From Childhood to Beyond

From Childhood to Beyond

I would have never thought by returning to school to pursue my college degree I would be writing about my childhood. I attended college after graduating from high school; however it was a feeble attempt at best as I was not successful in achieving my college degree. I will share some of my childhood upbringing that has brought me to where I am as an adult today. I will attempt to apply various developmental theories discussed as it relates to my journey from childhood to adulthood and what I would like to achieve by returning to college.

The way I saw it, from what I could understand, dad had a job outside of the home and mom had two jobs. One job was outside of our home and the other was inside our home with three children to raise. I am the eldest and the only girl of the three children. There are two years difference between me and the first brother and seven years difference between me and the second brother.

When it came to the family bonding aspect of my family, there was none that encompassed the entire family; however, there was much attention when it came to my first brother, the eldest boy. You see, being of Asian descent, I did not know about the family hierarchy until well later in my life. The closest I got to family bonding was during dinner when we all sat at the dining table in silence, which was if dad was home to have dinner with us. There was no conversation over dinner.

Early on, probably when I was 10 years old, my role in the house was defined for me. Aside from completing my homework from Monday through Friday, I also had to have dinner on the table at precisely 5:30 p.m. when both mom and dad arrived home from work. I will have the house tidied up daily, too. These responsibilities were in effect until I graduated from high school. There were many times when I forgot to cook the rice and did not realize it until I started to bring the dinner to the table.

For a period of four years, weekends became my reprieve from the daily responsibility of preparing the family dinner. Saturday was the day I would be dropped off at Japanese language school for four hours. I did not enjoy attending Japanese school to learn the language; it was where I could be a mischievous child. When I reached the age of 14, my Saturdays were spent at sewing school again for four hours so I could sew my own school clothes. After both Japanese and sewing school I was off to the ballpark since my dad was the coach for my brother's baseball team. I did not mind it much because I was outside of the house.

There were a couple of summers when we would spend every weekend at a beach house my uncle managed. The weekend started after school on Fridays, and lasted until Sunday afternoon. The house was located on a huge beach front estate that had a pool on the property. This was our family camping trip although we never slept in a camping tent. At the poolside there was a large so called patio which looked like a house with only three walls, this was our tent. Those weekends were more of a social time for my dad as all I can remember was the men sitting around drinking, playing cards, and barbecuing the night's dinner. Then it was back to my daily duties at home. I often wondered what it would be like to have my dad be supportive and kinder. I always wondered why I would see daughters in movies being their father's little princess and why I never had that kind of relationship.

As you can see, my dad was the disciplinarian in the house. From what I remember, it was primarily directed towards me. Mom was just there. I never felt I could have a conversation with my mom about my feelings because she was always too busy with my brothers or attending social events with my dad. I guess that comes from the Asian culture where boys are the prized ones of the children. The fear he instilled in me when it came to school and grades was so engrained in me. Not living up to his expectations was surely met with consequences right through middle school. I can remember bringing home a report card with a C on it and dreaded showing it to my dad. I later learned to just show it to him and face the consequences. My brothers would come home with all C's and my dad would just look at the report card and put it to the side.

When I entered high school, my dad still had a say in the types of classes I was to take outside of the basic core requirements. They all had to be a solid type of class and not a fun type of elective. I had classes like business law, business practice, and foreign language for four years. My freshman year I had a math class that juniors and seniors were taking, I felt like a dork. Sure I can look back on those days and I can admit I am thankful for my dad imposing his requirements on me but did I enjoy it then, no.

I continued to work hard at achieving A's and B's for grades and was acknowledged as being an honor student. The praises from my teachers and acknowledgements received in the school bulletins made me feel good and appreciated. One of my teachers suggested I should serve as a member of the school student government or class council. I settled for participating in various class committees and discovered when I told my dad it was for school, he did not have any objections. Of course he had no idea what the committee or club was about. Joining clubs and committees allowed me to have a social life and to spend time with my friends. The two clubs I enjoyed being a part of was our high school L.E.O. Club and Junior Achievement. These two clubs in particular allowed me to meet and make friends with students from other high schools and expanded my social life. I was privileged to travel to the other islands of Hawaii to participate at the annual L.E.O. Club conventions during three of my four years in high school, one year the convention was held on Oahu. The core group of girlfriends I hung around with were all members of these same clubs. We also did community projects like trick-o-treating for U.N.I.C.E.F., bell ringing for the Salvation Army during the holidays, walking in the Walk for Mankind walk-a-thon, and door-to-door fundraising for various health organizations. I suppose it was mainly to meet boys. We did pretty much everything together, but they never knew about my family life. It was a part of me I was never going to expose.

That was until a couple of years ago because I was too ashamed to expose my life to them back then. It was the year we were all celebrating a milestone birthday so one of my girlfriend's husband paid for an overnight stay at a timeshare condo where he worked. It was then we reminisced about the "carefree" days, so we thought.