F.A.M.I.L.Y.

A few friends had previously forwarded this particular email to me that taught me what F.A.M.I.L.Y. means:
Father And Mother, I Love You.

Not too long after I had moved into my new room just a few days ago, the Landlady had spoken to me about how her daughter kept reminding her to "don't bother me all the time"- don't cook for me, don't do this, don't do that.

"Maybe she only wants to be independent. Most young people are like that. They want to have their own life," that's all I could say.

But I know I was merely plucking random words from mid-air and trying to arrange them in a way that I hope might comfort the Landlady in whatever way possible.

This morning before I left for work, the Landlady came in earlier than usual to clean up the apartment once again. Such are those few things that keep her going with her life. Her daughter woke up and groggily emerged from her bedroom not too long after that. Mother and daughter met in the kitchen.

Perhaps this mother had tried to talk to her now-grown-up child this morning. Perhaps this mother had wanted to somehow reach out her hand to this once little hand that she had used to hold on to so lovingly and protectively 30 years ago. Perhaps I like sounding dramatic in my sentences once in a while.

All in a sudden, daughter went back into her bedroom and mother was sitting down on the sofa, flipping through today's newspaper.

The Landlady then saw me and smiled sheepishly. I wasn't sure why. It's that kind of smile you get when something unbecoming had happened to that person who had smiled at you, only to make you think that nothing's wrong. Like a person who had just taken a rough and nasty tumble onto the floor but could still force a smile on her face.

I made my way to the kitchen to wash my hands and noticed these freshly-written words staring at me from the whiteboard in the kitchen: "Please don't talk to me in the morning. Use this board. - Jen"

And then I immediately imagined myself as the mother who's just had those red hot words directed at her.

"It's difficult when her father tells her bad things about me," Landlady told me a few days ago.

"I understand. It's tough not knowing whose side you should be on in such a situation," so I went about trying to think of nice things to say once again to the Landlady.

I could also imagine that particular hatred boiling within Jen. It's that accumulative, pent-up feeling that could only be purposely and instantly expressed in ways where your sole purpose is to retaliate against that person who had hurt you either intentionally or otherwise- an eye for an eye, tit for tat.

Same as to how I had quietly left my mother alone in the kitchen to prepare this year's Chinese New Year reunion dinner dishes after she had stubbornly decided to ignore me and prepare everything on her own because she never wanted me to get my hands dirty in the kitchen. It's been like that ever since I was a child.

"You know how to cut vegetables or not?? Cut also cut until night-time!" my father had sarcastically said when I tried to help out in the kitchen that morning.

I decided to take an extended afternoon nap in my room and pretended not to hear my mother calling me when she soon realized I was missing from the kitchen. The father got a much colder treatment from the daughter soon after that vegetable incident.

"Since you're so smart, why don't you go prepare everything on your own?" I thought to myself as my mother kept on calling out my name and knocking at my bedroom door.

Father and mother, I love you. But I hate it when you do and say things that make me want to intentionally hurt your feelings in return simply because there's too much shit going through my mind.