The tale of two bitches

As most of you probably already knew, I was raised by my paternal grandparents, followed by a few years of living with my aunt (my father's younger sister), and uncle (her husband). In my recollection, life was pretty peaceful with my grandparents, and life with aunt and uncle was a whole other matter. I had always admired my aunt from when I was a little girl, I was born when she was in high school and since she was my mother's age, some people had mistaken us for mother and daughter. Something happened over the years and she became a picky and domineering woman, and my primary memory from the age of 10 to about 17, (I had also lived for 2 years in between with my father and stepmother, who really should have not become parents to start with.)I remember the daily yellings and lots of that psychological manipulation stuff. She dominated me and my uncle, and my uncle and I are cordial, but we were never close to began with.

I finally moved out to goto college, thus ending that part of my life with her. Don't get me wrong, she had all the best intentions, she just pushed me too hard from time to time. She's now in her 50's and has a son of her own since I left to goto college, he's an smart and active 15 year old. She works in the textile industry and has her one woman ran business. I don't know how big or how profitable her business is, but it frequently takes her to Southeast Asia for business. She's so ambitious that I don't think she'll retire any time soon.

My uncle, her younger brother, always have been the smartest and upright kid of his pack, did just about everything right, except that he married this seemingly sweet woman who basically turned out to be a total bitch. Maybe he had married the type that he fancied, someone masochistic always seems to want someone sadistic to be their partner. She was a Vietnamese immigrant from a large family, met my uncle while they were both graduate students, and married in the mid-80's. At first she was pretty sweet, then something happened, as if she had forgotten that a typical Asian family is, in nature, a large family with all 3-4 generations present and living in close proximity. Maybe she got sick of the fact that my grandparents chose to live nearby and wanted to be involved in their kids lives, who really knows why. She got bitter and angry over the years and even though she didn't yet lash out, with the ways that she carried herself around my uncle side of the family, she might as well have.

When my grandpa got ill, my aunt flew down for a week to help and take care of him. There were a lot of tension between her and my uncle, over what the best care was for grandpa, and it really helped when my uncle wife would occasionally cry out "Why me? What did I do to deserve caring for this family?" In reality, it has been my uncle, her long-suffering husband, who has been taking care of the folks, bringing home the pay so she didn't have to go and find a job, and shuttling the kids from and to school and all the activities that they do. (To tell you the truth, my cousins, all three of them, ages range from 11 to 16, couldn't stand to lift a finger either to help their dad out.) I can only imagine how my aunt was feeling at that point. You see, my aunt, after having pissed off so many people, business associates, family and friends alike, will not hesitate to get into a full-fledge fight with her sister-in law. I only hope that when they do duke it out, it'll not be in front of the grandparents or my uncle.

Maybe they are just what each other needs, one to vent and the other to take.

It also kind of makes me afraid to have kids sometimes, am I going to raise them mostly Chinese or American? Am I going to pressure my kids to take care of me if I fell ill or have gotten really, really old? Or do I want us to be in a nursing home, with other old folks like us, that'll probably feel like we're back in college again...dormatory style living, all over again! Hopefully, by then we'll be so deep into our amnesia or alzheimers to really care!

My thoughts are with my grandparents.