Last night my mom committed the horrifying act of estimating how many more times I’d see her in this life. “You visit twice a year, so if I live for 10 more years then we have 20 more times together.” This wasn’t a statement made to passive-aggressively conjure the guilt of a son. Mom and Dad have been supportive of my decade living in the East Coast in ways that defy the laws of immigrant-parent physics. She showed little resistance when I decided to live out my dream of being a New Yorker in ’09. She mustered bewildered excitement when Lovely and I moved to Beijing during China’s smoggiest winter on record, and finally stopped waiting for me to come home when I began my life in D.C.
That was almost five years ago, so her matter-of-fact statement about us only having a handful of moments left together came from more of a pragmatic, “let’s pencil these into our calendars” sort of a reflection that has still spiraled me into a morning of existential musings and questions about whether I’m really living the life I’m supposed to be living or if I’m just chasing frivolous adventures, overly-concerned with how people are responding to my internet self while the people who truly love me wait in the wing. Of course, there are the balanced happy mediums that I’ve spent over a decade not fulfilling – calling home more often, being truly present when I do visit, taking advantage of the plethora of technologies that make it much easier to keep in touch than ever before. Sometimes I think about the era of the Pony Express and telegrams, and how terrible I am at even sliding an envelope into the mailbox down the street. Thank the heavens for the telecommunications giants for saving me from a life as a hermit.