family inheritance

I was born with a platinum spoon, to be exact—not humble enough to belong among wood and iron, not quite fitting in the sea of gold and silver. I inherited both property and traditions, and such heirlooms come with a family name that carries weight. My chubby hands weren’t long enough to reach the counters at banks, nor had they developed fingerprints ready to sign leases and contracts, but they gripped onto something else: an inheritance that lingered in the shadows; Social manuals on how to disappear when things get hard, how to show love by doing instead of saying, how to grit your teeth and survive like it’s a duty, not a choice.

My parents didn’t mean to hand these things down, but they did anyway.

I inherited a silence that isn’t empty, but full from my father. He shows up through action: fixing things around the house, sending pictures of his dinner (usually white mantous or oats soaked in milk; on lucky days, a collage of feasts when his friends are around), asking me to order things on Shopee, more recently, gifting me a chargeable vacuum. He’s never said “I love you,” or made a gesture that directly signifies it. But he makes sure there’s money in the account, that we’re alive, that we’ve eaten. His love comes in the form of thumbs-up emojis and the quiet reassurance of blue ticks on WhatsApp. I resemble him in that way. I struggle to speak love (or just emotions) aloud too, but I’ll notice when someone’s tired and bring them water. I’ll ask for consent before checking their temperature if their face looks too pale. I’ll send them reels or memes that remind me of them—sometimes, even just showing up with my presence.

I listen, even when I don’t have the words to respond.

My father grew up an orphan, a golf ball being passed around from family to family, and I think his love had to grow in the dark (or maybe he doesn’t even know what love is.) What little he had, he gave by instinct, but I also inherited the parts of him that struggle: the quiet detachment mistaken for carelessness, the way we both float through a room, minds elsewhere, until someone says, “You never seem to notice what’s happening around you.” It’s not that we don’t care, we just don’t know how to stay present in a world that never taught us it was safe to.

My mother, on the other hand, handed me fire. We look alike (we could pass for echoes), but the resemblance runs deeper than bone. I inherited her resilience, her fierce devotion to surviving on her own terms. Life offered her little softness, so she sharpened herself in response. From her, I learned that no one will save you, that you walk away from things that don’t bloom, that you will still keep going even when it hurts.

I’ve heard the stories: how she traded her dreams for stacks of tax files and paint-chipped calculators, how she gave up her college ticket so her younger siblings could fly across the sea instead, how she said “I do” to soothe her own mother, even though she once planned to live life solo with contentment, not convention. She never knew where her fate would lead, but she watched life’s bitterness harden into structure, her longing stretch into abundance, and somehow, she built a road to security out of the life she didn’t choose. 

Yet, there are things I wish I hadn’t inherited from them, like how to snap. How to cut with words and moods that turn without warning. I inherited my mother’s own emotional weather—the storms, the sun, the sudden chills and stings. I catch myself labeling people too fast, especially men who remind me of her version of my father: the quiet ones, the ones who don’t fight back, the ones who sit on the couch shirtless, eyes glued to their phones or the TV screen, yet never quite knowing how to get taxes right. It took me years of failed relationships, exposure therapy (not the fun kind), a growing frontal lobe, and too many therapy sessions to realise I wasn’t seeing people clearly. I was seeing them through her hurt, passed down through sacrifices and resentment, wrapped in the name of filial obedience.

I used to think I was the worst mix of them. Too lazy, clumsy, stupid like him; too angry, people-pleasing, two-faced like her… Now I see it differently. We were all just fragments of different materials—iron, wood, fire, fog—thrown into the same melting pot and cast into heirlooms without ever being asked which parts we wanted to keep. We all, somewhere in between, learned to read these things as truth before we had a chance to question them.

I didn’t ask for these, but they shaped me. I get to decide what I keep now, or at least that’s how I like to think I am doing. There are scraps that I could remove through washes, and particles that require me to melt a part of me away, and some parts that I am forced to realise that I could never find or remove, but will always live within me.

Some days, that feels like betrayal; Most days, it feels like healing, but at least when it’s finally my turn to write the inheritance list, I’ll know exactly which part came from where.