If there’s anything college has taught me, it’s that you have to find comfort in loneliness. When left adrift and to your own accord for far too long, the quiet mental spiral that follows is inevitable. You have about 10 seconds before you’re playing back every single time you’ve experienced the slightest feeling of abandonment or betrayal. For me, the one flash point that constantly reappears during these times of reclusion has to be when, in first grade, my elementary school hosted two “breakfast events” — one for Mother’s Day and one for Father’s Day — where parents came in and had donuts and orange juice with their kids. They took the time to sit with them and their friends in the classroom, read books together and dramatically gasp with pride at all their painting projects. But for both days, neither of my parents showed.
Instead, I was stuck at the back of the classroom, seated at the reading table with one measly donut and a cold cup of orange juice that I left untouched. I sat there watching all the moms and dads giggle with their kids. One of my classmates, Grace, had her parents switch days, with her mom coming in on Father’s Day and her dad on Mother’s Day because they couldn’t get the day off on their respective holidays. Grace’s mom stood there proudly amidst all the men just to witness the beam on her daughter’s face when she made a surprise entrance.
The jealousy I had towards Grace was palpable, evident in my lingering stares. It felt like her parents were willing to move the world just to make sure she did not feel left out, while there I sat, confused as to what I could have possibly done for my parents not to come. Had I said something wrong? Was it my fault? I ran through a mental list of all the criteria I needed to abide by, carefully skimming for any recent slipups that could explain this cruel punishment.
With my parents, the concept of meeting emotional needs or even acknowledging the vulnerability that comes with being a child was non-existent. Whether we liked it or not, the purpose of our being was to be everything they never could be. We had to be academically successful, religiously devout enough to secure our spots in heaven and serve as the ultimate poster children of the Bengali diaspora. When people discuss the American Dream, they reflect on all the work their parents did to find footing in this country. But for my parents, we were the bearers of their American Dream. And I obeyed: In proving them right, I thought I could make myself indispensable. So when neither of them showed, it became instinctive to assume I was at fault.
Had I not prayed all five of my prayers recently?
Was I rude to my Dadi?
Did I embarrass them in front of any aunties or uncles?
As a child, I could not grasp that there would never be an explanation for their absence; my dad rarely spoke to me, and if my mom wasn’t complaining about my dad or the struggles she endured raising us, our conversations were minimal. Turns out, there was nothing you could do to earn more love or acknowledgement. But there was always an abundance of shortcomings that, despite being trivial, could make them irate by the thought of you.
I became more accustomed to the echo chamber my parents created that others would call dysfunction to the point where, when my brother went through the teenage-rebellion phase typical of any ambitious kid born to strict, close-minded immigrant parents unwilling to let you diverge or experience a new culture, I could not empathize with him. Their mindset led me to view my brother’s reasonable emotions as disrespectful and childish. The brother who was nine years my senior, according to my judgments, was a cautionary tale of what I was conditioned to reject.
They went back and forth, pleading for their perspectives to be understood, and as a witness to this whole debacle, I could only focus on how, by being so adamant that my brother not “stray” too far from our culture or religious teachings, they never realized that they were losing him in the process. While I thought he was a bit dramatic in his reactions, I could understand how exhausted my brother must have been. Why was wanting to hang out with friends, play on the basketball team or even go to homecoming so unreasonable? Normal teenage activities were turned into warnings about what they called “worldly pleasures” presented by the devil. Every night, they argued about who was at fault for “ruining” him — his friends, his teachers or one of them. Amid all the yelling and crying and blaming, I settled on staying quiet. Keeping peace meant suppressing your own thoughts, even when they ached to be heard.
Once my brother’s defiance subsided and it became clear my parents failed to turn their son into the perfect, well-rounded “taqi,” I became immune to their endless moralizing and even found community in their neglect, courtesy of the multitude of ethnic friends whose own parents seemed to be just like mine, fitted with the same dedication to shame and tradition. Somehow, parental trauma became something to bond over. From the parking lot of our local grocery store to the shaggy carpet of my best friend’s basement, I found myself laughing, ranting and even lightheartedly mocking my parents for “not getting it right.”
I compartmentalized the possibility of ever having a relationship with them and assigned a series of explanations for their warped sense of good parenting: It had to be because they were immigrants and came from backgrounds where love and support were foreign. Their collectivist cultures shunned independent discovery, and when survival is unassured, you cannot afford feelings. Maybe they never had good examples to go off. They were also rigidly bound to religion, which tends to lack the nuance needed to raise kids in a pluralist society. Or perhaps, and this was the most painful admission, they weren’t ready to be parents at all.
These reasons withheld my fragility until I got to college, when the defense mechanisms I had built to prevent myself from thinking too much about the stability I mourned came crashing down. To my surprise, maintaining a genuine, fulfilling relationship with your parents was more common than not. Plenty of other immigrant, South Asian, low-income, religious and conservative parents were involved in their children’s lives. They called every single day, had Google Calendar blocks dedicated to bonding, shared pictures with one another and yearned to be reunited, even if they only lived an hour away from one another. It was only in my freshman year of college that I first heard someone refer to their mom as their “best friend” without a hint of sarcasm.
When the usual college homesickness washed over me, the home I once knew, while broken, was still in reach. Now, there was nowhere to turn to. I could not call my parents on a whim without them questioning my sudden peaked interest, and as the phone grew more distant, the closure I needed filled its place. In the wake of embracing independence, it is often said that you will have to leave everything behind. For me, that meant bidding farewell to any possibility of cultivating a relationship with the very people who taught me to let go.
Over time, the lasting effects of my parents’ holier-than-thou lectures and volatile outbursts came into view. It did not matter how much I prayed, how intelligent I was or how respectably I dressed because they themselves, regardless of their demographics or personal experiences, would never see me for who I was. That was a reflection of their character, not their identity. It angers me when someone says that I need to “offer them more grace” or that because my parents weren’t born here, their perspective will be different than mine. You often hear this expressed through that very cliche proverb, “it’s their first time living.” But I am not trying to discount their struggles, nor am I expecting them to perfectly adapt to my needs. What I desire, rather, is a sincere effort on their part. To know that even if I made a mistake or did not want to conform to their expectation of me, I would still have their support. Behind all the jealousy and resentment, I wanted to be appreciated. Recognized. Admired. The hardest pill to swallow was knowing that I would never receive that from my parents.
You may disagree, but I’ve come to think that every parent is naturally entrusted with an aptitude to care, nurture and educate. But what makes a spectacular parent different from a run-of-the-mill parent is the desire to do better. To genuinely want to cultivate, strengthen and honor a meaningful connection, expecting nothing in return but inspiring loyalty through affection and endearment. To withhold conditions of prescribed modesty and maintain an unwavering presence, observing that even in the absence of shared beliefs or worldviews, a bond will continue to flourish.
I may not know what that’s like now, but I definitely know what it takes.
MiC Columnist Fahmida Rahman can be reached at fahmi@umich.edu.
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