"I just called to say... um..."

My cousin was staying at the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai when bombs exploded there and gunmen captured hostages.  As it was unfolding, his mother rang her brother (my uncle), who rang my dad, who told my mother, who told me and reassured me that he had managed to flee and was currently in hiding.  I called my cousin’s little brother to offer comfort in the terrifying situation but I was greeted with,  “Huh? What are you talking about?” 

It turned out that my (little) cousin had slept in and hadn’t heard the news, even though his mother was in the next room making calls to relatives interstate.

My family has always found it hard to communicate, whether that involves conveying information about terrorist attacks, Christmas dinner plans or flight arrival times.  We have particular trouble with expressing affection.  It’s as though my parents’ migration to Australia – and the subsequent years of scarcity and sacrifice – could forever sustain their relationships with their children, as if the relocation was so clearly motivated by love that saying “I love you” was superfluous.

In our house, there were no pet names or gushing Christmas cards; we heard multiplication questions more than ‘sweetheart’.  It became harder to relate to my parents when English conquered over the Chinese dialects I spoke as a child.  I forgot how to form a sentence in Hokkien, even though I understood every word my father spoke to my uncles on the phone.

As I get older, I want to know my parents better.  Whenever I pull into their peach-coloured driveway, I remind myself how much I want our conversations to move beyond banality; I resolve to be respectful and to share candidly about my life.  But my good intentions evaporate between turning off the engine and swinging open the latticed security door.  When I step into the living room with its cracked and mottled sofas, dusty Yamaha piano, and yellowing collection of Encyclopaedia Britannica, I revert to the petulant teenager who grew up in those surroundings.  I hear myself sigh when my mother warns of the cancer risk associated with drinking from plastic bottles.  I answer, “Fine” and keep leafing through the Coles catalogue when my dad asks how work is. 

It’s not all bad though.  Strangely, the advent of mobile phones has improved communication between my father and me.  My parents don’t call just to chat (or to wish ‘happy birthday’ or advise of a death in the family, for that matter).  My dad is monosyllabic on the phone and the pauses stretch out, punctuated by nervous throat clearing.  We avoid that by text messaging.  My dad sometimes texts, “Cme 4 dinner 2nt. Cooked curry”, which is his way of checking that I’m still alive.  In text messages, we can write, “Love you” without the awkwardness of eye contact or the risk of having the words stick, unsaid, in our throats. 

Instead of wishing, at every birthday, for my dad to impart upon me a long and profound reflection on life, I have learnt to value what counts as expressions of support from my parents, as the people I know them to be.  My mum and dad could never teach me the proper pronunciation of ‘writ of certiorari’ or coach me on schmoozing tactics for corporate networking drinks.  But my mother drove me, albeit silently, to the city for my first interview with a High Court judge.  When I had to fly to regional Western Australia for my first trial, my dad picked me up at 5am and took me to the airport.

Words can be deceptive and what we say is only a fluttering shadow of what we mean.   The profundity of my relationship with my parents is in the unspoken – in the rustle of newspaper pages at the dining table, the purr and groans of the old Westinghouse fridge, the sighs of our sleeping dog and the comfort of knowing that my parents will always be cheering me on (even if it is only in their hearts).