June 20, 2025
Dear Everett,
When we brought you home from the hospital more than seven and a half years ago, one of the first things people noticed was that you had two hair swirls on the crown of your head. As far as I can tell, everyone seems to have a place where hair swirls on the crown of their head. Most people have one, you had two. Multiple people told us your double swirl indicated you would have a temper; I believe one was your Taiwanese grandmother, and the other the Filipino caretaker that looked after you your first year. I found it interesting multiple people from different cultures came to the same conclusion about what a physical trait meant regarding your personality and demeanor. I’m tempted to say that I ultimately wrote off the predictions, chalking them up to “old wives tales”, but that’s not entirely accurate. Over the last decade or so I’ve become more curious about folk wisdom, especially ancient folk wisdom. I find Chinese culture particularly intriguing just because it’s been relatively uninterrupted for the least 5,000 years. I don’t want to suggest that I now wholly subscribe to folk wisdom, nor that I believe folk wisdom trumps science or modern knowledge. What I am trying to convey that I no longer dismiss folk wisdom out of hand as superstitious hokum. I approach folk wisdom with curiosity, wanting to counterbalance against my longstanding bias against.
Anyway, it didn’t take us very many years to discover you do, in fact, have a temper. My earliest recollection of a personal confrontation with your temper happened at our old house, the house we rented and lived in when we first moved home from Singapore. You were probably 2 years old, although you might have been 3. I don’t remember why you were upset, only that you were upset. You were getting ready to take a shower (which, come to think of it, may have been the cause of your frustration: perhaps I was making you take a shower against your will). As you started to cry, you faced directly at me and screamed at the top of your lungs. No words, just a blood-curdling scream. It’s…hard to put into words the level of force and energy you conveyed with that scream. It almost seemed to me that you had suddenly been plugged into an energy socket, and the scream was just letting off the excess energy of the moment. What I can say is that I felt that scream, and I don’t just mean the sound waves: I felt the energy you projected toward me. And it was quite clear to me that was your intention, to make me feel some of the anger and energy you were feeling.
I distinctly remember my first reaction: I interpreted your scream as an affront, as a challenge to my authority as your father. I felt a desire to come down hard on you in that moment, to punish what I perceived to be your provocation. I’ll admit I don’t remember exactly how I handled that moment, but I do remember how I handled the aftermath. Eventually (there may have been another instance before this reality truly set in) I realized this would not be our last such interaction, and that I needed to prepare myself for how I would handle future such interactions. I remember (and I’ll admit, I’m proud of this part) recognizing my interpretation that you were challenging my authority wasn’t necessarily real, and deserved interrogation. With reflection I decided that in those moments you 1) were experiencing big emotions, 2) didn’t know how to handle those big emotions, 3) felt tempted to direct those big emotions at others, and 4) needed a playbook for how to handle those emotions as healthily as possible.
As you got older, your outbursts came to include hitting or screaming at people. Particularly when it came to hitting, we set a pretty firm boundary, letting you know firmly and clearly hitting wasn’t okay. But we also talked to you about what options were available to you. I’ll admit: you internalized and implemented those suggestions faster than I ever would have anticipated. Soon, when you became frustrated or overwhelmed, you would storm off to your room. I don’t know if you screamed into a blanket or punched a pillow, but you separated yourself to give yourself room to let off steam without unnecessarily hurting other people. In some ways, you internalized the new lessons faster than I did: I sometimes followed you to your room in an attempt to talk to you; often you screamed at me, “Dad, I need SPACE!”. I recognized that you were right, and that you were merely setting a clear boundary with me not to invade your grieving process. To your great credit, since you were five years old you’ve maintained the ability to storm off to your room, process whatever emotions you were experiencing, and then return either fully recovered or ready to articulate what help you wanted from others going forward. Those are remarkable skills, ones I’m not sure I possess even today (and certainly not more than a couple years ago).
While you and I have become pretty adept at collectively managing your emotional outbursts, I’ll admit not all of your closest relationships have evolved so cleanly. You and your brother are settling into something of a pattern that I’ll admit concerns me a bit. Your brother will do something that upsets you, and (from my vantage point anyway: I often don’t see the offending incident) you immediately resort to screaming at your brother. Your brother I think finds these outbursts mildly triggering, because he resorts into a part-defensive, part-offensive posture where he alternates between antagonizing you, denying he did anything wrong, dismissing your concerns, and (when parents get involved) refusing to see your point of view or empathize with your situation. Empathy may never be Leland’s strongest suit, but he absolutely has the capacity to understand how others might feel in a situation, so I’ve come to believe Leland’s feelings are deeply hurt by your outbursts, clouding his ability to function at his best self. In those instances, he’s protecting himself from further pain, not looking to repair your relationship in the ways you would want. And so the cycle repeats. I will continue to look for ways I might nudge the two of you toward a healthier handling of those inevitable disagreements…but I’ll admit to wondering whether this is something you and your brother will need to figure out for yourselves (even, quite possibly, as adults). What I can predict fairly confidently: if you guys don’t figure out how to handle these interactions with each other, you will find ways to recreate them in other adult relationships: with your spouses, coworkers, bosses, or children, just to name a few of the most likely candidates. My point being: you and your brother will independently find ways to experience similar scenarios over and over again until you learn how to handle the pain you are both attempting to avoid underlying those experiences.
The member of the family who most struggles with your temper, however, is your mom. While your even-keeled brother can move on to the next situation pretty quickly, your mom gets particularly angry when you direct your outbursts at her. See, you get your temper from your Ah Gong. Unfortunately, your Ah Gong never learned how to handle his temper effectively. Instead, he let his negative emotions build until he eventually lashed out at his family. By then, he had so much stored pain that he couldn’t stop lashing out. His outbursts turned into torrents of vitriol that could fairly be described as verbal abuse. Your mom grew up experiencing these outbursts, and coped by attempting to avoid them at all costs. Now, after a lifetime spent attempting to avoid experiencing emotional outbursts, your mom finds herself confronted with the same temper all over again. Honestly, I feel a lot of compassion for your mom; those experiences must be hard for her.
One dirty secret complicating the situation even further: your mom inherited the same temper from your Ah Gong. To be fair, your mom is not nearly as prone to violent outbursts as you and your Ah Gong. But I’ll admit to wondering how much of that is a function of training rather than nature. Your mom came to understand very early that outbursts were not tolerated, and so found ways to suppress her emotions. And at root, the common thread between the three of you (you, your mom, and your Ah Gong) is that you feel things very deeply. Sometimes those feelings feel too big, and you need to let them out. For you and your Ah Gong, those come in the form of violent outbursts generally directed at loved ones. For your mom, the outbursts come more slowly, but like her dad, once they begin, they tend to come out in a chain reaction of anger, frustration, and bitterness. Fortunately, unlike her dad, your mom rarely reaches the stage of outright vitriol, but your mom’s seemingly endless acerbic tongue lashings are something we’ve all experienced more than we care to recount. To her great credit, your mom is doing her work, and developing tools that help her process her painful emotions in healthier ways. Her progress is slower than the rest of us might like, but (as you will learn in adulthood) it always is.
The thought hit me a couple weeks ago: you are in our lives precisely so that your mom gets another chance to experience her father’s anger. I shared this insight with your mom, and she doesn’t disagree with me. See, right now when your mom experiences your outbursts, she intuitively (and probably even unconsciously) recognizes her father’s temper, which hints at the pain she experienced from that anger. Wanting to avoid experiencing that pain again, your mom tends toward angrily and forcefully attempting to dislodge your anger, which…doesn’t work very well. The opportunity you present is for your mom to develop a new toolkit for how to manage that anger, and the big emotions underlying that anger. While your Ah Gong’s behaviors were pretty calcified by the time your mom experienced them, you are still pretty unformed. It’s harder to ascribe your angry outbursts to deep flaws in character: you are just a kid after all, doing the best you can with the skills you have. Thus, you represent an opportunity to try new things, to experiment, and to find new ways of dealing with old problems.
For your mom that likely includes practicing experiencing her own big emotions. Partly what your mom reacts to in your outbursts is the fact that she wasn’t permitted the space to have outbursts of her own. The idea that she wasn’t allowed to process her big emotions with big outbursts is so deeply ingrained that she can’t believe her own child hasn’t internalized the lesson, as if the lesson should have been passed on genetically. She’s tempted to reach back, leveraging the authoritarian tools of her own childhood, in order to impose order and ‘good behavior’ on her household. The struggle, of course, is the intuitive recognition that the authoritarian toolkit is deeply flawed, but it’s the only one she knows firsthand.
I’m reminded of last night’s Spiritual Stew meeting. The recurring theme was around the temptation (reinforced by a lifetime of habits) to steer away from the storm, but healing comes from steering into the storm. Our intuitions tell us to avoid feeling pain. In fact, the sources of our pain also represent our opportunities to heal; but only by purposely (and carefully, and gracefully) steering into the storm can we find the root of the pain, feel it through to completion, and let it go. From that place we open space to heal and grow. This is rebirth, or resurrection, which I deeply, compassionately wish for your mom these days. For better and worse, you are creating a relatively constant reminder (and opportunity) for your mom; let’s hope she accepts the invitation you inherently extend to her.
Last week, to start the summer break, we went down to see your Uncle in Orange County. You, your brother, and I made the drive down, then slowly made our way back during the work week through Santa Barbara and Hearst Castle before returning home. While in Orange County, I realized that your mom is not the only person who gets a second chance to experience their father’s anger through you. I made a point of saying to you, in front of your Uncle, that I’m convinced you are in our lives so that we get the opportunity to learn how to find healing ways to handle your Ah Gong’s temper. While I don’t think my comment was the only reason (or even the primary reason; your mom had apparently had a good talk with your Uncle prior to our trip), you and your Uncle got along much better on this trip than in prior trips. To be fair, it’s not as if you and your Uncle ever didn’t get along. But I’ve long felt like your Uncle had a bit of a blind spot toward you. Your Uncle and Leland get along famously, and I’m kinda convinced it’s because Leland reminds your brother of your mom without the temper. You always come along for the ride and enjoy being part of the gang with your brother and Uncle, but your personal interactions with your Uncle always struck me as a little less natural and organic. Often your Uncle just flat doesn’t hear what you say. When you and your brother speak simultaneously (as you often do, both vying for your Uncle’s attention), your Uncle tends to respond only to Leland. And when you periodically get upset (generally toward your brother), your Uncle proactively intervenes with a relatively unhelpful “don’t get mad”.
On the one hand, your Uncle means well: he genuinely doesn’t want to see you upset; he is a wonderfully empathetic and generous person who loves you, his precious nephew, dearly. On the other hand, your Uncle also sees your Ah Gong in you, and like your mom remembers his dad when he sees that temper emerge through you. Your Uncle also wants to avoid reliving that pain from his childhood, and so tries to smooth things over and convince you not to feel angry. Your mom and I have counseled him and/or you in his presence that it’s okay for you to feel what you feel, and that it’s important for us to help you develop the tools to handle those emotions.
To his great credit, your Uncle handled you very differently on this trip. On at least one occasion, when you and your brother spoke simultaneously, he responded to Leland first, but made it a point to circle back and say “Everett, you were saying something, what was it you wanted to say?” I don’t ever recall him circling back to you this way, so I was appreciative and proud of his progress. He was generally more responsive and attentive to you. And while he still said “don’t be mad” a few times, he took my feedback well, and showed a clear openness to try new things in order to connect with you. Overall, I’m excited for the healing opportunity you represent in his life, even if I’m sure the work will be slow, gradual, and nonlinear.
In another recent development, I finally convinced you to watch the original Star Wars trilogy. I remain surprised at the contrast: by the time I was your age, I had watched the trilogy multiple times; we recorded Empire Strikes Back on a VHS tape, and I would watch the movie after school while my mom worked in her office. Conversely, you found the movie simply too scary to watch. I finally convinced you, in part, by promising we would start with 15-minute increments. This allowed you to ease yourself into the movie. After we finished Empire Strikes Back at your Uncle’s house you astutely and maturely pointed out that we had finished New Hope and then watched the entirety of Empire on back-to-back days, informed me that was too much, and asked that we take longer breaks between episodes going forward. It was a completely fair request, and I’m pretty stunned that you had the self-awareness to recognize your need and the maturity to articulate it.
But what struck me most of all was your reaction to the end of Return of the Jedi. When Darth Vader throws the Emperor over the bridge (or whatever you call that space), and then dies himself, I remember my childhood reaction distinctly: the bad guys died, the good guys survived and won. For me, this was an unqualified success. Your reaction was completely different. Throughout the series you asked me to pause the movies in order ask questions or process particularly emotional scenes. Through that process, you understood (in a way I did not at your age) that Luke believed he felt goodness remaining in Darth Vader, and was attempting to bring his father back to the good side. Thus, when Darth Vader lies dying as Luke professes his intention to save him, and Darth says “you already have”, you were a bit of a wreck. For you, this was Luke’s father, a father he had been working to save, a father he still believed in, and a father that ultimately came through in the end. For you, the idea that Luke would lose his father then, in that moment, was a bit much to bear. I mean…you are not wrong; I just still can’t comprehend how you are already processing that level of depth. Only now am I coming to appreciate the deeper truths hidden in the Star Wars story, and here you are grasping them as a seven year old? Honestly, I am not entirely sure how to think about that.
This past week you’ve been attending an outdoor nature camp. Last night you had the opportunity to camp out overnight and sleep under the stars with your campmates. At the beginning of the week we agreed that Leland would probably go, but that you might stay home the first week (because we are doing the camp again next week, so you will have another opportunity if you decided this was something you wanted to do). On the drive home Wednesday (the day before the overnight) I reminded each of you of the plan, just to see if either of you had changed your minds. Mostly I was checking to see if Leland still wanted to go, because he had waffled earlier in the week. After Leland confirmed he wanted to go, you mumbled that I was correctly remembering the plan, but that you “really, really” wanted to go. This surprised me, and surprised your mom too when we discussed it with her, but ultimately we had no objections to your joining.
Last night your mom went to the camp’s BBQ dinner and singalong (sadly, I had Spiritual Stew, and couldn’t attend). By the time I came home, your mom was already home and had texted me that you had also come home, and that she had put you to bed and would be sleeping with you. At that point I assumed you had simply changed your mind and decided you would be a little scared or homesick to camp out overnight.
This morning as you and your mom woke me up, your mom asked you to tell me why you wanted to come home. You explained that, during the singalong, you sang a song about shooting stars. Your mom later said that the song was nostalgic and the tune indeed a little sad; she understood the shooting star metaphor to be about the brevity of the experience of the camp itself: a beautiful moment, but seemingly too short. Your interpretation was different: for you, the shooting stars represented people “leaving the Earth”, or dying. You couldn’t even tell me about it this morning without being overcome with emotion. Immediate after the song, the last of the singalong, you apparently turned to your mom and announced “I want to go home”. In the moment, you were able to articulate that the song made you sad (and it sounds like you wept on your mom’s shoulder during and immediately after). Again, it’s not wrong to comprehend shooting stars as a metaphor for the brevity of life on earth…but holy cow, what seven year old processes information that way? Honestly, I’m kinda stunned, and wildly curious to see where this side of you leads.
In the car ride back to camp this morning, I attempted to convey to you that your deeply held emotions are a burden, but they are also a gift. I’ll admit that, even as I said it, I appreciated the burden far more than the gift. You feel things very, very deeply, more deeply than most people. But feeling emotions that deeply often isn’t fun. It’s tempting to try to avoid feeling painful emotions like sadness or fear that deeply. But what I have learned, and I think the lesson of your Ah Gong shows, is that avoiding deep emotions creates far more problems than it solves. Sitting in the painful, deep feelings is hard, and indeed often even physically painful. But underneath the pain we often find inspiration, our deepest feelings of love and gratitude, and a level of wisdom completely unavailable to those who avoid their unpleasant feelings. I applaud your gift, but also your bravery and willingness to express and be with your gift. I hope you will build on this practice, and carry your gift with you into adulthood. But I can’t pretend it will be easy: the world isn’t set up to support and allow the expression of big emotions. Temptations and incentives will encourage you to bury your feelings, and pretend everything is fine, even when it’s not. And while I won’t suggest you should always wear your emotions on your sleeve, it will be important for you to cultivate a life where you can retreat to your safe space and feel what you feel, until you are ready to face the world again.
I love you kiddo. And, honestly, right now I’m a little awed by you.
Love,
Dad
Letters to Leland 