Let's Talk
I suppose I never got the memo that the teenage-parent relationship is bound to become strained especially if the teenager grows up in a completely different country than his or her parents did. I've never felt the embarrassment of having a Fay Da birthday cake that none of my other 8-year-old friends wanted to eat, or having to order at fast food places for my dad who couldn't say "cheeseburger". My parents didn't hang traditional Chinese red paper things on our front door, or make us eat dumplings and rice everyday. But the generation gap that created rifts in most of my friends' relationships with their parents now threatens to do the same to us. My parents had spent most of my life carefully constructing a bridge in order to best this dreaded obstacle of parenthood, but now I feel as if I've crossed the bridge while my parents are stuck on the other side. I thought that talking to my parents was the best way to solve this problem. This problem tha...