After working a hundred hours a week on top of navigating a new culture and country, immigrant parents may not always have the time or the energy to share Hallmark aphorisms. But, if they love you, these are the ways they’ll let you know.
Silence
A picture is worth a thousand words, but silence from an immigrant parent after you’ve completed a task is worth a million. It means that you didn’t do anything wrong—yet! Now go clean the garage; someone is coming over for lunch in sixteen weeks.
Fruit cut up and delivered to you on a plate, unsolicited
The less necessary it is to cut up the fruit, the deeper their love for you. If they’re slicing bananas, you are the light of their lives.
Lack of physical touch
Physical touch may be an “official love language,” according to the Instagram Explore page, but trying to hug your stoic father at Patel Brothers is basically unacceptable P.D.A. Danny Tanner “Full House” hugs are science fiction.
Forcing you to do Kumon homework for three hours
That’s called quality time, O.K.? Sure, you’re not talking to each other, but your parents are sitting nearby, reading newspapers filled with misinformation and glaring at you every time you get up to pee, like they’re Amazon floor managers. That’s what love is all about.
Doing things you didn’t ask them to do
Is your gas tank suddenly full? (With gas from Costco, of course.) Are there seventeen bags of Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies (which you casually mentioned you liked in 2006) in the cupboard? Did your mom hand you fifty dollars for a cup of coffee, to “cover tax”? Did your parents angrily stuff Vaseline, Ziploc bags, and dish sponges into your purse? Accept these gestures, whether you already have several tubs of Vaseline or not. And don’t you dare say thank you.
Bombarding your phone
An image of a flower with “Good morning” written on it in a serif font. Memes about Jesus. Forwarded texts on WhatsApp. Fifteen missed calls. Consider each a reminder that you’re in their thoughts. And when you do finally answer the phone, only to sit in silence for an hour while being berated about not having kids yet, what they’re trying to say is that you are their reason for existing.
Sending Google alerts about homicides in your area
“Your area” means anywhere within a three-hundred-mile radius of you. Similar to their asking for the exact time you will be home, this will do absolutely nothing to insure your safety, but it will make them feel better.
Roundabout questions
Immigrant parents, incapable of asking “How are you?,” will instead ask when you last had the oil changed in your car, or if you mailed in your tax return yet. Also: Have you eaten? Have you been incorporating enough milk into your diet? Whatever amount of milk you’ve been drinking, it’s wrong. If they really want you to open up, they’ll put on a movie from the sixties and explain the plot in excruciating detail until you interrupt them with an update on your relationship status.
Killing mosquitoes
Who else would murder for you? And who else would do it with a forty-two-hundred-volt tennis racquet? You can ask for no deeper love.
Arguing with you, then feeding you
It would be ideal if you were hungry every fifteen minutes so that they could feed you. And nothing makes people hungrier than a shouting match about politics.
Asking about a friend you haven’t thought of since the Bush Administration
How’s Corinne doing? You have no idea. They may not know the names of any of your current friends or your job title, but what their interest in Corinne really indicates is that they care about you. That’s right: it was never about Corinne.
Going the extra eight thousand miles for you
They left behind the only life they’d ever known to move to a foreign place called Paris, but in Ohio. They accept their new reality of not following the metric system and being served tea without milk in it. They said goodbye to their friends, family, and entire network to adapt to a culture where they must keep up with both the Kardashians and the Geico cinematic universe. They did all this just to give their kids the opportunities they never had—to grow up safely, go to a good school, and eat funnel cake at Six Flags. ♦
