The mother who cried “carpet cleaner”

Mandarin in italics.

Ernie’s phone: ring, ring.

Mom: ERR-NIE.

Ernie: Did you read my email?

Today I spent the afternoon writing a Google Doc in two languages, to be carefully copied and pasted to an email. While the research only took two or three hours, it doesn’t count the dozen or so hours with my aunt as we tried to find assisted living facilities: price points, locations, and whether or not there were too many white people or not.

“They should also have female aides,” my aunt says. ”Your father hasn’t been responding well to the one we found. Your father is a charmer.” I think she’s making a joke. I’m not really here for it.

After the references to care centers are done, I default to a combination of both English and Chinese. I try to use Google to translate the entire email at once, but reading it out loud, the mandarin seems “off.” You know, that whole uncanny valley thing, except instead of CGI ha…