Family Life Journeys
By Peter Tao
FAMILY LIFE JOURNEYS ARE AN INTERESTING TOPIC and often a cause for internal family debates and occasional conflicts. Most of us have something that shapes, guides, dictates, or pushes us individually and collectively in a direction, from the very moment we are born, then continually as we develop our thinking. Our journeys are like a small sailboat, vulnerable to the winds.
We are then bombarded by “experts” on what to do and told what is “Best,” with education and careers as a common theme in shaping our journeys. But our success and happiness are not a Top 100 Universities or Top Careers list. For what do they know about us, when we don’t?
Everyone’s map is unique. Our paths are often influenced by family dynamics, parenting philosophies, cultural traditions, and the community (society) that surrounds and judges us. Sadly, money is often believed to be the gauge of success. With these conflicting factors, how do we remain genuine to ourselves? What makes us happy within our community?
Journeys start with what you are exposed to. Here is one story, based on my collective family experiences. Our journey includes leaps in faith, discovery, trial, and error, and acting on what you feel is best and not by what others think. No doubt, some luck sprinkled along the way. I believe my own family’s journeys, in part, have been influenced by engaging with our immigrant parents, understanding the unbelievable paths that they endured, and the decisions they made and learned from. Then, in turn, what they passed on to us to think about.
We were fortunate to have been around my parents till the end at 99/102 years (mother/father). Their journeys started in China, in 1917/1921, growing up in a changing country, with old traditions, class systems, everchanging governance, civil conflicts, and the turmoil of war.
While my father’s career in mechanical engineering was not unique, we learned how he used the tools of this discipline to help shape their lives. It wasn’t just a vocation, but rather a means to solutions. It was their creative thinking and dreaming that was unique, inspiring many of us in their family.
Creative Fact: My father’s first job was in Kunming, to maintain the truck fleet used for the supply route to Burma. To conserve gasoline, he converted the trucks to burn coal.
Keeping an Open Mind… and Tolerance. The adversities they faced during their young lives, up to when they immigrated in the late 1940s, required them to have open minds and tolerance while maintaining reasons for hope. Their tolerance was a trait I learned from.
For unexplained reasons, my parents never told their 3 sons they couldn’t do anything. There were never emphatic nos. This was particularly true for that brother who would hitchhike to get to college and; later that year would quit school to go to Spain (he spoke no Spanish!). Perhaps this tolerance was due to their college days past, being on the run due to the Japanese occupation.
Peter Tao
The hitchhike: I was in the car when Mom surprisingly pulled over on an interstate on-ramp. My brother got out. Mom said, “Be safe.” My jaw dropped as I looked out the rear window, waving goodbye as we drove off. An eye-opening, learning moment for a middle schooler.
My parents would grow a successful business and hoped succession would be within the family. No sons wanted to take it on; no interest in engineering. This caused disappointment, but no anger. As the youngest, I was the last hope in the line to potentially take over the company.
Home from graduate school (Architecture), three of us had a dinner where my father made a last pitch. My mother stepped in, “Bill, Peter is in school hoping to be an Architect. You have to allow him to go through with this so he can make his own decision.” He did not debate.
I did have a guilt complex, saddened on how things sometimes don’t work out. As I entered the Architecture profession, he would be my biggest and proudest fan. I never forgot that. So, I always shared my own work journey travails with him, letting him in, often for his sage advice.
A Business Plan? My wife, Helen, and I would meet in NYC. Neither of us expected to call this big city, home. We stuck it out. Our journey would begin there with our architectural careers (my first job paid $28,000, which was fine by me). We would be there for over a decade, get married, survive in a 450 SF 2-room rent-stabilized apartment (with cats), and then jump on an opportunity train for London. We were excited, but nervous, knowing we were on our own, without family. We would begin our own family there with the birth of our own, Naomi and Matthew.
As five years passed, family separation was on our minds (we both grew up not really having grandparents in our lives), we decided to leap in faith, abandoning our safe (paying), corporate jobs to start up a business of our own in 1995. We chose my hometown, St. Louis.
With no business plan, no clients, only accumulated savings, we committed to our belief in a better life balance. We trusted our tools of knowledge to navigate us. Our parents would be our biggest fans and trust. Not having a business plan is not the ideal advice, but sometimes it is about your gut reaction and doing what you desire.
Facing Rejection. Our business journey, regardless of our proven skills and experiences, would face rejections and (conservative) judgments of “What projects have you done here?”
We knew who we were and our goals. While a community can shape individuals, we wanted to shape and contribute to our community, professionally and personally. So, we stayed the course. Next year will be a 30-year milestone.
Often, under these challenges, I look at what my parents and other immigrants have had to endure and persevere. I then remind myself, what do I have to complain about?
Despite the challenges and adversities, we would settle in, and get established, now coupled with raising our own family. I have to imagine that the “tolerance” of my parent’s willingness to allow me to choose my path has affected my own (and Helen’s) own views towards our children, where they would pursue their own “lucrative” careers. Naomi in the Arts and Matthew in Agriculture. Their choices were also not on those “Best of” lists.
Embrace those around you and be welcoming. Overlaid over my learning paths, I have always been introduced to the globe and travel. When you understand the world, your horizon expands. You can better understand the people and cultures that surround you and how to interact versus react. The World is your Community. The welcoming and mentorship my immigrant parents received upon arrival deeply impacted their lives and how they embraced newcomers and gave back.
As it turns out, Naomi would start her career in the international student travel business, traveling to points in the globe, from Southeast Asia to Peru, Tanzania to Fiji. Matthew would take a gap year to travel the world, beginning in India to trekking in the Himalayas, to working on a sheep farm in Tasmania, where he would learn the value of agriculture and growing food.
Interspersed in the last decade has been our family’s decision to have global, culturally immersive vacations. Starting with London, then Costa Rica, Morocco, Oaxaca/Mexico City, and recently Colombia. Next on our list? The list is long.
Celebrate Your Knowledge. Finally, at least for this story, after these experiences and many years later, Naomi and Matthew would both carry on what they learned, applying it in the areas of food, culture, and farming. At an early start-up stage, Winnebago Farms was founded. They are now on a food product journey, developing culturally informed hot sauces, researching pepper sources, and farming on their property. A discovery for them has been the hot peppers/hot sauce communities, bringing in this community of friends, and foodies to exchange thoughts.
Who knows where our Family Journeys will take us next? But what we know from our family’s approaches and tolerances since the early 1900s is that we all need to allow ourselves not to dictate, restrict or self-impose too much on ourselves, but to sometimes relax, look forward, and go with the flow.
Accepting that it is not always an easy journey can be more interesting.
Peter Tao is the current board president of OCA St. Louis and an advocate for AANHPI representation, including being a chair of the advisory committee for the Missouri Historical Societies Chinese American Collecting Initiative, where he is also a researcher, writer and lecturer. Peter was an executive producer of a documentary, DAY ONE, which highlighted how a community comes together to be a Welcoming Community for new immigrants and refugee students. Peter is the son of William Tao, one of the founders of OCA St. Louis.