Malaysia: Parallel Worlds
Posted on March 6th, 2008 – 8:33 AMBy May Chen
Does anybody remember the movie “Sliding Doors?” As Gwyneth Paltrow - with a British accent - is running to catch the train, her life splits into separate realities. In one, she makes it before the doors slide shut - in another, she’s left panting on the platform - domino events that roll out two wildly divergent futures.
Our Malaysia trip this year made me think of that 10-year-old movie. You can only be in one place at one time, but in all the places you’ve lived, and all the people you’ve touched, and been touched by, parallel worlds roll on without you.
Each time we go to see my family, we get lost in the city where I grew up. Skyscrapers block once lush views of rainforested hills, new highways weave through the city in crazy configurations. On the site of my old school, where a white colonial building once stood fronted by palm trees, is a shopping mall the size of a supertanker filled with Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
And in the past year, big, jarring, shocking things have happened in our social circle while we’ve been gone. Two marriages disintegrated. A family lost their only child. A favorite cousin was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. All while we’ve been so far away.
Not that anything would have been different for them if we were there. But at least we’d be there.
My parents, at 68 and 66, are healthy, active and still working. My father’s cell phone rings all day with invitations to golf. My mother’s beeps even more often, and she can out-text most Minnesota teenagers. But each time we see them, there’s a little more gray hair, a few more wrinkles. They waited this long for grandchildren only to have the two little girls live on the other side of the world. The house is quieter than ever now that my brother, at the grand old age of 30, moved out to his own place, a high-rise apartment downtown that wouldn’t look out of place in Manhattan.
Yes, Cribsheeters, this is my annual homesick post disguised as one on existential angst.
Zoe, wise beyond her four years, summed it up best. As we backed out of my parents’ driveway, my father at the wheel, heading to the airport to catch our plane back to Minnesota, Zoe looked back at my waving mother.
“Why is Por Por staying behind?” she asked, “when there’s nobody staying there with her?”
That made me cry.
Between Two Worlds: Zoe, Maya and their Daddy, on transit at LAX.
12 Responses to "Malaysia: Parallel Worlds"
May, What a hard feeling it must be for you to at times feel in between two worlds. But I have to say, what amazing experiences and life learning you are teaching your little ones at such young ages. That is what I think is very very cool.
From the mouth of babes…Zoe made me choke up too! I totally know the feeling. It can even be tough for us second-generation kids too. We feel the pull of both cultures and sometimes feel not part of either because of it.
It’s especially odd with India because it is changing by leaps and bounds. And, while people in India are eager to “catch-up” to the rest of the world, we feel they are mowing down tradition in their haste to modernize. It feels like at some point it will be a homogenous world…but who are we to dictate what goes on back “home,” we are the ones who left…and 2gens never even lived there!
I love the movie Sliding Doors, by the way. There are so many moments in my life where I know “this happened because of this…what would’ve happened if this had not happened.” Who knows who I could’ve been…or where.
I can only imagine how hard it is to be that far away from your family. It is hard enough on me living in Minnesota having my family be in Atlanta! Have you ever seriously thought of possibly moving back to Malaysia one day? Or becoming a Foreign Correspondent again so you can visit the region more frequently? It would definitely be an interesting blog to hear how you left Malaysia and came to settle here in the Twin Cities, as well as your job change from Foreign Correspondent. I would love to hear it!
Amy - yes, we’ve thought seriously about it. Just a question of timing. I moved here with my Minnesotan husband, who was working in Malaysia when we met. We’ve been here for four years and I’ve been editing and reporting for the Strib ever since. It was family that brought us here too. His dad died after a long illness the year we moved back and Chris got to spend the final few months with him. Unfortunately, with the way the newspaper industry is going, there’s little chance of reporting elsewhere in the world for most U.S. papers these days…
And Shruti….good to hear from you. When my girls hit the age when they’re undergoing Second Generation Angst, I’ll send them along to Aunty Shruti for counsel….
Amy -
Please don’t encourage May to leave!!
Tobi, I definitely don’t want to encourage May to leave! She’s an amazing reporter and would be too missed!
May, thanks for telling me your story of how you came to be here. It’s always interesting the twists and turns that life takes us that we never would’ve thought would have happened!
May:
Definitely send them along! My parents were one of the first of their set to live abroad; consequently, I am one of the oldest 2gens in our family. My younger cousins are just now coming of age, so I am already starting the counseling process–its funny how the grandparents of some of these kids were so quick to condemn some of my parents’ practices raising a child in America (such as having a babysitter, where they gasped “you’re leaving your baby with a STRANGER?”) now have their own little darlings who are far more “Americanized” then I ever was (or, have not only babysitters, but nannies!)
So hard. I understand the conflicting feelings and my husband’s family is only in Boston and my mother is in Mexico for half the year only.
Is there some bright side to having family far away? Maybe something about exposing your kids to different cultures/ways of life that is an advantage they wouldn’t otherwise have if all their family lived in the same place?
Yes, of course, there are many good things about bringing up bi-cultural (bi-geographical?) children. I do feel like their lives are richer, or at least less predictable! My husband have always talked about bringing them up so they will thrive anywhere they are in the world. Plus we get the excuse of annual travel somewhere (warm) that’s in so many ways the total opposite of Minnesota. It’s good to be reminded there is a bright side.
Hi, May,
I’ve written before. I totally relate to you. My family is Filipino, and some of my family lives in the Philippines, and some in CA. I moved to Minnesota 7 years ago. I saw my family last Christmas, and I still get homesick.
My little 1 year old is half white/half Filipina.
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