This is my family. This looks like a perfect photo for a perfect family. But we are not the perfect family that you are imagining.
Our house doesn’t fill with laughters every moment we see each other, we don’t agree with every point each other makes, sometimes, we squabble, slam the door to escape a hard conversation, scream at the top of our lungs for someone else to stop talking, or go for days without talking with each other.
We have our differences and our flaws. Making a family of five adults, a preschooler plus two fur babies to live in harmony with each other under one roof isn’t an easy feat. We are a mixed race family. My husband is Caucasian; my family and I are Asians, coming here from Vietnam at different times during the past 11 years. On top of that, we are in different age groups with the oldest reaching 63 years old, and youngest is only three. A few of the family members are neurodivergent—we know how a person with ADHD and autism could act and feel.
You can imagine the chaos in the simplest of things in our home. We don’t eat the same type of food. My husband usually runs his own grocery trips. My husband and I have different parenting styles with one preferring to be gentle and explanatory while the other is more strict and disciplining.
Every conversation is a constant juggling between one side and the other. And the project of building a little free library in front of our place has gone to the fifth year, still incomplete, due to our differing opinions. And, yes, we have “many” of these “little library” projects in our home.
As a family, we are still scrambling and digging around for a spot in this society as new immigrants to a well-established community and country, in terms of our career and socio-economical standing. Attending schools to improve our skills or climbing the invisible ladder in the corporate world or even just in a grocery store often leave us drained at the end of the day.
But among these jungles of differences and flaws, we found our commonalities and interests, especially unconditional love. We found agreements, strengths, peace, happiness, and most important of all, ourselves. We tangle our differences into a beautiful mess that magically somehow works. In this home, we love, we are loved and nurtured. We grow like sweetgrass in the praries, facing the audacity of the outside world.
We are not perfect humans ourselves, and that is why we are here, together under this roof. Our home is our seeding pod that the needed care and love are woven in its soil nourishing each of us to flourishing, generation after generation. I am who I am today is because of this beautiful mesh and marsh of the simplest of things, which is also the best of things.
So anytime if I lose my temper with anyone in my family, I take a a deep breath to accept my shortcomings and their imperfections. I give myself time to digest, explain, and forgive. I do the same for myself, leaving room for my flaws and eventual growth.
I crave these small moments, especially now at the end of 2022. Sitting in the dining room, typing and writing down these words, I am greatful for how whole I feel and felt in these moments. Because those are the moments of warmth, love, acceptance, and whole.
Start with your intentions,
Thao NB