Unspoken Words by Linus Lam

Unspoken Words

Linus Lam

Communicating with my parents is always a wildcard. At some point growing up, my parents started getting busy, and I stopped talking to them about my interests or feelings. Every conversation would consist of status reports on school, work, and enough small talk to fill the silence. After a while, if I did want to talk about something, there was so much to fill them in on that I'd just give up altogether. My parents didn't ask questions, and I didn't share things unprompted. So on and so forth, for the better part of a decade.

Leaving for college made me and my parents realize how little we knew about each other, which helped break the ice somewhat. College taught me a great deal about communication, but it's hard to translate that back home. We talk in Cantonese; my entire emotional vocabulary is in English. And Asian parents aren't the best with words in the first place. It took a year of texting "love you guys" to get a "love you too" back. Sometimes you just want to hear how much they care, you know?

11

After being home for nearly a year because of COVID, I've come to accept that my parents express love in nonverbal ways. Acts of service is definitely their love language. Dad avoids cooking like the plague, but he'll quietly do the dishes when I'm busy or when Mum is tired. Mum will bring us bowls of cut fruit and nuts unprompted. We still bicker occasionally, and them between each other, but the love is there.

These pictures are the quiet moments when I felt the love. The first shows my dad washing the dishes, despite working all day, because I was busy with school. The second shows my parents taking in the view together, in silence, shoulder to shoulder. There's still a long way to go, and a lot more things to say, but in these moments, the silence was enough.