I can't think of a name.
Nov. 23rd, 2011 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabrinamariSo I’m on the plane thinking hard about the next few days and the last many years. Trips home are fraught with hidden traps, both minefields and opportunities. Hell, the minefields are the opportunities. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that’s Starhawk is right: where there’s fear, there’s power. Sometimes---often---the most fruitful places to look for power are where you least want go.
For the daughter of a very conservative, controlling immigrant parent, this trip is profound.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
karmawings sent me a text today that read, “I feel like chest bumping you and saying, ‘Strength and honor’ like they did in Gladiator before going into battle”. She understands what I am about to do. As another immigrant daughter, she knows how hard it was---and is---to fight for your own sense of agency, your own right to control your mind, heart, and body and your own ability to make choices. Although Karma is Asian and I am Latin, I would bet good money that she would listen to many of my childhood stories with recognition, sadness, anger and understanding.
In conservative immigrant households, young women do not control their fates. They do not own the right to their own sexuality. They do not automatically get to decide what they want to do, where they want to go and who they want to be. In many immigrant households, women owe their obedience to their families. In short, they are not agents.
Young immigrant daughters learn early that their first fealty is to family. They are supposed to stay close to home, close to their parents and must, above all, remain innocent. In mainstream modern America, this is like forbidding them to cultivate the knowledge and behaviors that will keep them most functional, competent and safe in the world. Even learning to drive was a battle. For a long time, I could not understand why my mother was dead set against Driver’s Ed. In high school, everyone else took it, and everyone learned to drive. In my household, asking to take Driver’s Ed was like asking to spend the night with a boy----completely, totally unthinkable and utterly out of the question. Why would I even want to do it?
No matter how I explained myself, my mother stood firm---no Driver’s Ed. When I finally won the battle and took the damn class, I was so dispirited and shaken up that I didn’t manage to pass it, and of course, this was taken as proof that I never should have taken it in the first place.
The problem, you see, was that driving meant freedom, and immigrant daughters are not allowed to have freedom. Girls should stay home and go to school, not run around in cars to do who knows what with boys. They should focus on their studies, get their degrees and live at home until they get married, and then they should go and live with their husbands.
Needless to say, this model did not work for me, and I spent my youth fighting tooth and nail for the right to control my own choices, direct my own whereabouts and make decisions about my own sexuality. Still, my mother’s beliefs left their mark. In many ways she was successful in keeping me from learning all the things that I should have learned as well as in indoctrinating me with her ideas of right and wrong. She would scoff at the idea that I, her disobedient daughter, absorbed any of her beliefs, but she did succeed in limiting a great deal of my experience, even into the last few years.
****
Going home now is a very good thing, and I am terrified about it. Sometimes visits go well, and I bask in the very real love I feel for both my mother and my father. During those visits, I think I have grown, and that I can now manage the many undercurrents of anger, guilt and pain that characterize our relationships. But sometimes, I make a misstep, and assert my own independence in a way that angers my mother, and then there is hell to pay---real hell.
But always, in the past, this has occurred after Michael has gone home and I have been trapped without a car. Under these conditions, the environment of my childhood is recreated and I cannot leave.
This time, it is different.
I will have my own rental car parked in the driveway. I have a place to go if I decide to leave: my dear friend Phyllis lives only 90 minutes away.
So, ‘strength and honor’---I will stay as long as I can and do the very best I can, seeking to do the best thing possible for all of us. I will treat my mother with love and respect and spend as much time as I can with my dear, beloved father. And I will do my best to do the wise thing, the right thing, the kind thing in strength and honor, safe in the knowledge that I can now drive, and if necessary, I can drive myself away.
I hope I don’t have to.
****
Stopping here to post in the airport's free wifi. I feel kind of sick: nauseous and shaky, but I know this feeling well. It means that something powerful and important is about to happen. I will probably feel good about this later.
For the daughter of a very conservative, controlling immigrant parent, this trip is profound.
karmawings sent me a text today that read, “I feel like chest bumping you and saying, ‘Strength and honor’ like they did in Gladiator before going into battle”. She understands what I am about to do. As another immigrant daughter, she knows how hard it was---and is---to fight for your own sense of agency, your own right to control your mind, heart, and body and your own ability to make choices. Although Karma is Asian and I am Latin, I would bet good money that she would listen to many of my childhood stories with recognition, sadness, anger and understanding.In conservative immigrant households, young women do not control their fates. They do not own the right to their own sexuality. They do not automatically get to decide what they want to do, where they want to go and who they want to be. In many immigrant households, women owe their obedience to their families. In short, they are not agents.
Young immigrant daughters learn early that their first fealty is to family. They are supposed to stay close to home, close to their parents and must, above all, remain innocent. In mainstream modern America, this is like forbidding them to cultivate the knowledge and behaviors that will keep them most functional, competent and safe in the world. Even learning to drive was a battle. For a long time, I could not understand why my mother was dead set against Driver’s Ed. In high school, everyone else took it, and everyone learned to drive. In my household, asking to take Driver’s Ed was like asking to spend the night with a boy----completely, totally unthinkable and utterly out of the question. Why would I even want to do it?
No matter how I explained myself, my mother stood firm---no Driver’s Ed. When I finally won the battle and took the damn class, I was so dispirited and shaken up that I didn’t manage to pass it, and of course, this was taken as proof that I never should have taken it in the first place.
The problem, you see, was that driving meant freedom, and immigrant daughters are not allowed to have freedom. Girls should stay home and go to school, not run around in cars to do who knows what with boys. They should focus on their studies, get their degrees and live at home until they get married, and then they should go and live with their husbands.
Needless to say, this model did not work for me, and I spent my youth fighting tooth and nail for the right to control my own choices, direct my own whereabouts and make decisions about my own sexuality. Still, my mother’s beliefs left their mark. In many ways she was successful in keeping me from learning all the things that I should have learned as well as in indoctrinating me with her ideas of right and wrong. She would scoff at the idea that I, her disobedient daughter, absorbed any of her beliefs, but she did succeed in limiting a great deal of my experience, even into the last few years.
****
Going home now is a very good thing, and I am terrified about it. Sometimes visits go well, and I bask in the very real love I feel for both my mother and my father. During those visits, I think I have grown, and that I can now manage the many undercurrents of anger, guilt and pain that characterize our relationships. But sometimes, I make a misstep, and assert my own independence in a way that angers my mother, and then there is hell to pay---real hell.
But always, in the past, this has occurred after Michael has gone home and I have been trapped without a car. Under these conditions, the environment of my childhood is recreated and I cannot leave.
This time, it is different.
I will have my own rental car parked in the driveway. I have a place to go if I decide to leave: my dear friend Phyllis lives only 90 minutes away.
So, ‘strength and honor’---I will stay as long as I can and do the very best I can, seeking to do the best thing possible for all of us. I will treat my mother with love and respect and spend as much time as I can with my dear, beloved father. And I will do my best to do the wise thing, the right thing, the kind thing in strength and honor, safe in the knowledge that I can now drive, and if necessary, I can drive myself away.
I hope I don’t have to.
****
Stopping here to post in the airport's free wifi. I feel kind of sick: nauseous and shaky, but I know this feeling well. It means that something powerful and important is about to happen. I will probably feel good about this later.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 12:54 am (UTC)Text me if you need support, and I will text you back stories of funny patients.
And yes, I would absolutely listen and relate to your stories.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 01:22 pm (UTC)Hugs!
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 02:19 pm (UTC)Folks like to think I'm strong.
I'm not.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-24 05:26 pm (UTC)and you know, sometimes our moms get tired of the bullshit they felt compelled to support/represent/be. bing sovereign amd strong, might be the most liberating thing you can dofory your mom and you.
hoping this trip will open all kind of wonderful new possibiilites.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-25 02:02 am (UTC)May your travels be safe in every way.