At 2 A.M., While Everyone Slept, I Left Them A Different Kind Of “Gift” On The Kitchen Counter And Drove Away From That Perfect American Holiday. My name is Daniel Chen, I’m thirty-one years old, and I’m a senior financial analyst at Goldman Sachs in San Francisco. I make $185,000 a year plus bonuses, I live in a modest one-bedroom apartment in Oakland because San Francisco proper is absurdly expensive, and for the past three years, I’ve been quietly funding my parents’ comfortable lifestyle while they told everyone I was “doing well but still finding my way.”
Christmas morning at my parents’ house in suburban Sacramento was straight out of a Hallmark movie.
The kind of scene that looks perfect from the outside—big Douglas fir tree in the living room strung with white lights and glass ornaments, cinnamon rolls baking in the oven filling the house with that sweet, spiced smell, twinkle lights in every window of their quiet cul-de-sac where every house has a two-car garage and a lawn maintenance service. My parents, Robert and Linda Chen, had immigrated from Taiwan in the early nineties with almost nothing. They’d worked brutal hours—Dad in a warehouse, Mom cleaning houses—to save enough to open a small café in downtown Sacramento fifteen years ago.
Chen’s Coffee & Bakery. It was their dream, their pride, the thing they’d sacrificed everything to build. I grew up in the apartment above that café, falling asleep to the smell of fresh bread, doing homework at corner tables while Mom served customers and Dad managed inventory.
My sister Chloe, six years younger than me, barely remembered those lean years. By the time she was old enough to notice, the café was stable and we’d moved to the suburbs. She got the childhood I’d helped pay for with student loans and part-time jobs so Mom and Dad could focus on the business instead of worrying about how to afford school supplies.
But that’s what older siblings do, right? You sacrifice so the younger ones can have it easier. That’s what I told myself, anyway.
This particular Christmas morning, Chloe went first with the presents, like always. She was twenty-five, working part-time as a social media coordinator for a local boutique, living at home rent-free while “saving up” for her own place—though her Instagram suggested most of her paycheck went to restaurants and weekend trips to Napa. She tore through boxes with the enthusiasm of someone who’d never questioned whether she deserved everything she was getting.
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