Photo by amanda tipton

By Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

It was a typical toddler meltdown. My two-year-old, overtired and over-stimulated, wouldn’t talk to anyone or eat any of the food we put in front of him. Instead, he retreated into a corner of the room to wail.

But the scene, which took place a couple months ago, was anything but typical. We were in Hong Kong, in my grandmother’s eleventh-story flat, less than twenty-four hours after arriving from California. The whole purpose of this long journey was to bring my son to meet his great-grandmother for the first—perhaps the only—time. And now he wouldn’t even make eye contact with her or my other relatives. For long minutes that stretched out into eternity, he kicked and screamed as four generations of my family awkwardly looked on.

I wanted to bury my face in the delicious home-cooked dishes before me. I was sure that everyone in the room saw my son’s behavior as a reflection of my poor parenting skills. Not only was he acting like he had lost all his marbles, but the truth about how American I was raising him to be had come out: my son didn’t speak or understand Chinese, he wouldn’t eat Chinese food, he didn’t know how to use chopsticks, and he refused to address anyone by their titles. He even carelessly tossed aside the red envelope given to him, clearly unaware that it had any significance at all.

I was pretty sure I was the worst Chinese mother ever. The sense of shame I felt was palpable, a weight that hung my head and slumped my shoulders.

To make matters even more unbearable, my adorable eighteen-month-old nephew was charming the pants off of everyone. Though he could barely talk, he gamely lisped out everyone’s titles. He scarfed down every bit of food that was put in front of him. He smiled, he laughed, he repeated every Cantonese word spoken to him. He seemed delighted just to be in the presence of these fun and amazing relatives.

And still, my son—his older cousin—continued to wail. And I continued to be weighed down by my shame. Worst. Chinese. Mother. Ever.

In the remaining days of our trip, things didn’t get much better. My son had at least two more epic meltdowns and several bouts of whining in front of my family. He occasionally engaged with them, but I’d be hard-pressed to recall a single meaningful interaction he had with my grandmother. We had come all this way for them to begin to build some kind of a relationship. But in this most important of missions, I felt like I had failed.

Each day I braced myself for the criticisms, for the sighs, for the disappointment from relatives who had expected a version of my son that didn’t exist. It wouldn’t have been the first time my Hong Kong family had been brutally honest about my shortcomings.

And yet those expressions didn’t come. Instead they remarked on my son’s height and attractive physical features (my grandma was particularly obsessed with his big brown eyes and cute button nose); they commented on how he was clearly healthy and smart; they loved seeing how attached he was to both his mother and his father. They even ordered pizza just so my son could eat a more familiar food. (And even then, he only had about four bites.)

On our very last night there, we gathered in a typically raucous Cantonese restaurant for one final dinner. Even as both kids began to lose their marbles from exhaustion, my grandmother made her way around the table and told my mother, my sister, and me in turn: Thank you. Thank you for coming all this way. Thank you for bringing your children to see me.

It reminded me of the prayer my grandmother said the first night we were there, just moments before my son’s first Hong Kong meltdown. “Don’t go too long!” my aunt urged her as we all sat down for dinner.

Despite her acquiescence, my grandma still couldn’t help herself. She began by thanking God for creating the universe (at which point I felt a slight panic that she might say grace through every book of the Bible), and eventually made her way to expressing her awe at the arrival of the fifth generation of Christians in our family. Thanks be to God, she exclaimed.

I wished my son could have put on a good show for his great-grandmother, that he at least could have communicated with her. But she was just happy he was there. Though she has hardly traveled outside of China’s borders and doesn’t speak a word of English, my grandma has learned to accept the reality—perhaps even more so than I have—that we can’t be the same. Since my parents first emigrated to the US, each successive generation is a little less Chinese and a little more American. The divides across generations, cultures, and a vast ocean are too great for that not to be the case.

But in their unexpected grace to me and my tantruming toddler, my Hong Kong family reminded me what actually matters when it comes to family heritage. Despite my failure to raise my son as a traditional Chinese boy, we can still celebrate the most important commonality that has been passed down through the generations: one faith in one God, who has walked with our family through political revolutions, decades-long separations, sickness and loss—but also new starts, expanding opportunities, marriages and births. His faithfulness over more than half a century is the legacy we all share, no matter how vast the ocean or how big the cultural divide between us.

In the end, my relatives weren’t looking for a good show. They just wanted to experience this most tangible expression of God’s latest grace in our family: a new generation, raised to know the love and faithfulness of a forever God. Thanks be to God.

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun is a writer, blogger, and editor who has found healing and hope through words. She is a regular contributor to Her.meneutics and has written for more than a dozen other publications in several countries. Previously she worked as a nonprofit and social enterprise professional in the U.S. and Asia. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and adorable hapa son. Find her online at www.chengtozun.com or on Twitter @dorcas_ct.