Chinese people don’t say I love you to their children. But 
the way the three words slip so easily out of my mouth 
makes me think that maybe I don’t mean it as heavily as it sounds. And maybe I don’t— its curves are familiar on my tongue, curling and uncurling when granted even the slightest affection. Nightly texts of “good night, love you” over years of lockdown, alone in a world that had shrunk to fit the walls of my bedroom. Innocent favors with a strung-along “thank you, love you”; or “love you too,” an instant response to jokingly grumbled “I hate you”s. 

Love 
feels more familiar than its Chinese counterpart, because 
“我爱你” was another fleeing mouse in my grandparents’ household, 
caught between traps in their throats before it slipped away. My parents lived with love
in the form of sliced pears, 
love 
hidden behind the money for America when they couldn’t afford meat, 
behind after-hours against greedy school principals, 
but not even time loosens the spring of the trap that tightens 
when my mom stuffs my grandmother’s incoming video call into my hands and my dad’s WeChat monologues wear out into silence. And it’s culture— Chinese people don’t say I love you to their children. 
So are my parents Chinese if they hold me close even after I’ve grown out of their arms and they whisper “I love you, 宝宝”? Have they been Americanized, along with their American passports and American land? Have they lost the tiger within, let loose of the mouse that was captured in their throats, rejected the country they came from? Is that why they say it the American way most of the time, because it’s just casual, it’s ambiguous, it’s perfect for when you don’t know what you mean? Because “我爱你” is too bold, too unAmerican, too passionate? Because the way it sits in our throat feels like our tongues are working against nature? Because it’s not the same as “I love you”?
But sometimes, it’s not a cheap “I love you.” It’s three characters — 我爱你 — carved out of jade, the tones seeping into my heart & blood and its hand coming to rest on my head. The sound of my parents breaking its history of silence. Its presence in fruits and kisses and words. It feels like love.

So when they say they 爱我 — 
(and they do)

— I always say it back. “我（也）爱你,” 
the full thing, and I know I mean it
because it’s not the same as “I love you.”