mother's day

I call my mother, hesitantly, on Mother's Day. She is happy to hear from me, though I can tell she feels a little left out.

"Haven't heard your voice in a while," she says. (Excuse the poor translation; she speaks to me only in Mandarin.)

I tell her I've been busy, and she asks when I will be able to visit my sister in California. It is her thinly veiled way at asking whether I will follow up with A, the Taiwanese family friend's friend's son that they have tried to set me up with. A lives in Palo Alto. I feel sick.

Several months ago, our parents had sent us pictures of each other. A's pictures of himself and his brother hiking, were slightly dorky. Doubtless, pictures of me from family vacations would be similarly unimpressive. But our email conversations lacked spark. "He's not funny, " I complained to my sister. One of his messages included this line about his company:

"We expect considerable growth in cellphone software, with 600M cellphones sold this year and ever increasing power and features."

Now that I reread it, I think, "He must have been joking...right?" Maybe I'm the one who didn't get it? Later, I admitted to my sister that I couldn't completely blame him. "Maybe he's just being nice. It's not as though my emails to him were really funny or creative, either." So I continued, half-heartedly, to email him, and even once tried to write a slightly funnier message. Though I was intrigued by the idea of finding an ambitious, accomplished, Taiwanese match, my heart just wasn't in it. After we had exchanged a few unflirtatious emails, he sent me another earnest email with the following line:

"If you'd like to meet up, it is no problem for me to pay for your plane ticket to fly out here for a few days if you wish. You could meet upwith other Bay Area friends as well."

I was enraged. How could he suggest something like this? Fly across the country to meet someone I barely know?! (I know, by the way, that "barely know" has barely stopped me from doing lots of things in the past.) And pay for my ticket? I make plenty of money, and can pay for my own ticket, thank you very much!

So I took the high road. The mature, sophisticated response.

I didn't reply.

For three months.

I know. Ouch. I complained to my parents. My mother argued that I wouldn't know unless I met him in person, but my father sided with me."I don't even think that's proper!" he announced.

So months later, I emailed him with a "Sorry, I've been and will continue to be busy, but let me know if you'll be in New York" message and even included an extremely half-assed "I'm having a 30th birthday party in four days, so if you happen to be in town, I'll send you the invite."

He replied, with a nice message, quoting an Esquire article about Mitterand and food. I didn't even read it.

Now, I can't imagine the disaster that would have ensued, had he come to the party.

My mother continues to ask me about meeting A. I tell her I don't have time. She complains, "You never have time to meet anyone." And I have to, at this point, tell her about Clerk. I simplify the story and say simply that we've met. And that I am going to see him in DC. I tell her what his name is, and she sounds disappointed when she repeats it back to me. She asks what I like about Clerk, and I say: "He's really smart, and funny...he's a good person..." I trail off.

I am frustruated that the one thing she wants to hear, I cannot say, and that I can't think of anything else to say. What do I like about him? She is worried when I tell her Clerk is younger than me.

Fortunately, the conversation with my father goes more smoothly.

Father: "So, so, so...where did he go to school?"

Me: "Middlebury, and then UVA for law school."

Father, brightening: "Oh! It's ___ (a family friend)'s alma mater. It's a good school."

Thank you, Baby Jesus, I think.

Father: "So, so, so...what kind of person is he?"

Me: "Uh, what do you mean?"

Father: "You know...extrinsic, intrinsic...Republican, Democrat...yin, yang..."

Me (laughing): "What? Do you mean extroverted or introverted? Of course he's a Democrat. And what do you mean by yin or yang? What are you? I don't even know what I am."

He explains. Yang means sun in Chinese. It connotes forward thinking, extroversion. Yin means moon, and has to do with (apparently) calmness and introversion. Or something.

Me (laughing harder): "What does that have to do with political affiliation?"

My father claims that Republicans are forward thinking and tend to be yang. Whatever. I am laughing so hard (though mostly silently) that I cannot really talk. I don't like to make fun of my parents' English (clearly, I would never know how to say "extroverted" in Chinese), but the yin/yang thing is too much.

My mom gets back on the phone, and I sober up. She urges me, again, to contact A. I tell her I'll think about it, and that maybe I'll call him. I also drop that I've met Clerk's parents, and that they're good people. "Well," she hesitates, "You know how I feel."

Happy Mother's Day.