could truly appreciate how close the community and families are. Being in the US I only see my mother and father two or three times a year, and my extended relatives once during holidays. Sure I talk with my sisters and grandmother on the phone, but I can do that through the internet from Nepal almost as easily as here.

In Kathmandu P’s family has a small beautiful house in the backyard that P’s dad has said we could live in if we moved back—so no need to immediately save for a house as my mother said we needed to do– and there are workers who could help with things like laundry, dishes, collecting water and keeping things generally clean. Raising a young kid there would be so fulfilling—they would have grandparents, and extended relatives to dote on them all the time and child care would be essentially free. Although our earnings would be much less than the US, our ability to save will probably be much easier with some of the big ticket items like rent and car/car insurance off the table.

The day may never come when we move, but if it does I dread the battle that awaits. I wish a fairy godmother would wave her wand and grant my family a broader perspective and new understanding that would help them not fight me on every decision. I’ve travel quite a bit, but far far less than many. I know that my “different kind of lifestyle” continues to push my family to step outside their comfort zones, but I defend myself in that I’m not the first person to embark on many of these paths.

And the next time we travel to Nepal, I hope I’m not told to “stop with this ‘Nepal nonsense’ you should just stay put” because like it or not, my husband and his family are from Nepal and it will always be part of my life. I might not buy an expensive fancy car or clothes or jewelry, but I foresee many plane tickets to the other side of the world in my future–whether those are tickets from the US to South Asia or the other way around.

I’m curious– for any readers who are now living in their partner’s country and away from their own– how did your family respond? Was it an issue?

A Weekend With My Dad

This weekend we took P’s parents to my home town, about a five hour drive from our New England abode. My dad, who spends most of his time in Vermont these days, was back at the old house for the week, and was able to host us on Saturday night.

There were a few reasons I wanted to take them to my home town. First I wanted to show P’s parents where I grew up. We currently live in a city, and P grew up in a city, but I’m a country girl at heart. I grew up in a wooded area, climbing trees and going on adventures in the woods with my dog. We spent a lot of time outside, riding our bikes, swimming, picking wild blackberries and raspberries and eating them off the bush, planting vegetable gardens (and eating cherry tomatoes and small cucumbers off the vine as well!) If was a pretty fun childhood.

I also wanted to bring them to visit my dad because I wanted my dad to have the opportunity to bond with P’s parents a little.

My parents are divorced, something that P told his parents early on (and for a little while reinforced P’s mom’s view that—“See Americans will divorce you!”). They have met my mom a few times (in 2005 my mom came to P’s graduation and met his dad, in 2008 they stayed at her house in Virginia for a weekend, and my mom stayed with us a few days before the wedding) and they like her a lot. She is very entertaining (bordering on showy sometimes), but she is a great person to have when there is awkward silence, because she fills the silence with idle chatter (or embarrassing stories, which was the case during the wedding weekend). She is very extroverted, and animated, and easy to get to know because she lays it all out there for everyone right away.

One reason that my parents are divorced is because they are very different people. My dad is opposite to her in nearly every way—where she is loud and boisterous; he is quiet and reserved; where she likes to hustle and bustle, be close to the action and the city; my dad is happy to sit on his own, do things at his own pace, and live in the wilderness apart from others; where she is carefree, extroverted, and easy to know; my dad is difficult to know, introverted, and relatively serious (unless you get to know him well, then his dry sense of humor comes out).

P’s parents know very few divorced people (practically none). My theory is that they probably assume that in a divorce situation one partner was essentially “good” and one was essentially “bad.” Now my parents’ divorce is very complicated (much too complicated to begin sorting out in a blog post) and there are good and bad things on both sides, but the basic assumption that one person was totally wrong and “bad” and the other was totally right and “good” doesn’t fit this situation in the slightest. However that was the schema that made the most sense to P’s parents. Although they never outright said anything, since they met my mother first, and she is so bubbly and entertaining, right away they assumed my mother was the “good one” (I could tell by the way they would ask about her, but never my dad). I tried to explain to them in 2008 that the divorce was complicated, and they were only seeing one side (my mom’s side), but I think it was difficult for them to understand.

P’s parents first met my dad in 2008 when they stayed with my mother in Virginia. He drove down from New York to attend a program for my younger sister, and my mother insisted that he attend the “P and C family meeting” at her house, on her territory. Although everyone essentially behaved themselves (no arguments, etc), it was a bit of an unfair advantage for my mom, and I’m sure my dad was uncomfortable and more awkward and happy to escape to his hotel room once the meeting concluded.

I remember we were all sitting on my mom’s back porch. My mom was filing in the silence with stories (I remember one such story where she was telling about meeting P’s cousin MK for the first time, and how MK kept having to take smoke breaks—now the family kind of knows that MK smokes, but it’s one of those “she does it in secret” and they “pretend not to know” type of deals. I was standing inside the kitchen looking through the sliding screen door motioning with my hands for her to stop the story, and she said, “Oh look, C is trying to get me to stop, ha ha, anyway—so then…”)

My dad sat there mostly in silence. I remember P’s dad looking at him, hopeful for some “father to father” chit chat, but P’s dad didn’t know what to say (I think P’s family was relying on my parents to guide conversation since P’s parents were shy of their English), and I don’t think my dad felt that comfortable speaking. Eventually I said, “Hey dad, why don’t you talk with P’s dad.” And my dad turned and said, “So, how about the weather?” and that was pretty much it for conversation.

This awkward situation probably didn’t help their vision about my dad. He looked serious, quiet, and tough looking. Prior to their 2008 visit, when they would call and talk to me, P’s dad always asked about my mother and sisters and told me to say hello to them, but never mentioned my dad. After the 2008 visit he rarely, if ever asked about my dad (but at least slightly more than before).

Likewise, at the rehearsal dinner, between my parents, my mother dominated conversation again. She is just better at it, more comfortable, she doesn’t mind if P’s parents don’t really understand what she is saying, it’s easier for her to chat then sit through silence.

At the wedding my mother was dancing up a storm—dancing with everyone, including P’s dad. My dad mostly stood with his relatives on the porch, drinking beers and catching up on stuff. It’s the age old introvert/extrovert dichotomy.

I felt my dad needed his time and space to adequately share his personality with the P family. A short weekend trip to his home seemed like a good idea.

I’m glad we did it, because I think being in my dad’s space and on my dad’s time helped a lot. My dad had the opportunity to share his hunting stories without being talked over (my mom would surely find an extended conversation about hunting boring and dull). I think P’s dad really liked the one about my dad being on a bear hunt, and having a giant grizzly bear itching it’s butt on a tree no more than eight feet away from my dad’s hunting perch. My dad decided not to shoot it (P’s dad: “You had a gun ready, pointing at the bear?”) because his friend had killed a bear the night before and they were going to split the meat, so my dad just watched this giant animal walk around, so close he could practically touch it. Or the story about crawling two miles through the grassy plains of Montana stalking elk. Or about hiking out of the northern Canadian woods in waist high snow dragging a sled with 100 pounds of freshly killed caribou meat (my dad had pictures of the caribou hunt to help visualize his story).

My dad made a “Central New York” dinner—grilled deer meat (and veggie burgers for me and Mamu), fresh local corn on the cob, salt potatoes and melted butter, and apple pie made with local apples. We sat on the screened in back porch listening to the crickets, while my dad talked about things he was familiar with or that he enjoys—like how to make maple syrup (while we ate homemade blueberry pancakes in the morning) and which trees in our backyard were maples, what New York is famous for, what vegetables are locally grown, how he built our house himself, etc (again, conversations my mother would have found totally dull, but P’s dad seemed interested to hear).

My favorite questions that P’s dad asked that night were, “Do you have lions and tigers in America?”

Dad: “No. But we have mountain lions, which are big cats out in the Western US [He went inside and came back with a hunting advertisement with a mountain lion on it to show P’s dad what it looks like and how big they can be.] We don’t have them around here.”

P’s Dad: “Do you have elephants?”

Dad: “Nope.”

P’s Dad: “Monkeys?”

Dad: “No monkeys either.”

(I liked these questions because these animals are “normal” for P’s family, but exotic for mine. For P’s family it’s kind of strange that we don’t have monkeys running around, where as my dad probably thought the question was from left field.)

They talked about the animals we do have—skunks, beaver, opossum, fox, porcupine, etc—and which were also found in Nepal.

I think P’s dad liked being in the countryside. He desperately wanted to see animals (my dad told him there were generally some turkeys and sometimes deer around. We showed him a salt lick that my dad uses to attract deer to his backyard). On the screened in back porch P’s dad said it was like being on a jungle safari in Chitwan National Park—looking down into the woods to find the rhinos from a high perch. He told me in the morning that he got up in the night to watch the “jungle” from the porch to see if he could spot any animals but sadly didn’t see anything.

I think it was a successful trip. I think they realize that I don’t have one “good parent” and one “bad parent” but two very different parents, with different interests, energy levels, and personalities.

I feel confident that once they go back to Nepal and we chat on the phone again, they will now ask about and say hello to my mom and my dad.

My dad and I taking P's family around the sights in town-- including the city harbor on the shores of Lake Ontario

P's mom and dad pose outside my childhood home

I’m a Little Late for Father’s Day, But…

I called my father yesterday to ask him a quick question. He is a pretty quiet, relatively serious kind of guy, not the type of person to engage in idle chit chat. He used to intimidate my friends in high school with his weather hardened face (from many years of working outside in the elements) and air of silence.

After asking my question he said, “I was just on the phone with India for two hours.” Not the kind of statement I would normally expect from him.

“What were you doing talking to India?” I asked.

“My laptop wasn’t working properly so I took it back to the store, but they told me I had to call HP and gave me the number. When I called I was routed to a number in India.”

“Oh,” I said, kind of expecting him to perhaps complain about outsourcing or how he couldn’t get his computer fixed right.

“The woman on the phone was nice, we eventually had to uninstall and reinstall all the software to get it working again. It took about two hours over the phone.” He said.

“How did you know you called India?”

“I figured it was somewhere else when I heard her accent so I asked. She said she was in Southern India.”

“Oh, Chennai? Bangalore? Do you remember?” I asked.

“I don’t remember the name, but I mentioned to her that my daughter was marrying a guy from Nepal in a few weeks. She said ‘Nepal is far from me. It is north of North India.’ And I told her, ‘I know.’”

Perhaps this is my dad’s way of getting excited about the wedding. It is absolutely uncharacteristic of him to strike up conversation with a stranger over the phone, let alone share personal details. I find it sweet that he was able to connect to this random South Asian on the other side of the world.

I guess I don’t give my dad enough credit. I underestimate his willingness to “go with the flow” with a lot of my “different” ideas.

I’m sure the things I am interested in are kind of weird to him. In personality and interests I’m not sure if I could be any more different: he’s a hunter, I’m a vegetarian. He’s a republican, I’m a democrat. He loves American football, I don’t really care for sports at all. I love to talk, he enjoys silence. He would probably rather live in a small cabin in the woods undisturbed by the rest of the world, while I’d rather be out exploring it.

When I first started to discuss our wedding ideas with him, I met him for a Subway sandwich at a mall halfway drive between central New York and Boston. Even then I fully intended on doing both the “white” and “red” weddings, and my mantra was still that I didn’t want to force anyone to do anything that would make them uncomfortable. I couldn’t imagine my dad feeling comfortable sitting barefoot under a mandap wearing a topi and participating in a Hindu marriage ritual. During our meeting I explained to him that the parents of the bride have more of an active role in the wedding ceremony, but that if he didn’t feel comfortable taking that on I would understand, we could find a proxy or something, no big deal. I’ll never forget what he said: “Of course if you want me to do this, I’ll do it. You just have to let me know in advance what I should be doing.”

My cousin told me that the last time she saw my dad he said, “I know I’m going to be barefoot and have a special hat” when she asked him about the Nepali ceremony. That brought a smile to my face.

Regardless of any of the debates/discussions, at the end of the day I very much appreciate my family’s willingness to go outside their comfort zones for me. Both on P’s side of the family and mine. I hope they know how much it means to me… to both of us.

Downton Abbey and My Great-Grandmother

This probably doesn’t have much to do with intercultural relationships, but I still thought I would share.

A few months back the local NPR station was advertising the PBS Masterpiece Theater program “Downton Abbey” (which was originally a BBC production) during one of their fund drives. I didn’t take much notice at that point, but then a blog I occasionally look in on about a British housewife in Kenya recently mentioned the series and was relating it to hired help in the Kenyan context. I looked it up and the program was streaming on Netflix, so I thought I’d take a look.

I admit, I enjoyed it, and wound up quickly watching all 7 episodes. The series centers on an aristocratic titled family in the English countryside two years before WWI, and the servants that live and work in their house. The program does a good job at going back and forth between the two perspectives (family and hired help) and the dynamics between them.

But I also had another reason for having an interest in it. The show made me think about my maternal great-grandmother known to the family as “Nanny.”

I never knew Nanny. She came to the US on a White Star Line ship in steerage from Ireland around the time that this film took place (1912-1914) and died a year or two before my parents married. My aunt tracked down the manifest at Ellis Island from the ship and saw her signature, age, and amount of money she was carrying (a few dollars).

She arrived in the US and stayed with a sister and eventually applied to an advertisement to be a cook—for one of the richest men in America at that time—JD Rockefeller. I’m not sure if she realized it at the time of application. Apparently before Nanny took the position there was a Swedish cook that had a hot temper, and one night lost it at the butler and chased him with a kitchen knife and was promptly sacked.

Rockefeller sent Nanny to cooking school, and she worked for him at his Kykuit Estate in Sleepy Hollow, NY for nearly 20 years before she decided to leave so that she could marry. By the time she had my grandmother (an only child) my great-grandmother was in her 40s (conversely my grandmother married at 19 and had seven kids before she was widowed in her 40s).

Probably about ten years ago my aunt (the same aunt who tracked down Nanny’s ship manifest) took me to Kykuit so we could do a tour of the estate. We bought tickets, and followed the group and guide through all the fancy rooms that the Rockefellers lived in, but my aunt and I really wanted to see the servants’ quarters and the kitchen, where Nanny spent most of her time. Although it was still interesting to see the house, and the artwork and the gardens, the tour didn’t let us see where the workers lived. My aunt pulled the guide aside near the end of the tour and explained about Nanny, telling the two famous stories from the kitchen from our family lore:

1)      That Nanny had personally baked Rockefeller’s 90^th birthday cake in 1930.

2)      When Nelson Rockefeller (later the governor of NY) was a little kid he used to come down to the kitchen to watch the cooks. One time he insisted on helping Nanny make cookies so she gave him some dough, but he wasn’t patient with it, and played too much until it became stiff and inedible. However since JD was such a stickler for waste he insisted that Nelson’s cookie disaster be baked, and he had to eat the bad cookies from the kitchen. Not to mention that Nanny supposedly used to scold Nelson by threatening to hit him with a wooden spoon (something my grandmother also used to do, although she never did make good on the threat).

The guide graciously asked us to stick around after the tour and snuck us to the kitchens to see where Nanny used to rule as the head cook. It was pretty neat.

Downton Abbey gave me some insights into what life must have been like for Nanny in the kitchen. Granted, she wasn’t in England, but the robber barons of the gilded age were pretty much American aristocracy, and the kitchens were filled with Irish and other immigrants. There was even a side story in one of the episodes about the head housekeeper who was contacted by a former suitor from twenty years before, and she had to decide if she was comfortable leaving the household and being in the “real world” again, or if she should stay serving the family until retirement. My great-grandmother probably had that same dilemma at some point—I’ve worked here for 20 years, however if I don’t leave now I might never have a family. Should I stay or should I go?

And now eighty years later, here I am, a byproduct of her decision.

I think I’ve mention this before, but after 20 years of cooking Nanny was  ”done” with fancy cooking, and so she didn’t teach my grandmother that many dishes, or really any fancy dishes that she must have learned going to a cooking school. In turn, my mother also didn’t learn any particularly special dishes from either my grandmother or great-grandmother, and I too, didn’t learn. Most of the food I know how to make now is P-inspired South Asian cuisine, or stuff I experimented with myself!

I also never realized that P and I actually have something in common. P’s grandfather also worked in an aristocratic household– as a driver (Family Tree), kind of like my great-grandmother the cook.

Ceremony Chronology

This is kind of funny—the other day I wanted to tell a story about exchanging wedding rings, BUT as I started, all these other contextual pieces began jumping in first to set the mood as to why my family has been a bit “sensitive” about how the American wedding is organized. I’ll get to the ring story eventually—but first another side tangent.

Besides the lack of Catholicism in our American wedding, another sticking point in this process is that the Nepali wedding is happening chronologically first. We are doing both ceremonies in the US during one weekend in July. The Nepali ceremony was planned for Saturday while the American one was planned for Sunday. There was a very practical reason for this—in the US the most popular day/time of the week to get married is Saturday night. Thus wedding venues used to Western style weddings often charge (a lot) more if you book on a Saturday.

Since South Asian wedding ceremonies can happen at any time of the week because they are generally based more on astrology than social calendars, there isn’t really the same type of extra price tag for a Saturday booking (assuming you are using a South Asian venue). By organizing the Nepali ceremony on the more “expensive night” of the weekend, P and I were able to save a hefty chunk of change that we could put towards other details, like food for the Nepali reception.

I don’t think my family necessarily sees the practicality in the timings, instead I think they see it as me privileging the Nepali culture over the American culture “yet again.” It will be “the first” wedding, all the marriage rituals will be “first,” I’ve even heard the criticism that people will be too tired during the American wedding because of the party for the Nepali wedding the night before… or even bored, because it will be the second wedding party. Some of these criticisms are probably petty, but it is a way to voice disappointment that I gave the honored “1^st” spot to Nepal instead of America.

“You let the Nepalis do whatever they want, and always give us grief. You respect them, but don’t respect us. Instead we are always bending.” is the mantra I hear.

But I beg to differ. Since the Nepali wedding is happening in the US, there are already a lot of changes that have been made—1 day versus several ceremony/ritual days, fewer guests, less family, less formal, fewer traditions, in a place unfamiliar and less comfortable for P’s family. But my family doesn’t really see that—they assume that we are doing everything the way it would be done in Nepal, and no amount of explaining seems to get the message across that there is quite a bit of compromise on the other side as well.

So to save myself from going crazy, and venting too much to family, I’m venting to the blog. I apologize for all the wedding related posts (please tell me if it gets annoying), and I appreciate the feedback and positive energy. I’m actually not tearing my hair out (although it might sound that way), but it is nice to have a sounding board.

Sometimes a Church Just Doesn’t Feel Right

Our wedding has made life interesting the past few months. Sometimes I feel like a lot of the preparation has been a giant negotiation. We want everyone to feel included, and we want to make sure we cover the important cultural aspects of each of our “traditions,” but we also want to be true to ourselves. Because of this, I feel it has made planning the American wedding (in particular) all the more… “challenging.”

I come from an Irish Catholic family (on both sides), and even though not every one of my relatives is “religious,” they still have church as an important part of their lives (Baptisms, First Communions, Confirmations, weddings and holidays, if not most Sundays).

On the other side I have really struggled with faith (a WHOLE separate and long blog post), and because of this, church has not been an important part of my life. So when it came time to choose where to get married, I was pretty adamant that I didn’t want to get married in a church by a Catholic priest. I have nothing against that choice for others, but it didn’t feel right for me.

This revelation, as one can imagine, was quite upsetting to some of my family members. At least on my father’s side I am the third eldest cousin and several years ago my eldest cousin decided not to get married in a church, and broke that barrier (while her younger sister did marry in the church), on my mother’s side, I think I’m probably the first one in generations (and generations) not to be married in a Catholic church by a Catholic priest.

I think my grandmother doesn’t get it. I think for her and some of my other relatives it is hard to image what a “white wedding” actually is (or means) without a church and a priest. I’m sure they blame my parents—thinking they “did” something to me to make me turn against my faith, or somehow “raised” me wrong (so I can understand the pressure/criticism they have been under/getting, because of my choices). However it has nothing to do with my parents—again religious musings surely deserve its own post—but ultimately I think my relatives probably felt betrayed.

Here I was, claiming that I wanted to make sure both of our cultures were represented—AND I was willing to get married in a Hindu temple by a Hindu priest (blasphemy!) BUT I was throwing one of my family’s main wedding traditions—Catholicism—out the window. In one phone conversation with my aunt, as I reassured her that we were still doing a lot of American traditions: white dress, wedding rings, vows, first dance, cake, wedding party, etc, she said “If you throw out the priest and church, everything else is just cosmetic.” Ouch.

So I feel I have had to tread carefully when deciding on what details are important to include in the American side of our ceremony/reception and what not to. What battles am I really ready to fight for, and what am I willing to concede because the biggest thing of all—not doing it in a church, was finally hard won (although I think my grandmother is worried about my soul and that I might be going to hell, and thus won’t see me in the afterlife).

And not to confuse the situation further, but the third side of this is that I feel I have little control of what happens in the Nepali wedding—sure there are details to iron out like what to serve at the reception, making playlists of music, organizing a program for those unfamiliar with Hindu weddings, but mostly I am just as much along for the ride as some of the guests. It’s really P and his family that have a say in the Nepali wedding—including what I wear that day, and what traditions are followed, so it makes me all the more adamant to make the American ceremony “my own” in terms of personality and flavor. So there is this constant delicate balance between what I truly would love to have and what others expect, and what is a reasonable compromise between the two.

Anyway, this has colored everything from creating invitations (and insisting that even though it was tradition to include an image of Ganesh on Nepali invites, it was probably more politically correct to omit that detail for now), to what I wear (no I cannot put henna on my hands, even  though I think it would be fun and beautiful–technically it isn’t a Nepali tradition anyway, but a newer trend influenced from India and Bollywood– but none-the-less, because it may, according to my mom, “ruin” the “white wedding” photos, I’m not allowed to do it), to ceremony details… and my next topic—to Ring or Not to Ring.

Breakdown of Extended Family

Thank you BBC for always giving me good food-for-thought. Yesterday they had an article called “Granny Orphanage” about the rise in the number of older people who are no longer living with extended family, but living in nursing home type “orphanages” in Kathmandu. The article declares that “Nepal is currently experiencing one of the fastest-ever shifts from extended families to nuclear ones.”

P comes from an extended family. In his home in Kathmandu lives his mother, father, aunt, grandfather and two cousins.  His aunt didn’t always live with the family (she returned to the family home with her children when she was widowed at a relatively young age), however his mother came to live in the family home with his father after marriage, and his grandparents and parents have lived together all his life.

Relatively early in our relationship, I had a sense that being with P was a bit of a package deal. He is close with his family, and I fully expect some day to have longer extended visits from them (we’ve already had one, soon to be two), particularly if we live in America and they live in Nepal, and potentially one day his parents might live with us full time in their old age. Although I may not want to live full time with his family as a young couple, I do understand the importance of taking care of someone when they are older.

This is juxtaposed against my own family. On both sides of my family I have/had grandparents who were fiercely independent. My grandmother on my father’s side lived in her own apartment until the day she died. My grandfather probably would have done the same had he not been so sick that he spent most of the last year of his life in hospitals and nursing homes. On my mother’s side, my grandmother was widowed in her early forties, and raised seven children. She’s a tough lady, and is used to taking care of herself. She will occasionally visit one of my aunts for a week or two, particularly if she has some doctor’s appointments to attend near their homes, but she always relishes returning to her quiet home and being on her own.

The generation before my grandparents didn’t seem to be this way though. I remember my aunt (father’s sister) telling me stories about how when she was growing up one set of her grandparents used to visit for several months, then when they left the other set would come and visit. On my mom’s side, my Irish great-grandmother lived with my grandmother’s family until the day she died.

I appreciate people wanting their independence in their old age. I won’t force anyone to live with us, however I hope someday if it is needed, people feel comfortable to stay when need be. The extended family doesn’t have to entirely break down.

Christmas Expectations Rant

Sorry for the lengthy post. Sometimes it is cathartic to write it out.

Building on Julia’s (from My American Life) post on lowering expectations at Christmas, I thought maybe I could share my own crazy Christmas story from a few days ago.

Where to start? Probably with the preface that if my family knew I was writing about this on the internet they would probably shoot me.

I’ve shared a bit of frustration about my mother in the past. It’s not that she is a bad person necessarily, but we are very different. She has had a rocky path in life, and as a result she has a lot of negativity around her. As part of this, she can be difficult to be around. I can only take her in small doses, but I still appreciate that she is my mother, and I make an effort to connect when I can. Unfortunately I think my mother’s family (my grandmother and my many aunts and uncles) has decided they don’t want to deal with her anymore and have pretty much written her off. But she still makes the effort–coming on holidays, calling to check in occasionally, etc–but her gestures aren’t really reciprocated, and sometimes she is seemingly overtly shunned.

Now I’m trying to get my head around this Christmas, because when I see my mother’s siblings and my grandmother, I can’t tell if they realize how much their actions are hurting my mother, or if they are so absorbed into their own worlds they are oblivious to the fact that they are hurting her. Or maybe they don’t care anymore? Their actions make her angry, which makes her want to react, which make them think she is still being negative, and they do something else, which makes her angry and makes her want to react, and it is this vicious cycle.

Anyway– so this leads me to Christmas.

When we were kids, holidays were always a lot of fun. Both my parents come from large families (my dad is one of 5, my mom is one of 7), so holidays were always full of people. At my dad’s family we had a lot of cousins around our ages, so holidays meant snowball fights and lots of games. But there were always more rules at my dad’s family’s house, so his family came off as more strict. At my mom’s family’s house, my mom was the first to get married, and for a long time it was just me, and then my middle sister. It was us and the adults. Since many of my mother’s younger siblings weren’t married and not used to kids, they enjoyed spoiling us and having us break the rules– stay up late, eat candies, forget schedules. They always seemed like the “fun” family because everything was crazy with them.

So maybe that is the carefree spirit now, that they are still interested in doing their own thing instead of thinking about others… I don’t know.

My parents divorced a long time ago, and that makes holidays already a bit awkward sometimes, so having these extra frustrations can make them more so. But I always look forward to the possibility of having a fun carefree Christmas, like the holidays of my childhood.

Now my mother lives in Virginia, we live in New England, my grandmother lives in Southern NY and my aunts live close by in New Jersey. My grandmother and aunts (especially one younger aunt, who has since married and has three small kids) see each other all the time. They live about an hour from each other, and my grandmother often babysits, and stays for stretches of time at the aunt’s house. We, by contrast, have always lived a bit far– at least four hours away as a child, and now a similar distance for me as an adult, and about six or seven hours away for my mom and my middle sister. Since no one comes down to visit, and my mother works retail, getting up to see the relatives in NY/NJ is quite a feat. She sometimes makes the long drive only to stay for about 24 hours, to turn around and drive home to work again. No one seems to appreciate this. In fact, I think they would rather my mother not come. They exclude her from gift exchanges, aren’t considerate of her schedule, and usually don’t listen to her.

This year, my sister and mother were able to take off from work early. P’s brother U had nothing to do for Christmas, so I invited him to come with us (after checking with my grandmother to see if it is was alright. Her response– “Jesus says there is always room at the inn.”) U, who doesn’t have a car, had to take a train up from Philly, and since on Christmas Eve the trains are on a holiday schedule, we had to be at the station at a specific time to pick him up. I had called my grandmother about a week in advance to coordinate the details. P and I were hoping to come down around mid-day on Christmas Eve to my grandmother’s place to hang out and be with family and pick up U.

“Oh no,” my grandmother said, “No one will be here. We have to pick up your uncles at the airport in Newark, and then we are going to your cousin’s Christmas play in New Jersey. No one will be here until 9pm.”

Me: “That’s quite late, should we go to New Jersey then?”

“No, just come to my house at 9.”

Me: “Well, the trains, we might have to come early because of the train to pick up U.”

“Can’t he take a train to Boston and then drive down with you from there?”

Me: “But, then he is paying to go several hours in the wrong direction, it would make more sense to pick him up at the train station near your place, unless we need to drive to Philly to pick him up and then turn around and drive back to your place, but that is 4 extra hours of needless driving.”

“Yeah, no that is silly, just come at 9, we will be here at 9.”

–now an aside frustration– my two uncles are in their 40s and 50s. They have always been picked up at the airport for holidays, which is fine, but my relatives wouldn’t give P and I the same courtesy when we literally flew from the other side of the world back from Nepal in 2009. My aunt instead insisted we take a $200 car service instead since the airport was “too far.” When I mentioned $200 was a lot of money, she said that maybe we didn’t have enough money to make the trip then and we shouldn’t go in the first place. That was the last time I was going to ask them for help. Our good friend AD agreed to pick us up no questions asked and bring us to our car that was parked at his place an hour north of the city.

So Christmas Eve comes, and U realizes that his train options are 7:20pm or 11pm. 11 seemed awfully late to be traveling, so we said he should come at 7:20 and we would take him out to dinner to kill time. We called the restaurants near my grandmother’s place to see when they closed– which was around 8pm– I mean it was Christmas Eve, of course the wait staff would want to be home with their families too. We called my mom, who said they were going to be near my grandmother’s place at 6, since they got off from work early and wanted to set out early in case there was traffic coming through DC. So we aimed to be there at 6 so we could eat with my mother and sisters before going to my grandmother’s place.

Then I called my aunt to check in. Both my uncles had arrived (we were originally told that one uncle was coming in the morning and one in the evening, but that happened not to be the case) and had been picked up, and they were getting ready for the Christmas play which would be over by 6. Remember they were only an hour from my grandmother’s place. Which means they could technically have been back by 7pm. I told her the train schedule and my mother’s work schedule had us all reaching NY by 6, and we would kill time at a restaurant, but all the restaurants closed at 8pm, could they please come back closer to 8 instead of 9? Otherwise we would be sitting in the driveway in the car for an hour or so waiting for them. I even offered that if they would be up around 7, we could all eat at the restaurant together.

My aunt made an excuse about “if there is traffic and we are running late, we don’t want you to miss your dinner, so we will eat in NJ and come up after that.” I said, “Sure, but could you come closer to 8 than 9, everything closes at 8 and we will be stuck outside with nowhere to go on Christmas Eve.” She said something noncommittal and got off the phone.

All went according to plan– we met, ate, picked U at the train station, and stayed at the restaurant as long as we could before it became painfully obvious that the wait staff was anxious to leave. We called my uncle to check in– “oh we are still in NJ, your aunt made dinner, we will be about hour and a half… just go to a bar and wait. No big deal.”

My mother at this point was furious. She had driven 7 hours to come up for the holiday, tried to plan in advance, we had all met on our schedules, and all we asked was that they come back from my aunt’s place in NJ– an aunt that socializes with my grandmother and other aunt ALL THE TIME– an hour early so we wouldn’t have to sit in the cold waiting for them. They knew this at least a few hours in advance. They just didn’t seem to care. And there alternative suggestion was– oh, find a bar to hang out in– on Christmas EVE!– if we didn’t want to wait in the cold.

So we drove to my grandmother’s place. My mother said that my grandmother often forgets to lock the back porch door, and she was hoping that maybe the back door was also open. I went with her. We got in the porch, but the back door was locked. By the light of our cell phones I figured that I could probably shimmy the kitchen window open and crawl through so I could unlock the house from the inside. After 10 minutes of jiggling the window screens/latches, I took a set of car keys and wedged a key under the window pane and propped up the window, sliding through and rolling into the kitchen sink (a move that I didn’t realize at the time, but left both my upper thighs with three long sets of bruises as I shimmed through the high window sill). Finally I was in. I turned on the lights and unlocked the door and let my mom and sisters, and P and his brother in.

We settled in with our bags, and sat waiting for my grandmother and uncles to come back. My mom kept saying that she didn’t necessarily blame my grandmother, who is getting quite old and just kind of follows the crowd, but her siblings, for their lack of consideration for other people. She was practically in tears and seething. When the crew finally did show up some time between 9 and 10, they were surprised to find us in the house. I said the back door was unlocked, and they said, “oh that was lucky” and acted as if everything was no big deal. Later at midnight mass my grandmother didn’t know why my mother had “a puss on her face” during the service.

I tried to keep my mother from making snide comments under her breath the rest of the weekend (sometimes more successfully than others) but at least Christmas day was enjoyable. My youngest uncle was quick to fill everyone’s’ glass with more alcohol, and the house filled with other relatives.

The next day (26^th), the big news was that the east coast of the US was going to be hit with a big snow storm. P and I assumed that we would stay at my grandmother’s to ride out the storm before heading south to Philly to drop U off at his place. Instead my grandmother said that she, my aunt, and my two uncles were going to NJ again, and didn’t extend the invitation to any of us. Since my grandmother didn’t share her keys, the house would have to be locked when they left, which meant we all had to leave too. It basically meant we were being turned out of the house into an oncoming blizzard.

“In Nepal no family member would send you out into bad weather. Ever.” P said, as we loaded up the car and drove off. Again, my mother was seething, she was planning to drive 7 hours back to Virginia with both my sisters, into the storm. I kept calling her on my cell phone imploring her to take the route south which swings by Philly so if the weather got really bad she and my sisters could crash at U’s place.

According to our GPS the route from my grandmother’s place to U’s should only have taken 2 hours. It took us 6 because of the storm. We literally drove along the Garden State and New Jersey Turnpikes at 10-15 miles an hour, and could play “count the car wrecks” on the side of the road. We eventually caught my mother at a rest stop and had her follow us back to Philly where we weathered the rest of the storm at U’s and dug out the next morning. Upon calling my grandmother and aunts to let them know she reached somewhere safely they a) acted like it was no big deal and b) admonished her for staying at U’s place– a 20 something year old bachelor who was most likely “unprepared” for guests. They told her to get a hotel somewhere– which I know is outside my mother’s budget. Actually when my mother tried to coordinate Christmas to begin with, and the 9pm on Christmas Eve thing originally came up my aunt told my mother, “why don’t you get a hotel then” knowing my mother’s precarious financial situation.

And my youngest uncle had the audacity to say over the holiday that “family is important, and no matter how much we drive each other crazy, it’s important to get together.” Their actions didn’t really show it.

Needless to say I found the whole 2 day experience with the family quite hurtful. Not necessarily to me, but knowing how much their nonchalant attitude was angering my mother. I guess what makes it harder to chew is that growing up they were always the “fun” family. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized I have to lower my expectations from them. My mother said, “I feel guilty, because I know it’s me they don’t like, and I feel that they treat my children bad now because of it.”

I was also embarrassed because it was the first time P’s brother U was spending Christmas with us. It was his first look at an American family holiday gathering– and this was what he saw. Never  in a million years could I imagine P’s family, or any Nepali friend of ours, doing that kind of stuff to me or my family. So it saddened me a lot to showcase this side of my family. But likewise I would feel bad if I had to “hide” holidays from P and U as well.

So anyway, P and I are leaving Philly today after a day of relaxation to head south to VA for New Years at my mothers. Hopefully this holiday will have slightly less drama, but knowing how it started out, I’m not so sure.