A Family’s Destiny
I came from a big family: I have seven siblings, 7 girls and 1 boy altogether, and the boy is the second youngest.
My father died when we were young (I was 15 and my youngest sister was 11 months old). Now that the family members reside in different cities (Hong Kong, New Jersey, Danver and Toronto), this is quite difficult for all of us to get together honoring the way our father taught us. I didn't talk much about him, and I feel bad as I am the eldest daughter. I didn't know until last year that this was because I was grieving for losing him for so many years.
My father was the head of the family and my mom followed a lot of what he believed. Among the siblings, we seldom talked about the memories of our childhood. Even though we all had very limited time together with our father, he built the family’s destiny. We all become independent, educated and hard working persons. His love and hate had a big impact on our lives. And this has gone on for more than 50 years. It's something that we did, but we don't know why we did it. From my own experience, it took me many years to realize that my reactions and behaviors were not instincts, but it was totally from my father's influence.
In my generation, the parents are very dominant. What they said, you needed to follow. In my case, not only I really admire my father, his demands were reasonable and fair. However, I put too much pressure on myself. In the past, if I didn't do it at 100%, I felt bad. Recently, I realized those were the unreachable standards. Now I would forgive myself and forgive other people more easily.
When we were young, we struggled and hid our feelings.
Nowadays, our ways of thinking and acting have changed.
When the young people fought for their beliefs in Hong Kong, I saw the difference of generations. The young people got out of the public and spoke up. I agreed that they were not doing the right thing, but at least they tried to speak up and did something for themselves.
Angela
Toronto
as told to Tracie, April 2020
