Of Fathers and Sons
Monday, June 16, 2025 at 12:50PM I remember that it was DH Lawrence who stated in one of his novels: “Sons are put on earth to torment their fathers”. The quotation stuck with me for some time, especially when I reflected on the troubled relationship I witnessed in my childhood between my father and my older half-brother Tuyên. But then, haven’t we also heard that sons sometimes have to pay for the sins of their fathers? Damaged genes, poor role models, and ill-fated decisions - the effects of which trickle down from a generation to the next. Could fatherhood be a daily reminder of the ways we are flawed, un-aware of how our thoughts and expectations can resonate poorly in the hearts and minds of our children, or could point them in the wrong direction, facing a harsh wind? Even in the luckiest of families, generational frictions are bound to happen.
I am writing about this because, a few months ago, our son Ben took me by surprise when he busted out an angry comment at me. It was on the evening when he and Linh were to fly out after a brief vacation visit at home. We were seating at the dining table, just waiting for the time to leave home for the airport. The drive would take around 1 hour or so, and when Ben said that we still have about 15 minutes before we have to leave, I just dropped a comment that it wouldn’t hurt to leave early since we are not doing anything here anyway, and we would not have to take the risk of a traffic jam or cutting too close to the flight departure time. It was then that Ben said “Don’t tell me what to do! You are used to telling people what to do all your life - as a doctor, but not to me anymore, I am almost 50 years old now.” He stood up and quickly left the room.
The abruptness of his remark took me totally by surprise. How could such a low-keyed suggestion on a rather trivial issue trigger such a strong reaction? Was this bust of anger just the tip of an iceberg of resentment I have not been aware of?
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Back to my brother Tuyên: the relationship between him and my father was sadly quite damaged and perhaps un-repairable. When my father’s first wife died, he remarried within a year, perhaps not long enough a waiting time for his children to get over their grieves. I recall how my father was disappointed with anh Tuyên’s seemingly lack of academic interest and poor performance, a constant source of friction between them. Anh Tuyên eventually left Việt Nam for France soon after his graduation from high school, (under the umbrella of my sister Quy, and/or the Catholic church, it was never clear to me) and we never heard from or about him again. |
At the opposite end, my parents have always nurtured and spoiled me, and my father was very proud on my scholastic achievements. I certainly inherited his love of books from him, along with other personal traits, I am sure. But similar to many other father-son relationships, I did judge him rather critically in my youth, especially in the way he treated my mother in the male dominant tradition of the Confucian culture. He never did any house work, while my mother labored from dawn to dusk on a tight family budget and kept us well fed and respectable. Of course I never openly voiced any negative feelings to my parents, and I was not a rebellious teen in any way. Respect of our elders was one of the pillars of most Asian societies. Still, I gave them one of the biggest disappointments of their lives in their old age – my marriage to a non-Vietnamese woman, and it devastated my mother. My father on the other hand seemed to take my decision fairly well, and for the rest of his life, continued to cherish Jeri for the person she is.
Fast forward 50 years later, Jeri and I are now at the same stage of life when our off-springs no longer look to us for advice, but probably think that our past experience has little relevance in the world they now live in; they may even feel and resent anything thing we say as an unsolicited interference rather than advices or resources. Perhaps as a pay back to what the way we made them feel when they were growing up, the pressure of parental expectations. Our children are now the ones setting the tone and realigning the direction of family relationships. Remember, for years, you made me listen to your Peter, Paul and Mary’s songs when you drove the family car, and I was in the back seat?! Now it’s your time to listen to the music of my generation when I am the one in the driver’s seat! I certainly don’t have anything against Ben plugging his cell-phone music on, and I actually appreciate listening to new tunes once in a while, just as much as I realize that we, the old folks, have our own biases and strong opinions. In a sense, the inter-generation difference and discord, as minor as it may be here, tells us something about our human nature. Age may demand some respect, but it does not command it. Role reversal is bound to happen in the cycle of life. Later the time will come when our children simply think they will actually need to protect us from our own cognitive deficit and functional decline. In this new paradigm, it will be their turn to tell us where we should stay, what we can and cannot do. I remember when my parents came to stay with us in Davis, my mother often sighed: “We used to tell our children where they need to go. Now they tell us where to sit.” How the generational roles and responsibilities play out in the circle of life!
Even so, compared to other stories I have read in novels or known about in real life situations, Ben and I have sailed along quite well. I don’t think I ever “pushed” nor “controlled” him in his schooling or other activities – he did quite well on his own, and Jeri and I raised him more in the Western family structure than in an Asian one, more relaxed and less demanding. Our relations with Ben had always been smooth, mostly because Ben was “an easy-going child”, a reasonable youngster, and now a responsible adult. Jeri often brings up the fact that Ben was never a difficult teenager by recounting that his only two acts of “rebellion” were (1) – refusing to eat apples from our own apple trees in Sebastopol, where we moved to from Davis against his wishes; and (2), we told him we would like him to play the guitar and would pay for the lessons, but he “had nothing to do with it”, so we dropped the idea. Only to pick it up later in his own terms, and to become a later totally passionate about owning and playing the best (and most expensive) guitar collection I have ever dreamed off. He plays the guitar and sings much better than I do, and Jeri and I are delighted. In other aspects of Ben’s life, we cannot be prouder of his professional achievements, and Ben and Jen seem happy in their relationship and life choices. Jen is a lovely person, with the same Midwestern roots and values that perhaps simmer in Jeri. Ben and Jen are also rather “quiet” people, not eager to “expose” their feelings in public or even in close circles. Their bond with us is never a loud one to manifest to the world, but more of a quiet nature built on shared values and sensitivities. We wish they live closer so that we can do more things together, but maybe someday when they retire, the West Coast would be where they would choose to settle down.
From an evolutionary point of view, all parents love and want their off-springs to do well in life, but Elizabeth Strout put it just right: “We all love imperfectly”. No matter how much we, as parents, love our kids; as spouses, love each other; or as friends and neighbors, look after one another, love comes and is experienced in so many shades of blessings and alterations. Mostly with blessings, in our case. (June 9, 2024 )