Recently I was speaking with my older son, who is Korean and who arrived in 1976 with his younger sister and brother when the three were 10, 8, and 5 years old. We were talking about the business of respecting elders. My older son carries, still, a huge amount of anger – anger which, according to those who study intercultural adoption, is common among those ejected from their birth cultures into homes and families and societies which are not genetically programmed in the same cultural strains. Genetically programmed? As far as I can tell, yes: there are cultural genetics. Anyway, my son was furious with me for bringing up the topic, and kept insisting that he didn’t have to do what old people said, because he wasn’t in Korea now. In the heat of our exchange I simply knew I had to stand firm on the bottom-line value of respect for elders. It was not until I got home and sifted through the conversation that I realized he had confused “respect” with “obedience.” Ahh, I realized. The ancient Oriental training which does, indeed, merge the concepts of respect and unquestioning, unwavering obedience. I know this from my own upbringing under patriarchal principles, as well – girls and women clean the bathrooms, boys and men do not; wives are chattel and must, once married, “love, honor and OBEY” their husbands. All the guys have to do is “love, honor, and cherish.” Unfortunately for many women, that idealistic husband vow too often gets downgraded from three words to one: “use.” And so it can also be with that Oriental merging of respect and obedience. Truly, there are some times when it can work, and other times when it invites slavery.

I thought over my son’s and my discussion again, and felt certain he’d been able to hear my heart when I’d told him of my mother’s teaching me and my siblings respect for elders: how she’d taken us to visit our elderly neighbors, and how she had taught us to always hold the door for older people, those with disabilities, and pregnant ladies, and to always offer them our seats on buses or trains, or in rooms. My son looked at me – I know for that moment he could see me for who I am – just a mom, doing what mothers are supposed to do. For that moment his cloud of anger parted and I could see him considering in his heart whether or not he was also teaching his children properly. Just a moment. It’s sometimes almost more than we could dare to hope for, such a moment.