Professional Sweetheart: 9/13/24

妈妈

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There’s a scene in the movie Didi (2024) where the titular character (played by Izaac Wang) is having an argument in the car with his mother (Joan Chen). At this point of the film, Didi, who is roughly middle school aged (eighth grade, maybe?) has had a couple of disappointing experiences under his belt in a short period of time. For starters, he’s a first generation kid, or the American child of immigrant parents. Although he’s living in California in a diverse community of people from different backgrounds, he still feels like an odd person out. He’s frustrated by his inability to form deep connections to the kids around him, including a girl from school that he really likes. He also wants to be seen as a cool skater dude (though he doesn’t know how to skate, really) as well as a stud with the ladies (though he gets nervous when he’s alone with them). And he tells a group of older boys he wants to be pals with that he’s half white, despite the fact that both of his parents are Asian.

In the car, his building angst is finally released onto his mother, who he projects all of his self-hatred onto in that moment. Suddenly, she’s the reason why he’s having a hard time. If she had been more Americanized, more successful, a better wife and mom, she wouldn’t have ended up such a fuck-up and with such a fuck-up for a son.

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I’ve been obsessing over this scene since seeing the film the other night. Not just because I really liked the movie overall (I sort of guessed I would after seeing the trailer a while ago). It was mostly because this sequence in particular felt like my own experience as a first generation kid with an Asian mom. As it rolled out I started remembering a very similar argument (or, really, arguments) with my mother where I basically said the exact same kinds of things to her, when I was almost Didi’s exact age. At that time, I was also feeling like an unlovable loser with no friends and decided it was entirely on her. And for some reason in these heated moments, I would push her to say that my existence somehow ruined her life, which would confirm the bad thoughts I had about myself, of course. And just like this scene, sometimes the fights would be so rough that she would actually allude to it. And even though I thought I wanted it, I was never, ever ready to hear it.

It goes without saying that I’ll always feel sadness and guilt for talking to my mother this way, pushing her to a place where she was forced to be hurtful, and thinking things like that about her and myself. It’s cringeworthy to think about after so many years have passed, when I’m much older and wiser. But a stranger who could write it so specifically into a film! It was like I’d jumped into an uncomfortable time machine. However, I forget just how intense things were at that age. I’m not sure what it is about the middle school years but I literally cannot think of another moment in my lifetime where that many core wounds were formed. Like, I barely remember elementary school at this point but I can remember every single time someone hurt my feelings in middle school in stunning detail. In my mind, you were really lucky to not have completely hated yourself back then. What a fucked age!

For many reasons, too many to get into here right now, I felt like I really struggled in those pre-teen years. Especially when it came to my racial identity and how I felt about my family. I remember being so obsessed with being “normal” and “American” and wanting to just escape the foreignness of my parents and grandparents. I guess that’s growing up in the deep South for you, but a movie like Didi proves that this can basically happen anywhere. Seeing this kid with his own feelings of desperation to be anyone other than himself — older, hotter, cooler, whiter…it just really resonated with me. And of course, the complicated relationship with his mom. Ugh, gut-wrenching. It felt similar to watching the mother and daughter from Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), when they went back and forth with each other in the parking lot.

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Honestly, it doesn’t take much for me to get really emotional watching movies about Asian moms. Or really, moms in general. I suspect that’s a lot of people. I’ve probably always had lifelong “mommy issues” (and “daddy issues” too, trust). However, as I’ve gotten older, these things have come into an extremely clear and almost dire focus. Instead of being all nihilistic and “fuck it” about not getting along with her, I regularly worry about her not really understanding me and vice versa. Sometimes I’ll have these moments where I will think about being alone in the world without her and it will just get me extremely, unbearably sad for a couple minutes. I’ve discovered (therapy, thank you) in the past year and a half that virtually every aspect of my personality comes from things I’ve observed and learned from her. It’s a long, long way from eighth grade these days. Now I’ll watch a movie like Didi and get so rocked by my own similar memories and experiences with my mom: her also taking me to McDonalds to sit inside to eat, of ushering her out of my room whenever my friends from school were at the house (another cringe moment), of her fighting with the mother of her husband, a.k.a. my grandmother, when she lived with us. Wondering if she hates her life in America, if she regrets anything, who I am to her, if she’s proud of me, if she’s creatively fulfilled, if she’s happy.

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Talk soon,

Millie

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