'How much was it?'

A cost-obsessed family learns a hard lesson about the priceless.

My family is obsessed with the price of things. The two questions I hear most often are, "Have you eaten?" and "How much was it?" Discussing the price of something is like breathing for them. You can't make a purchase at my house without talking endlessly about the price of the item, the price everyone thinks it should have cost, the sale price versus the total price, the fact that you have used or not a coupon, and if not, why not?

My extended family lives in Hong Kong, where my grandparents grew up during the Japanese occupation. Like many people raised during times of severe deprivation and loss, they have become naturally obsessed with security. Their children – my mother and her siblings – inherited this scarcity mindset. Anyway, they think a lot about money.

I live in Los Angeles, where I make a good living as a television writer, and my mom and my father live in Dallas, where as a preschool teacher and part-time pastor of a small church respectively, they live modestly and have little savings.

Every summer for years, I took my mother back to Hong Kong to visit our many relatives there.

For my family, the money is not just something to be hoarded at the expense of pleasure; it is also a way of classifying oneself socially. On a recent trip to the Palace Museum in Hong Kong, we all stopped for lunch at the on-site restaurant, where I ordered a fairly weak latte.

We chatted for about an hour before feeling tired again and getting up to buy an espresso - something that will get me through the rest of our six hour walking tour. Upon my return, my eagle-eyed aunts noticed the cup in my hand.

"How much did it cost?" Dai Ji Maa, my elder aunt, asked.

"30 HKD", I replied (about three US dollars).

A whisper went through the group.

"Wow! That's expensive for something so small."

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">My family talked to each other and agreed. It was too expensive. The cup was too small. The ratio of cash to dollars was completely off.

"It's smaller", I said, "but there's more caffeine."

Kau Mou, the my uncle's wife, said, "It's okay, she must be rich!" felt like I single-handedly caused the wealth gap. All fun, but proof that no dollar spent in my family goes unnoticed.

The next f Well I came back with a drink and they asked the price, I overdid it. "It was free!" I said holding up a huge cup of cream. My family nodded in approval.

Money took on a whole new importance for all of us, however, 10 months ago when my mother learned that she had Parkinson's disease. Not just any Parkinson's disease, but an atypical version that doctors said progressed much faster than normal and included elements of dementia.

She n I'm only 63, but suddenly her hands were shaking, and then she started forgetting words. His personality remains the same - optimistic, cheerful and positive - but his decline has been rapid and alarming. She can't work anymore, and we're afraid she won't be able to take care of herself any longer.

She needed all kinds of news resources, not just copays for his medical bills, but a handle for the shower, a cranial red light therapy machine, slip-on shoes with traction, weighted utensils to help with tremors, a bidet and so on. No one in my immediate family has the funds to cover all of this, and I, as the child with the highest salary, chose to take care of it myself.

"How much was that?" my mom asked when I came home with a Uniqlo collection of easy-to-put-on stretchy clothes.

'Gong ni di,' I said, Cantonese for: "It doesn't matter."

And it doesn't matter. That's what money is for. It took a long time to...