by Ali Wong
Prior to meeting your mother, I spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship researching human trafficking in the Philippines. Based in Manila, I traveled around the country interviewing survivors of sexual and domestic exploitation, hearing stories of rape, sexual violence, enslavement, and trauma. On Mother’s Day, I visited a shelter for survivors filled with young women who were smiling, cracking jokes, and finding community in one another despite the trials they had endured. I was just beginning to learn the power of laughter.
My time in Manila unraveled something deep within me, blasting through long-held assumptions I formed growing up in my privileged bubble in Washington, D.C., and leaving me feeling disoriented and alienated from the world I thought I knew so well. I drove your mother crazy when we started seeing each other because I was in no rush to move things forward. After hearing the horror stories of so many women, I returned to the United States with a knowledge of sexual violence on such a deep level that when it came to dating I was hyperaware of these threads and proceeded unusually slowly and carefully. Eventually, that changed.
Your mother and I fell in love because we loved discovering the esoteric and hidden spiritual parts of ourselves, and each other, because we loved food, and because together we grew. I remember when I introduced her to her first ayahuasca ceremony in the jungle outside of Tulum, Mexico. We slept in the property owner’s spacious, Swiss Family Robinson–style thatched hut. During the day we hiked and swam in cenotes (large, cool, freshwater open pools dotting the Yucatán Peninsula’s limestone bedrock). At night we sat in ceremony in an open-air hut with mesh screens for windows, imbibing the thick, ayahuasca brew that tasted like the blood of Mother Earth and traveled deep into the rabbit hole of our minds, emotions, and beyond.
On our final night, your mother and I and a few friends left the jungle retreat to camp on a quiet, desolate beach. The mosquitoes were relentless, having penetrated the thin barrier of our worn tent, wings buzzing our ears, sharp long straw mouths aggressively poking every inch of exposed flesh. Sleep was difficult. We eventually fled the tent for the respite of the water, where we figured the mosquitoes wouldn’t follow. A glowing green traced the movements of our limbs below the gentle surf. I imagined a scaly, bug-eyed eel with razor-sharp teeth had come from the deep to hunt for a late-night meal before realizing it was a luminescent algae emitting a subtle glow with each tread of the water. At one point we returned to the beach to rest and came across a nest of hatching turtles making their first voyage into the water. We watched the sun gradually peek over the horizon, and I realized in this moment that I had your mother’s deepest trust. Miles away from her comfort zone, she was willing to walk with me and explore the depths of a world I had grown to love. I, in turn, would need to trust her to the utmost as I stepped deeper into her world of stand-up comedy.
I moved back to Boston in the fall of 2010 to complete my final year at Harvard Business School. Your mother visited me often, and we went on long runs along the Charles River. We made complex breakfast cereals composed of millet, steel-cut oats, and amaranth in the slow cooker I kept in my dorm room and woke to the smell of freshly cooked grains. Eventually she moved to Los Angeles for her first role on a TV pilot, a comedy on Fox starring Christian Slater. After graduating, I moved to San Francisco to pursue my tech dreams. A year and a half later, we reached a breaking point. Long distance meant we spent the majority of our time apart. We knew we loved each other, but the bigger question looming was how committed were we to each other and when would we actually live in the same city?
We were both in heavy grind mode. Your mother was acting during the day and doing comedy sets at night while renting a room at her college friend’s apartment close to Pico and Crenshaw. I was working nonstop on an online business to make services like massage and acupuncture more accessible to the masses and searching for creative ways to generate income and not dip into my personal savings any more than I already had. After a year and a half of being long distance and an escalating cycle of arguments about when and where we would finally be together, I decided to take the leap and move to Los Angeles to find a place to live with your mother and discover for myself what the city had to offer. Being in a relationship will inevitably offer up uncertainty, risk, and challenges. Find someone who is willing and able to come up with creative solutions as issues arise and take leaps for you when called for.
I knew your mother was getting antsy about getting married when she started showing me pictures of engagement rings and then literally asked me when I was going to pop the question. She found a picture of an antique jade Art Deco ring that was unique and beautiful, but the jeweler told me it would chip if worn daily because jade is too soft of a stone. Despite your mother’s explicit desire for the jade ring, I decided to go the more traditional diamond path, still sticking with the Art Deco style and designing all the elements with the jeweler to ensure it would look classy and unique. What I didn’t know was whether your mother would love it or hate it. Once it was made, purchased, and insured I kept it in a cheap cloth jewelry pouch, the kind you get when buying a fifteen-dollar trinket on Canal Street in New York. It was less conspicuous that way if your mother happened to come across it.
I revealed the ring to her when I proposed in front of the SoHo apartment where she’d lived when we first met and where we had our first kiss. I was nervous and read a speech I’d written in my journal before bending the knee. It was a sincere and slightly awkward speech where I overused the word “pregnant” in reference to how I was filled with love for her. The best part was that not only did she say yes, but she absolutely loved the ring. Moreover, she admitted to me that she had actually changed her mind and no longer wanted the jade ring, even though she’d conveniently declined to let me know and left me to figure it out. I believe this helped further reinforce my genie-like capabilities in your mother’s eyes.
On the day we got married the sun was shining in San Francisco. We got dressed together in the Airbnb we rented for the weekend in the Mission District. Then the heel of your mother’s right shoe punctured her dress while she was exiting the Uber at city hall, creating a small tear. I viewed it as a sign of good fortune, like stepping in dog poo or getting pooped on by a bird. That’s good luck, right?
After the short ceremony and intimate, celebratory Cantonese dinner at R & G Lounge that followed, your mother and I took a car to the Punch Line Comedy Club, where she performed, working out new material in her wedding dress because that’s how dedicated your mother is to her craft. I beamed with pride from the audience, our parents and families, friends and colleagues present, as she performed her set, at one point lying on the ground with her wedding dress in the air, falling over her legs, punctured hem and all. That night, not only did we get married, but I was now the front-and-center subject of your mother’s onstage material.
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Your mother’s jokes elicit laugh-so-hard-you-pee reactions. I know because people tell me this directly at the merch table after shows. Though hilarious for the audience, it requires a great deal of alignment between your mother and me to ensure her comedy is an empowering force in our relationship. Being made fun of onstage by your mother is no joke. Here is how we manage.
To start, before a performance she runs new jokes by me when I’m mentioned and gives me the right to edit or veto. I remember prior to filming Baby Cobra there was a joke about our sex life that I felt was a bit too on the nose. (I’m imagining you both squirming in your seats. Sometimes the truth is uncomfortable.) I asked her to modify it and she did, with a tweak to the characters. Since that day, whenever I am mentioned, she honors that I need to know in advance. And with this mutual creative trust established, I realized that I could let go. I am not here to censor your mother’s artistry. I embrace her work, celebrate being a subject of it, and only ever used my executive privilege that one time. I am comfortable being in your mother’s jokes thanks to my mindfulness practice, which groun
ds and roots me. No matter what is said onstage, I know who I am and support her in her fullest expression. But it wasn’t always this easy.
It was 2011 and your mother and I were again at the Punch Line Comedy Club in San Francisco, though this was before we were married. It was a coming-out moment for us as a couple, as I was standing between your grandparents and it was their first time attending one of your mother’s shows. Your mother joked about an encounter where a man blew on her vagina as a form of failed foreplay. She talked about her body as a reggae fest that has had many guests, including a homeless man and skateboarders.
Grandpa Ken was laughing along with the audience. Your lola was generally silent followed by occasional nervous laughter. I was making the most of my peripheral vision to observe them throughout the set and take note of any perceived pleasure or discomfort. It was a meta experience to be made fun of by your mother, my then girlfriend, in front of your grandparents. Almost like stories of near-death encounters when people talk about end-of-life reviews, except this one was filled with profanity, embarrassing anecdotes, and presented in front of a public audience that responded with copious amounts of laughter. The genuine pride I felt seeing her onstage mixed with the anxiety and discomfort of being made fun of in public while sandwiched between your grandparents.
This was a big aha moment for me. Your grandparents didn’t storm out of the venue, and thankfully both enjoyed the show. I found the experience cathartic, as if the laughter cleared me of ego and shame, as your mother does for so many. It was important for our relationship that your grandparents experience your mother as a performer, the same way I had years before in New York. If they could know and accept her onstage, they would then better understand her offstage, and she could be herself with my family and not feel as if she had to hide or contain herself. She did not and does not have to. No woman should. And for myself, I needed to know that my parents could handle your mother’s work and in turn accept the life I was choosing. They did.
In the fall of 2018 I was the vice president of product management at GoodRx, a digital health company based in Santa Monica, and I realized I needed to stop working to support the family in new ways. Your grandpa Ken’s example implied that I should be the main earner and support my family financially. But when the Milk & Money tour launched I knew I couldn’t be a good husband, and father to you, and support your mother’s career if I was also working. And because we didn’t need the money, I chose to support our family by offering my time, care, and presence, forcing me to reconcile my prescribed gender roles, which wasn’t always easy.
“I make a lot more money than my husband, by a long shot,” your mother confidently stated in her Hard Knock Wife special to wild applause. She called my job an “eccentric hobby.” Hearing the jokes at first made me uncomfortable and disoriented because they resonated with some truths I had to face. If I wasn’t the breadwinner, what did that say about me as a man, as the son of Grandpa Ken aka Dr. Fad, as a graduate of Harvard Business School? In the challenging moments, I felt like I was failing myself, and in turn both of you.
Allowing your mother to publicly poke fun at what was a sensitive spot for me was scary at first. But over time I realized that the jokes enabled me to better see the expectations I placed on myself that didn’t match our reality and therefore weren’t helpful to me, or us, to continue to bear. I began to see how, similar to your lola, I provide for our family in enormous ways. I wake up and give you medicine at three A.M. when you have a fever. I make your breakfast in the morning and know the layers of different cereals you prefer in your bowls. Therein lies the potent, challenging gift afforded to us brave, lucky few, fortunate enough to be roasted onstage night after night by your mother: that of self-realization through comedic ego destruction. Your mother showed me with her comedy how to let go of who I thought I had to be and allowed me to embrace a life rooted in my love for you girls.
Being married to a bread machine like your mother enabled me to attend your preschool concerts, Mari, have tickle fests with you, Nikki, throughout the week, and be a much more present father to you both. In addition to selling merch, I also became your mother’s tour manager. My newfound freedom enabled me to work more closely with her and gave me the space to rediscover the limits of my own creative possibility, allowing me to ask the privileged question: What do I truly want to do with my one life? Now we travel around the country together from city to city, family-caravan style, your mother and I doing shows, Grandma and Lola in tow, and all of us having adventures. I wouldn’t trade this for the world.
I began selling merchandise at your mother’s shows when she started headlining at theaters. The first time was in Boston at the Wilbur theater on a freezing November evening in 2016. I found a local printer in Mar Vista, had some bootleg posters with the Baby Cobra artwork made, and manually lugged them to the airport on a red mini dolly, secured with rugged bungee cords. I manned the merch table and could tell when the show ended from the sudden roar of applause and celebratory whoops and shouts. The doors to the theater burst open and people started to stream out into the main lobby, smiles and laughter on their faces. They converged on my posters with fervor, still buzzing from the laughter, eager to talk and purchase a piece of your mother’s memorabilia.
These fans were excited to see your mother perform, but more than that it was as if she was taking her audience to church like a fiery, foul-mouthed preacher who offered up profane salvation. There was the new mom who was enjoying her first night out after giving birth a month prior. There are fans who dress up like your mother, imitating the outfits she wore when you were both in her belly. There are mothers who bring their daughters. There are those who travel from across the country, and sometimes across the world. They talk about your mother being their spirit animal. Their eyes are lit up, their faces relaxed and smiling, their postures open and welcoming. Watching this magical effect on her fans keeps me manning the merch table to this day.
That Boston show was when I began to see your mother through the eyes of her fans and realized her stage presence was more than the sum of its jokes. She was speaking to people’s truths and making them laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. This was what our ayahuasca ceremonies were about: sourcing the most potent parts of ourselves and letting go of the rest. Your mother, I saw, had done just that. She was embodying experiences like pregnancy and childbirth that are sacred to us as individuals, and celebrating these acts in a fresh new light. Asian cultures often teach us to be silent about our sexuality and filled with shame. Your mother breaks that up and transmutes pain and shame into power, like a mystical priestess.
Because of the way your mother viciously dissects and explores everything from gender norms to marriage and motherhood, she is like a supercharged pressure washer, removing the thick grime of long-held societal assumptions. What’s important for you girls is to work with the pressure washer that is your mother’s comedy to find greater personal clarity for yourselves and home in on who you are versus who you think you need to be. As both of you are increasingly characters in her comedic narrative I encourage you to set your own boundaries, and to also remember that being a subject on her stage enables people to be seen, heard, validated, and empowered. This can be a very privileged role to play. So when you do find yourself at the center of one of her jokes, ask yourself two questions. Am I comfortable with this? And, is this serving a greater good? You are always allowed to say, “Mom, this isn’t okay for me,” and she will always listen. Because for her, family always comes first.
During the afterparty for the premiere of her movie Always Be My Maybe, she had a table next to mega-celebrity Keanu Reeves. The room was teeming with actors, agents, managers, producers, and social media influencers. Daniel Dae Kim was there. Randall Park was close by. I was at your mother’s table along with her closest girlfriends from college. And though these famous actors are her work colleagues and contemporaries, she just wanted to be
with us, her family, her friends, the people who know, love, and ground her in all that is real. That’s what you are for your mother, girls: the real.
To be brutally honest, initially I didn’t want children. Living in our spacious one-bedroom apartment with your mother in Los Angeles, I enjoyed our copious amounts of free time, ability to exercise on a whim, sleep late, and binge-watch The Wire to our hearts’ content. I clung fiercely to the independence of carefree, non-kid life. Your mother, in her wisdom, pushed for us to get pregnant, but even then it felt more like an obligation to me. Then she miscarried. And in addition to supporting your mother as best I could, I was filled with a deep, primal sadness and sense of loss. Something shifted in me that day and, from then on, I was ready to be a father, though I had no clue what it involved.
Then you two beautiful girls came into our world, Mari first, then Nikki. I remember when each of you was born, bringing you home from the hospital, the feet of your infant onesies flapping as your tiny bodies hadn’t yet grown into them. I remember passing through our front door and feeling like a scared child myself, like it was somehow illegal to bring you home alone with us. Who were we to take care of you and nurture such magical beings? But then instinct kicked in, along with relatives and Sofiya, your magical Ukrainian nanny, and we were off and running on our new adventure.