In college, I lived with a girl whose parents were Indian immigrants. My roommate was the most modern, typical American you could ever want to meet, but underneath our trips to Banana Republic and movies and smoothies, there was a distinction between us. When we talked about dating, or career choices, or any other major life decisions, she frequently referenced what her parents would think if they found out. Often, her answer was “I can’t do that” because her parents wouldn’t approve.
This is not to say they weren’t supportive of her individual wishes; they were, and are. There were just some choices she would rather not have garner their disapproval, and she acted accordingly. This was completely alien to me. My attitude– and advice to her– was consistently, “screw what your parents think, they’ll get over it, just do what you want.” I never truly understood not only the function but the feeling of duty to one’s parents until now.
My mother and her mother came over to help me prepare for the move into the warehouse. For those who are new to the discussion, I decided to move into an artists’ colony in a warehouse in East Baltimore’s Station North arts district. I would be spending all of my time writing, producing textile arts, and pursuing my journalistic career. So my mom and my grandmother come over to my apartment, one floor of an old rowhome, to help me pack.
All the while, they’re asking questions. I try to break the idea in gently. Yes, it’s in a rougher area. Yes, I have a gated parking lot inside the building. Yes, we have elevator keys. Yes, my cat is coming with me. Yes, they are really nice people. The area’s on the upswing. It’s just received a special designation from the City and a lot of money is being funneled its way… And then they ask me if we can go drive by and see it.
This puts me at a distinct disadvantage. First of all, my mother’s terrified of my neighborhood now. There are more people here than in our entire town. Also, I don’t have keys yet. That means I can’t pop into the gated lot, go up the elevator, and show off the comparatively clean, pleasant, welcoming space inside the warehouse. I just have to show off the Baltimore office of Social Services, weeds in the sidewalks, and the chicken & lake trout shop adjacent to the boarded-up warehouse that neighbor the Copycat. But I acquiesce, rationalizing that they have to see it sometime, so why not now?
To call the tension “palpable” as we cruised up Guilford Ave and out of the comparative glory of Mount Vernon would be an embarassing understatement. My mother’s eyes bulged behind her sunglasses. My placid, comforting grandmother became snippy as I nervously shouted last-minute turn instructions and tried to figure out what to say to these people. They were mostly silent as we circled the warehouse, me pointing out the large windows and how the surrounding buildings were– mostly– coming up, too. We saw a hipster art girl walk into the warehouse; bonus points for me, showing it’s inhabited by young people like myself. My grandmother suggests we circle the building again. These women become ominously silent. I know they are scheming.
When we return to my apartment, my grandmother parallel parks and ensures the doors are locked. The seatbelts come off and my mom and grandmother turn to face me in the backseat, selecting their words as if each were choosing the proper filleting knife for a particular fish. They want to be sure. My grandmother takes the more levelheaded route, addressing my financial concerns and telling me that it’s not a prudent course of action to move ‘backwards’– from living alone to having a roommate, from living in a secure area to one where I need a gated parking space. I fumble out something about artist types and how plenty of young people live there, and that it’s not that bad. My mom is interspersing this with comments about how unsafe the neighborhood looks, and how it’s not well-kept like Hampden or Camden or a surprising number of other Baltimore neighborhoods she seems to know by name. I’m still buckled in, sputtering uselessly about the experience, when my mom plays her pocket ace: my grandfather wouldn’t want me living in such an unsafe area. I dissolve completely into sobs, feebly telling my mother that she has just used an unfair trump card. In my weakened state, they are able to quickly apply parent logic to everything– practically throwing money at me to assuage my financial concerns related to living in the apartment of a salaried young journalist when I have become a bartender, promising to come back tomorrow and help me redecorate, and making me promise I won’t move.
And unlike every single time I was ever told “no” before, as a child, as an adolescent, or as a young adult, I don’t fight them. I don’t tell them all the reasons they’re wrong about the neighborhood, and that I’ll prove them wrong, and I don’t care about their sleepless nights overdramatizing the dangerousness of the neighborhood. I simply say, of course not. I won’t move. I’ll stay. I’ll swallow my pride and accept your help on some of my mounting bills. Somehow it just became crystal-clear to me that my indulgence is simply not worth whatever worrisome hell, real or imagined, I’d be putting them through. Strangest of all, I don’t feel conflicted or regretful. In the turn of that one moment, I simply lost all desire to do something that my mom and my grandmother don’t want me to do. Unexpectedly, I found out the meaning of filial duty.
