The Not-So-Secret Diary of a Bad Luck Girl

My last memoir post is up!

It was up earlier this week, but I just now replaced the last section with a revised version.

It’s interesting to read it knowing what does come after the “end” of my memoir.  While I was writing it, I didn’t know, and felt so frustrated.  It’s selfish but I thought, Where’s my reward for bringing my cousin and her American husband together?  For being the catalyst that led to Mia’s existence?

Of course things happen to us not as reward or punishment.  Sometimes things just happen.

In my memoir I write about faith.  Joe and his family had faith in fortune tellers and the idea of luck.  When I came along, not believing that “good thoughts” or lack thereof, lead to someone else’s good or bad fortune, their superstitious world began to fall apart.  If I didn’t believe in that stuff, then I must be bad luck.  Everything bad that happened must be my fault.

I had faith that my relationship with Joe would work out somehow, despite all the obstacles, the same way I believed I’d always be a writer, even if I wasn’t a huge success.

After my divorce, I didn’t fully believe I’d find someone new.  I doubted it a lot and had to resign myself to the fact that I might not.  So why did I keep trying?  Why, after each bad date and break up, did I keep putting myself out there?

Maybe part of it was because I’m a writer.  I’ve been putting myself out there and getting rejected for years.  After the sting of rejection wears off, I forget about it and simply try again.  Maybe I’m a bit skittish, having been burned in the past.  But I keep going.

I think part of it, quite frankly, was that I’d get bored.  Dating was almost like a hobby, a distraction.  Each time I tried, I didn’t think, I’m going to find the love of my life, but in baby steps: let’s see who contacts me.  Let’s see if I go out on a date.  A second date, a third.

It was almost like, well, I’m only publishing dinky articles for $15 a pop, but at least I’m trying.  Sure, I’m having dinner with some old guy, but at least I’m giving it a whirl.  At the same time, I’m looking for something better.

To me, having faith is rather like not thinking about something too much.  Not thinking, If I do, I’ll fail, or If I do, I’ll succeed.  It’s just doing with no expectations, with focusing only on the process.

Of course it’s impossible, at least for me, not to have expectations at all.  Disappointment is inevitable, but success is possible too, and if you don’t even try, you’ll never reach either point.

Next memoir post is up, and it’s almost the last one!  Next week will be the very last.  After that I need to figure out what to do with my writing site.

When I was married, I enjoyed watching Sex and the City.  From the comfort of my relationship, I was amused by the women’s dealings with trying to find the right guy.  Thank God I don’t have to go through that, I thought in my suburban apartment.  But when I became single, I found the show depressing.

I quickly learned that dating was not fun.  The most fun part was writing my online ad, and maybe that period of time before anyone contacted me, when there was still all this potential.  Then it turned into why isn’t anyone contacting me?  Or, why aren’t the guys I want contacting me?  Okay, I’ll contact them.  The usual response?  Crickets.

My very first post-divorce date was the summer of 2005.  He was British and loved opera.  We were supposed to meet for drinks at six, and the awful manager I had at the time liked to schedule 5:30 meetings.  He scheduled one on the night of my date.

“I can’t stay,” I told my co-workers.  “I have to leave.”  I felt like if I didn’t have this first post-divorce date, I might never have any.  Luckily my co-workers were nice enough to cover for me.

The date was so so.  I was incredibly nervous.  We met at Pipa, and I was the only one drinking.  Who agrees to meet for drinks and then doesn’t drink?

He was pretty nice, and I went out with him twice more.  But by the third date, I knew he wasn’t for me.  I just wasn’t attracted to him.  He was barely taller than I was, had a paunchy face, a paunchy belly, and arms that jiggled like an old lady’s.  I mean, my triceps were more toned.

I liked the Acupuncturist much more.  I met him through speed dating.  It was my friend’s idea, and for some reason I had to pose as her sister’s friend.  It was her sister and this friend who had the membership; otherwise it’d have cost us some fee (probably not a lot).

The first guy I talked to worked for a competing pharmaceutical company.  That was weird.  But he was very nice with lovely manners, and attractive despite his “Gordon Gekko hairstyle,” as my friend put it.  I can’t really remember who else I talked to; the guys start to merge together with the one other speed dating event I attended.

When I talked to the Acupuncturist, no sparks flew.  In fact I thought he was gay, as did my friend.  But then when we shifted partners, and my new guy was a complete weirdo who said nothing even after the bell rang, the Acupuncturist caught my eye and laughed, and I thought, Wow, he’s cute!

We dated for about two months, and it was great fun at first.  On our first official date, outside of speed dating, we ended up making out in a bar, something I’d never done before.  He was an excellent kisser.  But even by the second date, I sensed some weirdness about him.  He already seemed distant and too in himself (probably a sign of depression).

One Sunday I didn’t have anything to do, so I called him to see if he wanted to hang out.  “Oh, um, maybe,” he said.  “What would we do?”

“I dunno,” I said.  “It doesn’t matter.”  I began to regret my calling him.  “You can say no, you know.  It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh, no.  It’s okay.  We can hang out.  If you want.”

Gee, thanks.

We had a very nice time, but I still felt weird.  Another time I invited him to a friend’s show, and again he had a strange response: “Where is it?”

I wasn’t sure.  Midtown maybe?

He hemmed and hawed, and said he’d think about it.

Later he called and said he felt bad about his response, that he should have said yes right away.

“Only if you want to go,” I told him.  I had been disappointed that he seemed to not want to, but that was that.  Now he was saying yes because he felt guilty?

“And about dim sum on Saturday,” he said.  “You can invite your friends if you want.”

“Why would I want to do that?” I asked.  Dim sum was a date – why would I want my friends there?  I did not get this guy at all.

His birthday came up around this time, and I got him a nice gift.  He told me all about the birthday party he was having, and yet didn’t invite me.  Then I never heard from him again.

Yeah, dating really sucked.

When I watched TV, I didn’t really want to be reminded of my own life.  That was why I turned away from SATC and became obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Gilmore Girls.  I’ll take ass kicking slayer and living in Stars Hollow over dating any day.

Next memoir post is up.

The hardest parts to reread in my memoir are the ones with my parents after my divorce.  I can deal with reading about my own pain – I lived through it and put it behind me.  But remembering how hurt my mother and father were still gives me a pang.

I wonder what it was like in their house after I told them.  If my mother kept trying to talk about it, and my father kept turning away, kept going to his paintings, his singing, his guitar, to make himself forget.  If they didn’t worry about saving face so much, they could have talked to their friends.  It wasn’t till April, nine months after I told them, that my mother finally let someone else know.

She and my aunt Ping were staying at my grandmother’s house in Berkeley.  It was just the two of them since Puo-puo was living in L.A. by then.  The house needed some repairs, and my mother and aunt were basically watching the repairmen.  Aunt Ping is the least gossipy of my relatives so I can see why my mother told her.  Afterward, my aunt couldn’t sleep the whole night.

The next time I saw her was a month later.  She, my mother, and a cousin were meeting up in the city for lunch.  I didn’t know my aunt knew and so was surprised that she hugged me so tightly when she first saw me.  (Aunt Ping usually does the arms-length hug, grabbing the would-be hugger by the arms and patting them before they can get too close.)

“You could have warned me,” I whispered to my mother.  Actually I was relieved.  I preferred that people knew.

Then again, did I?  I saw my uncle and his family later that year, and they just looked at me like they didn’t know what to say.  I knew they had been upset, but the last thing I wanted was anyone feeling sorry for me.

After my separation, I mostly liked the peace of my solitary routine – a cup of coffee and toast in the early mornings, Friday nights picking up on my way home half-priced breakfast pastries from a cupcake shop on 2nd Avenue, long runs in Central Park.  But sometimes I had a hard time filling my days.  Saturday nights I didn’t have plans, I’d walk down Park Avenue, from my place on 77th Street to Grand Central, where the Sunday Times would already be available, and walk back home.

Then I’d read the front page, the Styles section, and glance through the Book Reviews.  I’d save the magazine for last, relishing the crossword puzzle, which could keep me occupied for days.

Now I occasionally miss that time I spent alone.  I like this quote from author Alice Koller:

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your own presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

Next memoir post is up.

In it, I finally leave my ex, going out for the first time without my wedding ring, moving into my own apartment in the city, and finally telling my parents.

Now it’s been almost five years since my ex and I split up.  I remember in October 2005, the day I received my final divorce papers was the same day that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt’s divorce was finalized.

I really felt a bond with Jen back then (Team Aniston!).  She also got married in year 2000.  Brad was also supposedly unfaithful, and left her for his mistress, who shortly afterward had his child.  I cried along with her in her Vanity Fair interview.

Last week People magazine’s cover story was Jennifer Aniston, 5 Years After Brad.  How ridiculous, right?  I mean, who cares at this point?  There have been a zillion other divorces since then that People isn’t talking about.  Why endlessly Jen and Brad, five years, half a dozen kids, and several bad movies later?

Because for a while, Jen and Brad were Hollywood’s golden couple.  Not only was Brad HOT, he could act but didn’t take himself too seriously.  Jen was girl next door-gorgeous, goofy and cute on Friends, and by God, she could act too.  They seemed fun and down to earth, a couple you could drink and get high with.

Then along came Angelina.  (Cue scary music.)  Pale, dark-haired, and kinda creepy (vial of Billy Bob’s blood, anyone?).  She was the weird, beautiful girl you made fun of but secretly wanted to be friends with, if only because she couldn’t give two shits about being friends with you.  How could Brad resist?

How could anyone resist?

Of course I perked up when I saw the headline.  Me too, Jen, five years later!  But unlike Aniston, I haven’t had every break up and bloat-mistaken-for-baby-bump splashed across the tabloids (just on my blog).  While I willingly look back on the past five years, maybe she doesn’t want to.  But, unless she holes up in a cave, she won’t have much a choice.

My memoir, like the tabloids, make a story out of the events of my life.  Joe and I were the nice and unassuming couple you made small talk with at the train station.  We were hard working and good to our parents.  I was the dutiful daughter-in-law, taking care of my sick mother-in-law and basically giving up a lot for the good of the family.  The dutiful wife betrayed by her unfeeling husband.

But there was a lot going on underneath.  Built-up resentment, withholding of affection, my feeling maybe that I had settled, Joe having an inkling of that.  I’m not saying it was my own fault, only that it was complicated.  Who knows what was going on between Brad and Jen before Angelina came along?  Only they know.  Only ever do the husband and wife know in a marriage.

My next Nervous Breakdown post is up.  Some of you may remember the original blog post it’s based on.

I also wanted to catch up my most recent memoir installments, since I haven’t written about the memoir in some time.  They’re basically Part 11 and the beginning of Part 12.  There are several more posts coming up for Part 12, and then the last section, Part 13.

Although hearing Joe’s confession and dealing with the aftermath were horrible, even harder was dealing with the actual birth of the child.  It was a cold, stormy weekend in January, and so incredibly bleak.  Only slightly worse was stupidly going to my parents’ house a week later (which you’ll read about soon).

Now that my memoir will be finishing up in the next couple of months, I’m wondering what I should write about next.  I was very gung ho about my murder mystery set in the corporate world, but I’ve written it for NaNoWriMo and feel disappointed.  I’ve yet to look at it, but I think because I only had a month to do it, I didn’t try very hard.  I based a lot of it directly on my life, which ironically tends to suck the life out of the story.  It needs more of a voice.

I always assumed my next memoir would be based on my post-divorce dating misadventures, and would be called Single Asian Female (SAF), or something to that effect.  But I’m not sure.  If I were to write a straight recounting, it might be boring, or at least I’d find it boring to write.  Blogging about dating works because it’s in the moment.

If I went to write SAF, I’ll have to think of a different angle.  And there are a million dating memoirs out there.  How would mine be different?

Next memoir post is up.

My ex-husband confessing to his affair was one of the first scenes I wrote for my memoir.  It was a pivotal event that bisected my life into before and after – before I knew about his affair, and afterwards.  Normalcy, then disaster.  My own little 9/11.

Next I wrote about the days right after, and right before.  I described taking care of his mother, and when Joe and I first met.   I looked back in my journals and saw there were things I had forgotten, like when Joe first told me about Kimiko moving in next door to his parents’, and how in that moment, a terrible feeling washed over me as I remembered years earlier his telling me that a fortune teller said he’d marry a woman who had been born in Japan.  Back then I had thought, Where would he meet someone like that?  All the Asians he knew were American, like us.  Now here she was.

Some people might think writing a memoir is easier than writing a novel.  Fiction you have to make up from scratch while you’ve lived your life, now write it down.  But what to write down is the hard part: just because it happened, doesn’t make it interesting or pertinent to the story you’re trying to tell.

So how do you know what to keep and what to toss?  Fresh eyes help.  Readers, especially ones who don’t know you, can tell what’s irrelevant and what’s missing.  They also give you perspective.  For instance, I was resistant about including the parts about my sister-in-law, Olivia, because I thought I came off as bitter.  But my classmates in a writing class didn’t think I was at all, and that those scenes added to the story.

One of the most common questions when starting a book is where do I begin?  I always say, “Start with whatever is foremost on your mind now.”  You can always reorder later.  Once for a writing class, I volunteered to have my piece workshopped first.  Although I had a draft of my memoir, I didn’t think it was polished enough.  The morning of the day I was supposed to email everyone, I still hadn’t written anything.  Where to begin?

The night before I had a dream about my ex.  I decided to begin there:

I dreamt about my ex-husband again last night.

I had gotten him out of the house, but somehow he was able to get back in.  Somehow I took him back.  He was very happy.  He went around smiling and laughing, which he only sometimes did in real life, rarely at the end of our marriage.  I pretended to be glad but really I wondered how I could tell him without hurting him that I needed him to leave.

This didn’t end up staying in the book, but it kick started my creative juices and I was able to keep going.

Now that I’m writing more essays, I’m exploring topics, like memories from childhood, that I’ve written about before.  I remember struggling in high school and college to tell stories and not just summaries of events.  It’s encouraging to feel that my skills have improved since then, that I have a better feel for what to include and omit, and creating scenes out of memories.

Next memoir post is up.

Sometimes a phone call can change your life.

It was actually two calls for me, the first from Joe’s parents, the one we were always afraid of, then just two weeks later from Kimiko.

I remember it was such a stressful time, and I didn’t even fully know what was going on. Dealing with his parents’ illness and hospitalization was one thing, letting my husband go tend to the needs of some other woman was quite another.

Some people might wonder how I could be so clueless. But the thought just never occurred to me. I never thought Joe could do such a thing, that it was even possible. I even felt guilty for being upset that he was going to Kimiko’s in the middle of the night to bring her to the hospital. One of my friends told me, “Have a little compassion! The woman could have been bleeding to death.”

Yes, bleeding as she miscarried one of their twins.

Now as my parents are getting older, there are other calls I dread. My mom seems the same, but in the years since he retired, my dad seems suddenly older. I know he has a healthy lifestyle, eating the right things, taking walks every day, and keeping busy with various activities, but I still can’t help but worry. He’s over 70 after all.

Every day I glance at the obits in the New York Times and breathe a sigh of relief whenever I see that all three “featured” deaths are well over 80. I cringe when I see those who have died at 70 or younger.

Dealing with parents’ deaths is a fact of life, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I dread even the thought of it. I don’t feel grown up enough. I can barely stand the thought of my grandmother passing, though she is well into her nineties and quickly declining.

My parents have never pressured me to give them grandkids. They think MB and I should have children, but more for our sake than theirs. They’ve never fussed over babies or toddlers, while I melt at even the sight of a single fat foot protruding from a carriage or stroller.

But they adored Mia, my cousin’s three-year old. The moment she walked in, my mother swooped down to give her a hug. “You’re so cute!” she cried. My dad cracked up over her antics, and when she left, they hugged her again and gave her kisses.

Doesn’t hurt that Mia’s a complete charmer. She’s outgoing and unafraid to talk to anyone, even my grandmother who may seem frightening to little kids. But Mia had no problem chatting up Puo-puo’s nurse, then going to my cousin and saying sympathetically, “Grandma’s sick.”

Of course my parents want grandchildren. They’re so full of life, even when they’re being bratty.

Next memoir post is up.

After my ex told me of his affair, it was really easy to hate his mistress.

It still feels weird to call her that. When I hear “mistress,” I picture some young blonde thing waiting around in a slinky dress, not a single mom six years older than my ex and twelve years older than me.

Hating her was easier than hating my ex. I didn’t know her, and while my ex begged my forgiveness, I didn’t hear a peep from her, though there wasn’t any reason I should have. It was probably easier for her to keep me faceless, simply “the wife,” rather than a real suffering person.

One of the million times I asked, “Why?” he answered, “It was nice for a change to feel attractive.” He thought I wasn’t attracted to him anymore, and maybe it was partly true. Maybe the physical attraction had evolved over the years into a comfortable affection, but I didn’t see anything wrong with that. However, it was hard to be affectionate with someone who was always angry or withdrawn, who hardly responded when I reached out to him.

He always wanted what he couldn’t have. After the first time we broke up, when I was 25 and he 31, he was suddenly more attentive. Forbidden fruit and all that. But after we got back together and got married, things changed. We had sex less often, and stressed more about his parents, jobs, and money. Then Kimiko came along. She was forbidden fruit who had a crush on him.

I’m still not sure what her story is. By the time my ex met her, she already had a little girl. The girl was half-white, and I don’t know if Kimiko had been married before. After their affair and her subsequent pregnancy, I assumed she had done the same thing with some other married guy.

Even before their affair, she seemed needy and to attract the wrong kind of men. For a long time, her boss sexually harrassed her, and Joe tried to help her legally. Then she had trouble with her visa and had to leave the country. I couldn’t help but think the only reason she wasn’t out on the street was because her parents were rich.

I guess it’s easy for me to say that I would have never done such a thing. But I’ve had crushes on a couple of married guys (my Latin professor in college and a consultant at work). What would they have done if they had shown interest? Would I have convinced myself that their wives were shrews? That I could make them happy? Is that so different from thinking I could change any guy that I happened to be dating?

Through snooping on the internet, I suspect that Joe has married Kimiko. I found some listing with her first name and his last name, and I could see him convincing himself it was the right thing to do, marrying the mother of his child. Are they happy? I wonder, or are they having the same problems we did? Is he still angry and withdrawn? Does she hang out with his family on the weekends and holidays, or does he use their history as an excuse to keep her away, to keep her separate, which would probably be best for everyone?

Part of me hopes they’re unhappy. Who says either of them won’t cheat again? But part of me is thankful. If their affair never happened, I don’t know if I’d have been strong enough to just leave. Surely I’d have thought of that as weak.

New memoir post is up.

Whenever I think about my ex sister-in-law, Olivia, even after all these years, I still feel amazingly catty.  Was it the fact that she got the bigger ring, or that she got out of helping with our mother-in-law, or that she didn’t give a shit about getting to know me?  All three.

When I tell the story of how she thanked me for helping my mother-in-law, some people don’t understand why I was so offended.  “Oh, she thanked you!” they say.  “How rude!”  But here’s what it was:

• I had already married into the family and was the wife of the older son.  I had been part of the family and spending time at my in-laws’ house for a couple of years by then.
• She was still only engaged to my brother-in-law and was a visitor.

Thanking someone like that in that type of situation shows that the thanker thinks she has power over the “worker.”  Maybe it’s an Asian thing, but you’d never wander into the kitchen and thank your mom for cooking dinner while she’s cooking it.  Then what, wander back out and put your feet up?  No, you show thanks by offering to help.

My sister-in-law thanking me like that made me feel like a servant.  I could have been the maid coming in to drop off fresh towels while she sat back and did her toenails.

You’d thinking coming from Korea she’d understand this.  But either a) she just couldn’t get past my not being Korean and treated me the way she thought an American would want to be treated, b) she thought because she was older that this was proper behavior, or c) she really did look down on me.  Probably a bit of all three.

Her disrespect didn’t end with me.  At my father-in-law’s 70th birthday party, my parents were in attendance and sat with my ex’s uncle and aunt.  Olivia, still just engaged at that point, came over to say hello to the aunt and uncle, and COMPLETELY IGNORED MY PARENTS.

She knew who they were.  I had been hanging out with them for much of the party, and they were obviously not the ex’s family, or their parents’ friends.  My mother, usually the to take offense, didn’t even notice, but my father, typically the easy-going one, did.

“I didn’t like that,” he said.

And my dad likes EVERYTHING.

I know I shouldn’t have cared what this random person thought, but unfortunately I wasn’t receiving much positive reinforcement at the time to balance out her, at best, ignorant remarks.

At the same time, I was fascinated by her vast array of beauty products.  A cosmetics junkie myself, I’d examine the slew of bottles, jars, and tubes she’d leave strewn across the bathroom counter when she visited.  She was big on anything whitening, and, freckled girl I am, so was I.  She had brands I had heard of, like Shiseido, and others I hadn’t, like Pola.  I actually ordered some (it was very nice).

But of course I didn’t tell her this.

After she had her kid, she seemed to mellow out.  Her son was very cute, and she had no problem letting all of us hold and play with him.  She even seemed to notice me more.

“I hope it fits,” she said of a Christmas sweater.  “You’re so tiny lately.”

The truth is she probably didn’t give two thoughts about me.  When she got engaged, she was already thirty-three, positively ancient in Korean culture.  She was probably getting a lot of pressure to hurry up, get married, and have babies.  By cooking instead of helping with my sick mother-in-law, and buying expensive gifts instead of being there more often, she was doing what she thought was right.  While Joe had no problem correcting my behavior, his brother never said anything.  With no one to tell her what was really “right,” how was she supposed to know?

Next memoir post is up.

My ex-mother-in-law was very superstitious. She regularly visited fortune tellers and believed that dark colors brought bad luck, like the black fish I gave my ex one year for Christmas (hence the title of my memoir and this blog).

It wouldn’t have mattered except my ex believed it too, blaming me for everything from his not getting into law school to his mother’s Parkinson’s-induced falls. He even took our highly incompatible Chinese signs, the horse (him) and the rat (me) – described as “disastrous” and simply “no no no” in horoscopes – and invented a story of the rat eating the horse’s grain. The funny thing was that his mother was also year of the rat, as well as, I think, the woman he had an affair with.

I, however, have never been superstitious. My parents were never into rituals like hanging a mirror opposite a window to ward off negative spirits, or taping a fou character upside down on their door (upside down so it’s easier for good luck to slip in). The most they believe in is eating long noodles on your birthday for a long life, though they don’t think no noodles = sudden death. More like, it doesn’t hurt to try.

I remember the first and only time I tried believing in good luck. I was taking the SATs and convinced myself that my jade necklace would help me do well. The opposite: I was so distracted by rubbing the stone that I lost my ID, had to go back in the parking lot to find it, and couldn’t. The facilitator let me take the test anyway, and I completely screwed up, scoring 200 points lower than the first time I took it.

When bad things happen to me, I never think, I have bad luck. Yesterday when I went out to meet MB for lunch, it was sunny. Afterwards I popped into Macy’s for a bit (yes, ANOTHER trip to Macy’s, must stop!) and when I came out it was pouring. Like, end of the world, rapture rain. And of course I didn’t have an umbrella. But I didn’t think, I have bad luck. I thought well of course I didn’t have an umbrella because it was sunny when I left, and everyone waiting in the lobby had also been caught off guard. Did we all have bad luck, or was it just a freaky storm?

Then of course when I finally bought an umbrella, the rain slowed to a trickle. But did my action actually CONTROL THE ELEMENTS? I don’t think so. I probably unconsciously waited the right amount of time for a rainstorm to pass.

The most I believe in is an energy we can’t see, like if several electronic items break down at once, I assume Mercury must be in retrograde. I believe that everything happens for a reason, that every step (and misstep) we take leads us to something, even if it’s just knowledge, or even if that something is very far away. That something is important, but the path there is important too.

Believing in luck, good or bad, makes people feel like they have control over uncontrollable situations, and in a way relinquish responsibility. I left my purse on the train, spilled my coffee, and got splashed by a puddle because I have bad luck or I must have done something wrong, not because these things just sometimes happen to anyone. When my ex was studying for his bar, he asked me to think positive thoughts for him. Instead of worrying about what was going in my head, maybe he should have been studying more. He passed, but if he hadn’t, in his mind he’d have had the luxury of blaming me.

I don’t believe making a wish will ward off death. I’m trying to believe worrying doesn’t do shit.

But when weird things happen, I can’t help but wonder why. Is it fate, some bigger force pushing us down a certain path, making certain decisions? If I hadn’t gone to China that particular year, my cousin would have never met the man she’d leave her first husband for; she wouldn’t have her daughter. But I wouldn’t have gone to China at all if my grandmother and mother hadn’t returned the year before. They wouldn’t have returned at all if they hadn’t left in the first place. Why did my grandmother leave and my cousin’s grandmother stay? Because my grandmother married a really rich guy, and my cousin’s grandmother didn’t?

If you get right down to it, my cousin’s husband can thank the Communists for bringing him his true love. Their baby Mia exists because of the Communists! My brother and I, my cousins, and their children wouldn’t have been born if all of our parents hadn’t met in Taiwan or the U.S. We all exist because of Mao! Thank you Chairman Mao!

Crazy.  Makes your head spin if you think about it too much.