In a few days I will leave for New York City to see my family. There aren’t many members of my mother’s generation left.

Almost all of her side died during a six-month period; my mother and my aunt on the same day, with the others following within a few months of each other. Then my aunt passed away two years later.

My brother-in-law, Bob, and my nephew, Jordan, 11, will greet my stepson, Jay, daughter, Mimi, and myself at JFK Airport. There is always a rush of excitement to see them, gather our luggage and walk into the stifling humidity on the way to the parking lot.

My sister, Heidi, and Bob have been together since they were 17 years old. Theirs is a great love story. A friend told my sister that there was a cute boy in school that she liked. He was a jock named Bob. She pointed him out to Heidi.

My sister took one look and said, “I want him.” Her friend was confused. Heidi rarely talked. Now she was really saying something. The friend reiterated, “No, no, I like him.”

“No,” insisted Heidi, who never insisted on anything, “I do.”

Heidi and Bob each went with a different partner to their high school proms. At the class picnic they made their way to each other and have been with one another since. It was a long journey to get Bob to make the ultimate commitment. He assured us when he was ready, he would do it the right way.

In a London restaurant he asked the pianist to play their favorite song, fell to one knee and proposed. Bob has been a perfect husband and father ever since. They serve as role models for me about what good mates and parents should be.

But they can be loud.

Yelling isn’t in my family’s blood: it is their blood. My crazy relatives from Brooklyn always screamed. My family was exactly like the characters in Seinfeld.

Perhaps it was from growing up in buildings so close to each other in Brooklyn. Neighbors hollered to each other through open windows. My grandparents lost scores of relatives in the Holocaust, just as their neighbors did. It may be why they never stopped screaming.

But their yelling ways were passed to my mother and her siblings and then to me and my siblings. My stepson doesn’t yell. My daughter does. I’ve never once heard my Asian husband or his family raise their voices.

John has a hard time going back East because our nieces and nephews are so loud. Sometimes I have a hard time visiting his family on the Peninsula because they’re so quiet.

I bring the noise. At first I think they thought I was a little on the loud side. Now I think, or like to think, that they enjoy my honesty and humor.

When I go back East to visit my family it is bittersweet because life is so different now. We’re not the children. We’re the adults. And we have our own kids. What we no longer have is the older generation. No mother for my siblings and I, or grandmother for the nieces and nephews.

The older generation is gone. No wisdom to be passed.

Last year I told my nephews, Jordan and Alex, both are the same age and were born on the same day, stories about my sisters and how they got their nicknames.

“Did you have to tell them?” my sister, Robyne, asked.

“How can we not? Somebody has to and especially the embarrassing stuff. That’s the most fun,” I said conspiratorially to my nephews who laughed and nodded.

Such a wonderful part of my childhood was listening to the stories my mother and her sisters told us of their upbringing.

I do the same with my children so they will know their aunts, uncle and I when we were young. I also tell them about my mother and the rest of my deceased family. It brings them to life.

On this vacation, we’ll have more stories to share and it will be wonderful to see the cousins together. Watching them do simple things, like catching fireflies in jars and seeing the glass light up the night.

I love being able to give these experiences, these memories, to my own children and to my nieces and nephews. My sadness comes only that my mother and all the others are not here to share these times with us.

By Dawn Yun

Labels: Dawn Yun

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