[ That little note about his parents, that bit about how they never really liked him being into anything, rings a little too true, a little too close to home. Yeah, buddy, tell me about it. But it’s not like his parents… disliked him having interests, especially if it kept him from bothering them. It's more that their interest in what interested him, what mattered to him, had always been minimal, just like everything else about them, a continuation of their ongoing vaguely fond indifference.
It was why he’d chosen to not be interested in a disengaged father’s cultural heritage, in the things that so obviously mattered to the unassimilated immigrant parent. It was why he’d answered every sentence addressed to him in French with an English reply his sophomore and junior years of high school. There had been arguments, also bilingual, but he hadn’t yielded until he just got tired of running a mental switchboard on his dad's custody days senior year.
Why should he lopsidedly care about what Matthieu Lavoie does?
There’s something else there, in what Toki says, and it’s familiarity that makes Freddie see it. He had come to America because there weren’t any family ties holding him in place, giving him a reason to stay, something to miss. Freddie had seen each parent once, before he shipped off to Iraq for that first tour. And he hadn’t felt any real sense of missing them, not like he got the feeling somebody from a normal family would. What was there to miss, really? It’s not like they’d be talking or seeing each other any less than their current pattern of occasional contact and forced family Christmases stateside. ]
Yeah. [ He’s not sure why he says what comes next, but he says it very casually. It’s a long-established fact of life, even if it’s not one he usually goes out of his way to share. But this is commiseration, to some degree. ] My parents didn’t really give enough of a shit to be upset about what I was into when I was growing up. I wasn’t crying my eyes out when I shipped off to Iraq or anything.
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It was why he’d chosen to not be interested in a disengaged father’s cultural heritage, in the things that so obviously mattered to the unassimilated immigrant parent. It was why he’d answered every sentence addressed to him in French with an English reply his sophomore and junior years of high school. There had been arguments, also bilingual, but he hadn’t yielded until he just got tired of running a mental switchboard on his dad's custody days senior year.
Why should he lopsidedly care about what Matthieu Lavoie does?
There’s something else there, in what Toki says, and it’s familiarity that makes Freddie see it. He had come to America because there weren’t any family ties holding him in place, giving him a reason to stay, something to miss. Freddie had seen each parent once, before he shipped off to Iraq for that first tour. And he hadn’t felt any real sense of missing them, not like he got the feeling somebody from a normal family would. What was there to miss, really? It’s not like they’d be talking or seeing each other any less than their current pattern of occasional contact and forced family Christmases stateside. ]
Yeah. [ He’s not sure why he says what comes next, but he says it very casually. It’s a long-established fact of life, even if it’s not one he usually goes out of his way to share. But this is commiseration, to some degree. ] My parents didn’t really give enough of a shit to be upset about what I was into when I was growing up. I wasn’t crying my eyes out when I shipped off to Iraq or anything.