“Every year you come back home, it is like celebrating the Lunar New Year!” my mother says as she folds the pocket-full of a hand-chopped mix of pork and scallops into a crescent-shaped dumpling, a tradition for families before the Chinese New Year Eve.
My words dangled in my throat. I was about to tell her that I wanted to go to Guilin on a volunteer trip for a week, but I swallowed it down.
I have not been at home for a year, and I have just stayed at home for three days for my four-week winter break. But I am bored, and I want to leave. The excitement of home seems to exist only before reaching home, at best before the end of the first two days and is usually outlived by the monotonous repetition of eating, sleeping, and trying to circumvent the firewall for Facebook.
I am called the loneliest generation, a term that dominates headlines after the end of the Chinese One Child Policy. I do not have siblings. And having left home since the age of 15, I am made lonelier as I have few friends in my hometown.
As the only child, I am both lucky and unlucky. I never experience poverty, revolution, and famine my parents have gone through. However, the general comfort they provided and the undivided attention along with high expectations have made me yearn for independence since young.
Over these years, as I eagerly set my feet on foreign soils and meet new people all over the world, days at home have become shorter and shorter. I always thought that I am doing them a service by going home.
I told my mother that I was going out to eat again. “But I bought a good old hen yesterday. I wanted to stew soup for you, but yesterday you were also not at home.” She looked disappointed. “But fine, we will eat it alone.” She forced a smile and that made her creases all piled up at the corner of her eyes.
As 150 million young people who grew up as only children lament feelings of isolation, what has been largely ignored is their parents’ loneliness. According to U.N. forecasts, the number of people 60 or older will approach 400 million, or a quarter of the population in the early 2030s.
For 300,000 students now studying in the U.S., their parents have to go through an even steeper adaptation curve to the new life of loneliness — a life no longer that centers around their only child, a life that starts off and ends by checking messages from their child on the other side of the world.
And for parents who once lost their only children like my parents, it must feel like a second loss. When I first left home, my mother could not help crying when I called her every week. And even after six years, every time I travel, she cannot sleep till she receives my message “arrived.” I sometimes feel it is unfair for them to go through such bereavement, for they have gone through the grief of loss, and now they have to relive this similar experience again and again. I know their greatest fear has always been getting sick, for we have no relatives in my hometown. Sometimes, the thought of them passing away make me shudder, for it takes me at least a day to travel back home with at least two transits and I will have no one to depend on once they are gone.
However, we have all learnt to accept our fears and worries, for it is a life we have chosen. And we are both still learning to adapt to a life that has been more about separation than what a family is about.
I always think that we do not live for each other, but we are a family tied by blood for some reasons. Yes, my parents are consoled by the fact that I am pursuing what I want. As self-centered and incongruent as it may sound against the Chinese traditional idea of filial piety, I am not going to sacrifice my dreams for my parents, but the point is, even without sacrificing, there is still much more to do to make their final stage of life less lonely. Maybe it is just about including them into my life even if it is through a flickering screen of photos, messages and video chats. Maybe it is just about spending more quality time with them when I am still at home.
First featured in the Huffington Post.