The Aunties Arrive

On Saturday, I got up at 8 am, later that usual, because I wanted to rest. When I got up to go to the bathroom, the phone rang. It was my first aunt from Toronto. In a loud, booming voice she said, “Jeff, zhe si da niang-niang.” I had to hold the phone away from me because her voice was so loud. She told me that she and my second aunt from San Jose were going to come over at noon.

After hanging up, I started getting ready. By his request, I made a seafood omelette for my dad, using the toppings from last night’s pizza. It was a failed attempt at an omelette, as the non-stick pan lost its non-stickness and it turned out to be more of an egg scramble. I heated up the now-turned cheese pizza for him to eat as toast and poured him a glass of organic Concord grape juice. He didn’t finish the eggs – as it wasn’t quite fluffy enough – but he did have a glass of milk after his grape juice.

My dad took a nap to save up energy for the later arrival of my aunts. I too got ready – I swept the floor, cleaned the toilet and the bathroom sink, washed the dishes, did a load of laundry. I know that if anything is out of order with anyone in my family, I won’t hear the end of it for days ... or worse, years.

They arrived at around lunchtime, bringing with them a bag of about 20 lianmu fruit, a box of ginseng tea, six bottles of this Isotonix vitamin drink powder, in addition to the organic penne pasta, tomato sauce and pumpkin spice granola that I had requested from my sister. We could have opened up a supermarket in our one bedroom apartment.

My first aunt from Toronto and I went out to buy lunch. I remember my mom saying that there was a dao xiao mian place around the corner. So we went there and me, not knowing how to read Chinese except niou rou mian, ordered that for me and my dad. Plus, he told me yesterday that he wanted to eat some beef. This little thing turned out to be one of those moments you never hear the end of.

After lunch, we went to Taipei 101 to have some coffee and hang out. When my dad went to the bathroom, my aunts were like, “Jeff, you shouldn’t let your dad eat anything too salty." I said yeah, I know. They said, well, you shouldn’t have let him eat niou rou mian. Or next time dilute the soup with water. And when you go out, make sure you ask them not to put any MSG in his food …

Oh boy ... this is going to be a long week.

Around dinnertime, we thought it'd be better to just eat in at Taipei 101. I surveyed the fourth floor for restaurant options that fulfilled my dad's request: meat. My dad told me the day before that he had been wanting a good steak, so we ended up going to Tony Diamond’s Italian Restaurant in Taipei 101. All their steaks came with sauce and so he ordered one with pesto. I requested that the sauce be put on the side.

Luckily I did because he didn’t like the pesto, thought it was too salty. He would’ve been fine with just eating the steak, but he had dropped his fork and well, he then had a grudge. I picked it up and a minute later he said where’s the fork that I dropped. I said that I had it. He said that the manager was poorly trained. I asked why, and he replied that the manager saw him drop his fork and should have come over to replace it. Instead, the manager just walked on by. My dad then had the look. The look where he’s scanning the room looking for a target.

Well, a few minutes later, he called over the waitress and told her: 1. The pesto was too salty 2. The corn wasn’t cooked enough and 3. The string beans were too firm.

The manager came, apologized and replaced the pesto sauce with a mushroom sauce (they didn’t cook the vegetables again). So when he got the sauce, I tasted it and said that it had a sweet flavor, but was still kind of salty, like a gravy.

He proceeded to dunk pieces of his steak into this gravy. So I said, hey, you should be careful, it’s still salty. He looked at me and just waived his hand like, Don’t tell me not to eat it ‘cuz I’m gonna eat it; it’s just a little and it’s my body and I want to do what I want. Just fuhgeddaboudit.

I looked around and there was no one there to back me up ...

It was a pretty good steak for NT$600.

That night, my dad couldn't sleep. He wasn't sure whether it's because of the coffee he drank or what. I heard him get up at 2 a.m., then again at 4 a.m. when he took leftover niou rou mian out of the fridge to eat. He was fiddling with the plastic bag surrounding the container and it quickly became annoying. I got up and thought Oh my God, he's trying to cook. I told him to go sit down, and heated up the noodles for him although I was half asleep.

When I asked him why he couldn't sleep, he said he was engrossed in thinking about going back to the U.S. in October, when he turns 65 and qualifies for government Medicare insurance. After talking with my second aunt, he had suddenly become interested.

Prior to her arrival, she mentioned this to me over the phone and I was instantly aware that she would plant this in his mind. I don't know why, but I just had this feeling. I asked my dad a few weeks ago if he wanted to move back and he said that he didn't want to. "Never," is what he said. He didn't want to live the kind of life he had in the States, where one has to struggle to maintain their quality of life.

I remember on Christmas Eve in Shanghai, my parents took me to eat niou rou mian at this tiny shop. The owner and his friends who ran it seemed to all be from Taiwan. But they were like my dad: They moved from Taiwan to the U.S., worked, retired and moved to Shanghai, while their kids stayed in the States.

The owner of that niou rou mian shop also said he would never go back for the same reason. Shanghai, to them, is a place where they feel comfortable, and can relax, and pursue small business ventures that won't put them out on the street if they didn't succeed.

But he changed his mind about moving back to the States. He is now considering it. Not that I'm advocating that choice, but sometimes I wonder what my aunt said to him. In Chinese, you say that she is li hai.

I just wished he didn't lose a whole night's sleep over it.