Dissonance

Ever since I started reading Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), I can't stop imagining myself as an actor in different scenes wherever I go. A sociologist, Goffman described our social interactions as theatrical performances, where our daily actions are presented, as if on stage, with scenery and props to be displayed and interpreted by our audiences.

Conceptualizing my interactions as performances has helped me understand my life in ways I never have before. I now realize that when I am with my own family and my parents, I am simultaneously in two different scenes, one with my husband and children as a mom/wife and another as a Korean daughter with my parents. Even though we are together, I am engaged in two or more separate dramas, each with a storyline of its own, one with my parents in Korean and another in English with my kids and my husband Jeff.

For example, picture our lunch together yesterday at a local pizza joint. The six of us are sitting around a table during a school fundraising event.

In the scene, I am sitting across from my parents, with Jeff to my right and the kids to his right. I am speaking to my parents in Korean (a language neither Jeff nor my kids speak), asking them what they would like to order. My parents quickly peruse the menu and mumble that they don't know what to order, that I should order for them, and that they will just eat whatever. I push back, as I put the menu back in their hands. Can you just look at the menu? Here's the section on salads, here are the main dishes. What would you like to eat?

We have played out this scene many times. We are in a public setting, and they recede, as if they have no preferences, as if they are not there.

I feel my irritation surfacing. There is a historical context to this irritation. Their passivity unleashes the resentment of the perennial parentified child. I do not want to be your mouthpiece, not again. It also threatens to cast our lives in America as a failure, a poor decision that landed us in a foreign country where we do not function publicly.

In this setting, I am acutely aware of the pressure to perform. Here we are, in a restaurant, in a public scene. I am conscious that we don't quite fit in. My parents and I are the only Asians in the place. My parents do not interact with the waitress in English. They do not send or pick up the same social cues, such as making eye contact or returning the greeting.

I am sure I am more self-conscious in these settings as a result of having grown up as an outsider in this country. To me, the scene presupposes a certain performance out of us: to be ready to order when the waitress returns, to smile back at her, and to identify our dishes. To play the part of a happy family enjoying lunch together.

While I am in this scene with my parents, I am repeatedly interrupted by my children who demand that I take in their activities; their drawings, their recounting of the day, their mile-a-minute thoughts. In those interruptions, I am pulled into their scene as a mother.

Throughout the meal, I am in separate snippets of conversation with my parents while I toggle back and forth with my own family. My parents rarely communicate directly with my children or Jeff. The language skills aren't there, and even when they try, my father's limited hearing shortcuts the dialogue. They often comment on the children to me, or they will try to speak through me. For example, my mom will often say, "Tell Jeff to eat more. Here, give him this."

On these occasions, I am diving in and out of different scenes, playing multiple roles, and tending to various needs. In this picture, I am never sure of the role I am supposed to play. Which scene am I in at any given moment? Who am I in this picture? Who do I tend to first? Once, during my daughter's birthday party, I assumed my parents would join the party. Instead, they huddled by themselves inside while our guests and their kids played joyfully in our yard. It felt like a failure on my part, a failure to tend to my parents. I failed to give them their own scene, a safe haven in our own home. I second guess myself through two different value systems, and I may find reprieve in one, but not always both.

I am often left feeling like I neglected someone, whether it's my parents, Jeff, or the kids. I am painfully aware that when I am speaking Korean with my parents, Jeff is cut off from the conversation. He is cut off from adult company by virtue of our language, even though he is sitting with us at the same table. Less than a foot away from me, he has no access to the events happening in front of him. Similarly, when I am talking to Jeff or the kids, my parents are excluded. I don't know how to be a wife, mother, and daughter, all in the same scene.

In these situations, I am alone in my emotional experience. My conversations with my parents are often laden - with history, habit, cultural differences, and misunderstandings. Their words, perhaps intended to be helpful, sometimes land as criticism. And often, interacting with them in a social setting reminds me of all that we're not as a family, all that I would like us to be.

I often come out of these gatherings slightly peevish and mentally fatigued.

Later, when I describe to Jeff all that happened at the table, he listens and nods along. He says I am a "gasket," there to keep two parts together. A gasket is usually needed to join two parts that do not fit perfectly together. It fills the space between the two parts and protects the whole from leaking when it is pressurized. To function well, a gasket should be made of yielding material in order to fill and conform to the space, particularly where there are irregularities. 

I think about being this gasket. As a gasket, I am never in a space of cohesion; instead, it is up to me to provide the cohesion. But that cohesion never feels within reach. My arms are not dexterous enough, malleable enough, or expansive enough to wrap around all of us and tie us up in a beautiful bow. It feels like playing two different songs on the piano, one with each hand. Each song has its own rhythm, logic, and beauty, but they have no relation to each other except through the person sitting at the bench. The result is dissonance - with occasional, accidental harmony.

I think about sources of frustration -- and inaction. When we cannot act, we are sometimes caught in a crevice between different scenes, wedged between conflicting value systems. One of my professors recently commented that we cannot possibly hold all of our values at once. There are too many that we have collected over our lifetime, through too many different contexts, and they don't always align. She said that we may have to let some go in order to attend to what is in front of us at the time. I'm not sure how to work that into my life yet. I find myself juggling, trying to keep them all afloat. It never occurred to me that we can put some down. Perhaps because attached to these values are lives getting shorter by the minute.

I live a life of dissonance. This dissonance often gives me a headache and diverts me from where I would like to be. I cannot always be as attentive as I would like, and I may play a lesser part than I had imagined for myself. It can be lonely in this space, and there is always a yearning for something more, something better. At the same time, I like to think my striving counts for something. I'm trying to make something coherent out of disparate parts, not through anyone's choosing, but because that is what life is at this time. Abandoning this effort has never been an option. And I relish the occasional harmony, as fleeting and sporadic as it may be.

Returning

Sometimes when I think of our family's trajectory, I fill with a deep sadness. There's an overwhelming sense of defeat, of despondence. Over forty years ago, we traversed to a new land, and it feels as if we never found our grounding. Our family still feels lost. I wonder if others who attempt to transition from one culture to another feel the same. Is this the story of other displaced people?

I feel this sadness most acutely when I spend time with my parents. They are usually during time spent together as a result of my well-intended effort to provide a semblance of a better life, as I perceive it. Left to their own, they would probably go for months without social contact. They would eat, go on daily walks along the same stretch of land, and go to their doctor's appointments. They would lock the little gate to their front yard around 5pm and from inside the walls, watch some Korean television while dozing. They live as if in a bunker, holed up against a hostile world.

I arrange almost all social events that occur on their calendar. Over the years, I've sent them to Broadway shows, to the US Open, on a trip to Europe, to countless restaurants. I have organized family vacations around their longings, including a trip to Sedona, to Hawaii, a cruise to Alaska. I arrange all birthday celebrations. Two years ago, I organized a gathering for them in Hawaii with my mom’s two sisters and their husbands from Korea. Most recently, I took them on a trip to Northern California to attend our niece's graduation. I’ve organized dinners with friends with elderly Korean parents so that my parents could meet some people. Most of these events occurred despite resistance from my parents. They often say no initially, and I take it upon myself to persuade them to engage with the world.

I've tried to cajole my parents to attend church, just to meet other Koreans. People who speak the same language. People who may share a similar outlook. People who have a chance at understanding their perspective. I’ve chatted with random Koreans who own dry cleaners and work at restaurants to inquire about which church they attend so that I could suggest them to my parents. Even when I offer to drive them or line up an Uber, they refuse.

It is difficult to watch them live out the last decades of their lives. Their lives lack mirth. They don't have much in common with each other, and they know no other people in town, apart from us. Their time, often marked by anxiety, is spent tending to repetitive daily chores. Their loneliness is palpable, and their frustration, close to the surface. They seem afraid to hope, reluctant to demand more.

They see danger in everything. A lot of my suggestions are met with resistance, an admonition of possible risk, an assessment of the money spent against the possible benefit. When I invite them to my children’s birthday parties, they huddle in the corner or indoors by themselves, eat their food, and tell me I shouldn’t spend so much money on the party favors or so much time preparing the food. Their advice usually reflects positions of retreat, like warning me against extending myself too much, conserving my money and energy, and guarding against possible danger. In their advice, I see the hallmark characteristics of the vulnerable, defenseless, community-less.

There are glimmers of their yearning. On a recent flight, my parents sat next to a Korean family. In their presence, my mom became an engaging person, someone with a social presence. She treated my daughter with more gusto and made an effort to be seen. I have seen her do this on another occasion. She emerges from her invisibility and takes on a social identity. It is a drastic transition. Her passivity falls by the wayside, and she becomes a functioning human being. She becomes the kind of grandmother I want for my children. The kind of mom I want for me.

I think of the audacity of uprooting oneself to go to another land. Anyone who has spent time trying to grow roots from a cut plant knows how tricky it can be. Thick, fleshy, water-retaining succulents may be easier than most, but stems of mature trees with histories in its rings may not root at all. Even a new shoot needs to be cut at the right angle at the right part of the plant, during the right stage of growth, and sometimes even at the right time of day to have the optimal chance to survive. The cutting needs to be handled properly. Many require specific conditions to grow, like proper level of humidity, good drainage, and the right type of soil mixture. And even as the roots start to grow, they need constant care to thrive and to avoid decaying. I wonder about the conditions we need as people.

Our family never set out to traverse to another land. We came for what we thought would be a temporary stay, and here we are, 40 years later. We are accidental immigrants. We didn’t come equipped with the kind of audacity needed to make this crossing. We lack the toughness, the know-how, the optimism needed to thrive.

Every non-Korean I speak to about this situation has basically told me to leave them alone. Maybe they prefer it. There is nothing I can do for them. Don't let their sadness interfere with your happiness.

It's difficult to explain that my life cannot be separated from the journey we took together. It is unacceptable to have their story arc turn downward, toward despair, while mine turns upward, toward hope. We are entwined. We are made of the same cutting. Any roots I grow have to supply water to their branch.

And yet, at times, I long for a little separation. To not carry the weight of their desolation on my shoulders. To not have my slivers of hope dashed by their ever-present despondence. To live cocooned in optimism, not dejection.

I feel something akin to survivor's guilt. I made it across more or less intact. They made it across as well, with their limbs and financial security, but also with a profound loss they do not name. I wonder if the decision made 40 year ago was a mistake, and I spend my life looking for evidence that it was not. I desperately search for some signs of redemption, signs that are not easy to find.

On this day, my parents and I are on yet another journey, a short stay in Hawaii before we travel back to Korea for a few weeks with my husband and children. We have many reasons for returning. To meet with our relatives. To see the land we left behind, to see how much the country has changed. To test our memories against the reality of a life we could have had.

It is my children’s first trip there, and surely my parents’ last. My dad is 80, my mom, 77. It feels like a ritual of sorts. To show my children the starting place of our family while giving my parents a chance to return.

In this process, I have this fantasy to be absolved of the what ifs and could haves that have permeated my existence. I will no longer see my mom and wonder about the person she could be if she lived among her people. I will not see her invisibility and pine for a life where she can be a socially engaged person. Even if for just three short weeks.

On this day, redemption feels elusive. I see no upturn in the arc of our story. We are a family who left for another land and became lost. We lost each other and perhaps ourselves, even as we discovered new things along the way. And I, one who found a way to grow roots here, have no insights to offer my parents. All the effort I have made to try to help them enjoy the perks of our new land have amounted to little. I can pay for dinner, but I cannot give them a social existence.

And still I look, for this elusive redemption. I remind myself that this is a tremendous opportunity, one not often available to others. We return bearing gifts for our many cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. We return with intentions to be a part of a larger family, a larger community. We return to be understood, to be seen, to belong, to once again be a people with history and context. I carry images of us surrounded by our aunts and uncles, laughing, exchanging stories. I carry visions of my mom holding hands with her sisters, reminiscing, finding a version of herself that has became obscured. I carry a picture of us visiting my mom and dad’s hometowns and coming back with a new lens through which to see them. I carry a dream that by returning to the land of what could have been, we will also see all that we are. I return with a hope that we still have something to find, something to restore.

The Lens of Money

Since my teenage years, my singular image of my father is a vision of him crouching alone, at the end of the day, on the floor in his bedroom in front of his file cabinet. In front of him sits piles of coins: quarters, dimes, nickels, and reams of bills. First, he tackles the bills. He sorts them into twenties, tens, fives, singles. Then he returns to each pile to straighten out the bills, unbending the dog-ears, turning each face side up. Then the coins, each clanking as they fall onto the pile, while he counts softly under his breath. After each mound, he logs the amount into his notebook, marking the sum of his earnings for the day. This ritual is repeated day after day, with the exception of Sunday, when their business is closed. For a man who had no words left for his children, he spent a remarkable amount of time with his earnings.

In our family, life was understood through the lens of money. It represented the hours my parents spent cleaning, pressing, and bagging other people’s dirty clothes at their dry cleaners, where my mother worked through her bleeding hemorrhoids and talked of her simple longing to treat herself to a cup of coffee in a coffee shop one day like everyone else. It represented our mirthless days in the musty store, nodding along with customers who wanted a discount or expected us to carry their clothes to their car when their nails had just been manicured. It represented the monotonous years that passed, while the children graduated from high school and then from college with no parents to witness the commencement. It represented the decades spent away from our extended families in Korea who would eventually learn of our success in America.

Money was precious, precisely because they stood in for the lives we should have lived. A quarter wasted or an irresponsible purchase became causes for rebuke. “Do you know how much longer your mother has to work for that?” When I asked mother why we never invited others over to our isolated house, she responded, “Do you know that costs money?” Doctors went unvisited, gifts unpurchased, all social rituals foregone because money was something to be held, not used. To spend it meant we had no proof for the life we had lived.

Money wasn’t just our past. It was also our future. As we continued to hear stories of other dry cleaners dying of cancer, my father, who spent the most time hunched over chemicals, put off his retirement year after year so that he could save enough to cover treatment if he got cancer. Money was also our language of love. When they could not visit their parents in Korea, they sent money. On special occasions, my parents sent us money in an envelope addressed in block letters with a check inside, no note. When my mother sent me a check to prepare for my wedding, I cried in the dressing room as I tried on wedding dresses.

It would be dishonest to describe money only as a source of oppression. It provided for our food, our shelter, our clothes. It gave my parents a goal and structure when we had none. But we could only fit so much onto these flat, green surfaces already occupied by Washington, Hamilton, and Jackson. These objects offered no space for emotional connection. They didn’t console us when we felt alone. They didn’t comfort us when we needed a hug. We children didn’t understand the language of money. Even though we didn’t know it as we receded to our disparate corners, we were hungry for warm embraces, understanding, words of empathy.

I didn’t realize that I had become trapped on these flat surfaces until I was in college. I remember observing myself, devoid of emotions, intellectualizing everything, disregarding my yearnings. I did not know how to speak the language of emotions, even though I longed for connection. The intellect is superior to emotions, I remember arguing. My closest friends were those who saw eye to eye intellectually; they sufficed. The emotions flooding inside me felt illegitimate; I shouldn’t have those feelings and what was the point anyway. I didn’t know how else to be. The world of emotions was not mine, and I did not belong there.

When I started working, I too adopted the language of money. It was the only way to trump my dad’s power. No, Dad, let’s go out to dinner; I’ll pay for it. Yes, you can afford to take a vacation; I’m sending you. I paid for my mom’s doctor appointments when they had no health care. I helped them buy a new car when theirs broke down in the middle of a parkway.

No one event drastically changed my relationship with money; rather, it slowly became more grounded by the mere experience of living. Making my own money bought me liberation from my parents, and it allowed me the means to distance myself from them. From this distance, I was able to negotiate my own, direct relationship with money. It was no longer mediated through my dad’s anxiety or my mother’s longing for a life she couldn’t have. And unlike in my parents’ case, it bought me freedom, dinners with friends, membership to the ACLU, and a second career.

I am still very reactive when my parents, now in their mid-70s, choose to forego instead of spend, when they cut the paper napkin in two to share. It reminds me of their lives that passed uneventfully in a dusty enclosure, unnoticed by others, with no real sense of purpose or meaning. And no matter how much they have saved, it restores nothing. It saddens me that all they have to show for their lives is their savings.

My relationship with money hasn’t been a jig, but a slow dance. At times, I let go too much, and other times, I embraced it too tightly to find my own footing. In this clumsy back and forth, I learned that money is just a thing, an object, like a car or a chair, with no power over us apart from what we bestow on it. In my family, it often felt like the only thing. It held all the promise for a better life, but no matter how much we had, it was never enough. It was a currency of anxiety, insecurity, and desperation, but it also offered a glimmer of hope. My parents latched my hands to this glimmer until I was delivered to a safe landing. And like many children of immigrants, I suffer a sense of guilt for all I have and all they lack.

These days, I do what I can to alleviate my parents’ anxiety, buy them some enjoyment, allow them some moments of relief. But my offerings are delivered in the hands of my young children, who come with promises of an afternoon of giggles, a meal to be enjoyed together, and a reminder that there are relationships to nurture. And such afternoons restore my hope in all that is possible, in all that I can do, and all that a family can mean.

Time Of My Own

Growing up as an immigrant kid, I watched my parents struggle a lot. They worked painfully long, labor-intensive hours, often more than 14 hours a day with no real breaks, six days a week. They could never catch up on their sleep and had no time to spare. I remember their exhaustion stretching out like a rope of molten glass, drooping from its own weight, threatening to crack with the passage of time.

As a teenager, I tried as much as I could to help. I cooked dinner, washed the laundry, cleaned the house, helped out at their store. And I was hyper-aware that I should never impose on their time. I remember one time I returned to law school after a visit home. I accidentally left something behind at my parents', perhaps a watch. When I mentioned it to my roommate, she casually suggested that I just call my parents and ask them to send it. I thought her suggestion absurd. No, that's not possible, I said to her.

But more than with regard to time, I knew I should never impose on them emotionally. We weren't an emotionally open family to begin with. But the idea of bringing my personal issues into the household, where my parents' stress already stretched out the seams of our family fabric precariously, was unthinkable. When their frustration and unhappiness started to swell and they started unfurling their anger at each other, we just quietened our breaths and sagged against the cold, desolate walls.

I learned to be accommodating. To figure out a way to help quietly. To identify the areas of need so that I could find a way to fill them. I took it upon myself to play that role. I had to help us. I was the only one who could do something. There was no one else.

To do what, exactly? I'm not even sure I understood. To reduce the level of unhappiness in our family? To minimize my parents' stress? To free them from the unrelenting demands of survival? To create a sense of order when we felt none? To find some sense of security, some assurance that we will all be okay? Maybe all of the above. I'm not sure.

All I knew was that the situation felt desperate.  I had to do something. I had to find a way to help us, to get us out of the morass. So I stepped onto that hamster wheel and ran as quickly as I could.

After years of living like this, it didn't even occur to me to think about what I needed or wanted. In that context, all of my problems seemed so trivial in comparison. I couldn't even call them problems. They were nothing, insignificant bothers that didn't even merit mention. What are the worries of teenage girls? Weight, boys, popularity? None of them mattered, I told myself. Nothing mattered more than our survival, our survival as a family.

I don't think I even realized that I was effacing myself. I remember how detached I felt from my emotions at times, as if I were watching myself from the outside. I remember never crying. I remember constantly feeling guilty for whatever free time I had, for the smallest luxury, like treating myself to a piece of cake, and comparing myself to my parents who worked nonstop. I remember always fulfilling all of my duties first before I allowed myself to do what I wanted. I remember never asking for anything. Never making demands for myself. Simply biting down on that bullet and doing whatever it was that needed doing.

Ever since I became a mom, I realize that I've reverted to that role. Of putting my head down and doing my part. Meeting everyone else's needs. Trying to make everyone else happy. Doing things for myself only when it didn't upset anyone else's needs or plans.

Of course I've heard all that talk about how motherhood requires balancing one's own needs against others. I heard all that, but it seems impossible to do at times. And selfish.

Despite myself, I've been bulging at the seams, steam leaking out of my ears and my nose. I could feel the frustration building over the day, over the week. The week would pass with me driving the kids to school, then picking them up, then driving them to taekwondo or swim or dance, killing time while they attend class, walking up and down the aisles in Target, Costco, Von's, picking up their toys yet again, preparing their meals, vacuuming their crumbs, bathing them, getting them ready for bed. And a thought would quietly appear, My life has to be more than this. And another thought, I'm getting so old. And I would try to push those thoughts away.

Then a week would hit where the kids get sick, and I would be homebound for days. The three precious hours I had to myself while my little one went to preschool would be taken from me, and those thoughts would keep resurfacing. I have nothing to show for my time. Just scrunched up balls of kleenex, red noses, and mounding anxiety about the minutes, hours, days slipping by. Those days would inevitably end in a blow up. A blow up about how I'm doing nothing with my life.

"Nothing" is a cold word. It slaps you across your cheek and says, Do something! Just do something! Figure it out! It doesn't leave room for excuses, and it does nothing to console the deep sadness I feel about how I spent my 44 years.

Jeff would try to talk to me about hiring a regular babysitter or switching roles and him taking a turn staying with the kids or figuring out what it was that I would rather be doing. And I found it difficult to say out loud that I just wanted time. Time to myself. Time to figure it out. Time to explore.

It just seemed too selfish. We are where we are. We have children, children I desperately wanted. We aren't retired. We need to make a living. It didn't occur to me that I could ask for something like that. It seemed impossible.

But the other day, Jeff asked me why I didn't relax with the kids. Why did I always go running off to this store or that? Why didn't I just sit with them and play?

I responded honestly and said that I just needed to get through the day, to pass it as quickly as I could. I just needed to pass the time.

He looked at me for a long time. Very quietly.

Then he said, "We need to make a change. You can't live your life like that."

He offered me a deal. Take a year. Do whatever you want to do. Just write if you want to. Or take classes. He told me I earned it after taking care of the kids for so long.

I didn't believe him. I know his anxieties about money, our future security. I know his goal-driven personality. How could it possibly work?

But the next day, he quit his job. He's been handling the kids' drop off, the pick ups, taking them to swim and taekwondo after school, planning some of the meals, and doing the grocery runs.

It's been a week. I've been writing, and I signed up for a bunch of classes at the community college.

When I was growing up, my family always needed things from me. Everyone else's needs always trumped mine. Their needs were always more desperate, more urgent. No one ever stopped to ask what I needed.

No one has ever done anything like that for me. Put my need above theirs. Put time back in my hands.

It makes me want to cry.

What is Inevitable

Whenever I cry to my mother about how my sister estranged me, she tells me it's just the way things are.

"All siblings grow up and go in different directions. You now have your own families. You just aren't going to be as close as you used to be."

She says it as if it's natural, inevitable.

Whenever she says this, I protest. With tears, with a barrage of words, with rebuke. You know that's not how it is, I cry. That's not what happened. I offer up evidence of other families who vacation together, who celebrate the holidays together, who don't give up on each other.

She responds that life is inherently lonely, that we all ultimately die alone.

One time, when I complained to my mother about my failed relationship with my sister, she said it's because I'm too strong, too hard. "You're incapable of understanding other people's weaknesses," she said.

Another time, when I grumbled about my sister for abandoning me so easily, my mother said, "Do you think you're perfect? Do you think you are without fault?"

I've begged my mother for help. To help us in a situation where we seem unable to help ourselves. She said, "What could I do? How could I possibly help you? You're grown-ups. You created this fight by yourselves."

I've learned not to bring her up. To pretend all is well. I sit by in silence when my parents talk about her in front of me, trips they've taken with her, meals they've shared. I've sat by their side, with my eyes averted, my head slightly bowed, my breath stilled, as they answer her calls, doing what I can to avoid bringing attention to myself.

I find my mother's failure -- or refusal -- to understand incomprehensible. I've tried to see it from a different perspective, from the perspective of a person who believes life is suffering. I've tried to view it in the light of her own estrangement from one of her own sisters and thought about what kinds of psychological barriers that might impose. I've tried to imagine the perspective of a person who believes herself to be powerless, who has lived in this country for more than 35 years and has yet to learn how to speak the language or how to drive, who relinquishes all control to her husband.

Against these factors, I weigh my efforts to convey the depth of my sense of calamity. I have sobbed in front of her. I've talked to her of how I can no longer trust people, how I couldn't rely on anyone else to stay by my side when my own sister abandons me. I've told her how I'm persistently angry, how I cannot shake this feeling of betrayal. 

She seems to lack the ability to absorb my words. She stares at me with disbelief. 

"You have everything you need," she says. "You have two well-behaved children, a good husband, a large house. Why harp on this one problem?"

I do not know how to make her understand. I lack the skills to convey to her how alone I feel these days. How I now feel like I live my hours on the verge of an impending crisis, of yet another breakdown. How one minor spurn, one signal of rejection, or one careless word is enough to spiral me into a hole of despair. How I feel more like a stranger here on earth, with few friends I feel I can turn to. How what I now see are inevitable doom, inescapable failure, impending betrayal. 

I think about the notions of family I used to take for granted. How I simply assumed we would grow old together. That we would be at each other's weddings, play with each other's children, travel together, laugh together. It never occurred to me that we would throw each other out for whatever the reason. I did not fathom that forgiveness would abandon us after our fights, no matter how terrible. 

And I never thought to question whether they were worth it. That my family was worth whatever effort I put into it. That they were worth however much time I spent with them. That they were worth however much money I spent on them.  

Now, all I see are wasted effort, time, and money. 

I regret the trip I took to Paris with my sister. I regret the countless times I hosted her in Chicago, San Francisco, DC. I regret considering her needs when I purchased my house in San Francisco. I regret including her in so many of my gatherings with my friends. I regret all the times I put her ahead of my friends, ahead of my own needs. I regret the countless hours spent talking to her on the phone. I regret all the segments of my life wasted on her.

And despite myself, this sense of regret projects into the future, and I fear what will become of my relationship with my children, with Jeff, even as I cling to them for one vestige of hope. 

My mother's responses make me reconsider the family we were. What were our values? What did we believe? How did we treat each other? How vastly did we fail to understand each other?

I wonder if all these notions of family I held were fabrications on my part. Mere wishful thinking. Social norms I blindly adopted for our family. Unquestioned assumptions that would inevitably reveal themselves to be false with the passage of time.

I do not understand my mother's refusal to help, her claims of inability. I think about what I would do for my own children if they were in such a crisis. What I wouldn't do to help them salvage their relationship. To keep our family together.

It seems that my failed relationship with my sister has exposed other rotting parts. Or maybe the whole family was perfectly healthy, but one weak point has jeopardized the rest, like removing one cherry stem can cause the whole bunch to drop. I would like to believe that we haven't been decaying all along.

I would also like to believe that her words came from a place that contains no malice, no ill-will, but from that crevice where we lack easy access to other words, to words of sympathy, words of understanding. I would like to think that I have the fortitude to withstand these words without suffering too many bruises.

Black Mission Figs

Back, when I was working, I used to buy the most beautiful figs for my mom. On farmers' market days, I would shoot out of my office at lunchtime, hoping no one would pin me down for needless small talk or some random assignment, head straight for the elevator, ride down 24 stories, and beeline for the Ferry Building. There, I would scurry past rows of tables, push through mobs of leisurely shoppers huddled around the stands sampling pieces of apples and persimmons, and scour for sightings of my black mission figs.

As soon as I found them, I would zoom in and scrutinize them for imperfections. Were they ripe enough? Over-ripened? Were they flattened, mottled, punctured? Were their stems intact? I would hold up each basket to examine the fruit on the bottom. Were those on the bottom crushed by the weight of those on top? I would resist the urge to pick them out individually to examine them. Once I was satisfied of their perfection -- soft and dry to the touch, full and plump, skin taut, with each holding its own shape -- I would plunk over my money for as many baskets as I could carry.

On the way back, I would stop by CVS to pick up some disposable plastic containers. Then, back to my office where behind closed doors, I would arrange the figs in the containers one by one. First, a row on the bottom, right side up, each of them resting snugly side by side to keep them from moving around and bruising each other. Then, another row on top, but this time upside down, in order to fill a layer in the gaps created by those on the bottom, like the way teeth of a zipper meet. After I securely filled all the containers, I would grab a FedEx box from my secretary's desk and fill out the form with my personal use ID.

Then, I would place the sealed box on my secretary's station.

"Could you please send this out for overnight delivery? Please make sure they are for delivery by tomorrow, not two days."

All afternoon, I would keep my eye out for the guy making his rounds on the floor to ensure that he picked up my box for overnight delivery. I imagined the sealed box, with my rows and rows of perfect figs waiting inside, forgotten in some dusty corner of some overheated truck or dropped by mistake by some careless worker. That night, they would journey across the continent from Northern California to New York while I slept.

On days when farmers' market was not open, I would taxi to Whole Foods to find my figs. One time, when I was checking out, the cashier was stunned by the amount of figs I was purchasing.

"What are you doing with all these figs?"

"I'm feeding my mom."

Fig season passes quickly, and I would send them to her just a few times before they were no longer available.

The morning after I sent them, I would await her call.

"Were they damaged?" I would ask. "Did they get ruined on the way?"

"They made it over okay," she would reassure me. "They are perfect."

Then, she would tell that she will eat some and freeze the rest. And then for many months to come, she would call to tell me how much she enjoyed the frozen ones. Like little popsicles, she would say.

Once I called some fig growers that I found online to ask if they shipped out to New York.

"No, not for home delivery," they said.

The other day, while I was at Lowe's, I picked up a fig tree for my mom, something she had been wanting for some time. It is still a young tree, inconspicuously bearing just a few green pearls among leaves the size of my hand. I imagined them ripening over time into the kinds of perfect figs I used to buy for her. Jeff drove it over in the back of his truck to their new home while they were unpacking. In their new complex, they have no yard, but we gave her an enormous pot we had lying around our own yard. I think it's big enough to hold the tree, with some room to grow, at least for the time being.

Our House

Our house towers on the corner of a street lined with yew pines, perfectly trimmed hedges, and modest bungalows, just two blocks from Marine Street Beach. Its oak beams soar to the sky and jut out horizontally like branches of a mature redwood in Muir Woods. Its sides are lined with glass, thick enough to withstand an earthquake, angry fists, or carelessly tossed frisbees.  

Some might call it a glass house, an encasing for something precious. It is as exposed as the primate exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, yet as protective as the Popemobile. It’s imposing enough to draw the attention of random passersby, and gracious enough to elicit their praise.   

To enter, you walk up four cement steps book-ended with miniature pumpkins, past the red-hued garden rose, toward the imposing glass wall, and push past the heavy wood-framed glass door now decorated with gooey spooky ghosts, purple and orange pumpkins, bats, goblins, and tombstones, all pasted haphazardly and reliably asymmetrically, all at eye-level with your crotch.  As the door swings, it jams abruptly, jarred by a small green translucent superball left forgotten at the perfect spot to trip an unsuspecting guest, and you are forced to sidestep the tiny green specks that appear to sprout out of the wood floor. 

When you walk in, you are intrigued to see in the center of the living room a cylinder staircase the size of a trunk of a giant sequoia, rising from floor to ceiling, not unlike the winding spiral of the Guggenheim Museum.  

To the right, you see a pair of brown velvet chairs, angled just so as to invite intimate conversation without kissing knees. They flank a stand of flowering orchids, as if beckoning a queen or at least a special guest to grace its seats for a photo op. Instead of a royal romp, it currently hosts a reclining Darth Vader draped in a flowing black cape with his arm, mid-air, brandishing a florescent red lightsaber. With him, a Minnie Mouse plastic tote bag overflowing with Duplo Legos on a field of spit balls yet to be soaked in spit. 

You follow the trail of crusted dribbles of milk and streaks of mud, past a grove of Fisher-Price Little People, each figure seated on a chair in a perfect circle, as if gathered for an annual summit, to the plush rug in the center of the grand room. There, you find a toddler’s table, surrounded by three chairs in primary colors, two standing, one fallen. The table is more covered than not, by a singing Cinderella there, a dancing Belle here, a leaping Luke Skywalker, and an exploding droid ship. A crust of Crayola Air-dry clay adds unexpected texture to the table's surface, and drying glitter glue, unexpected dazzle. 

Under the table lies an unruly collection of construction paper, like a pile of raked leaves, some tossed after one or two mis-spelled words, others filled with a chaos of colors, all works in progress. All are invariably wrinkled or grease-stained, and many discolored with age and torn at the edges, as if they have been tossed from here to there, never to find a permanent home, yet too precious to be discarded.    

Like fallen foliage, plastic plates and teacups, half-torn workbooks and board books, crayons and markers, tiaras and hair-clips, pieces of corn flakes, and missing puzzle pieces clutter the rug. Along the wall sits a child’s kitchenette fitted with a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a stovetop, all of its doors ajar and exposing a coffee maker, a blender jammed with waffles and sausage, and baskets filled with enough plastic food to last you a winter. 

Around the room, princesses lie about, like damsels in distress, waiting to be rescued by either a prince or a fickle toddler. A plush Snow White left behind on the rocking horse, an Elsa doll with her tiara fitted askew on top of the toddler piano, a red-headed fair mermaid wedged behind the drum set. While heroes are aplenty, they have all been corralled by the five-year old for the great battle brewing in his bedroom. 

The discriminating eyes might spot the row of cookbooks and novels tucked behind glass cabinets in the far corner, secured with child-proof latches, and the delicate hand blown glass ornaments perched behind the display of Lego Star Wars vehicles on the uppermost shelf. Portraits line the walls, all evenly spaced, one of a wedding, many of the children at various ages. Here and there, post-its of various sizes, colors, and orientation, scribbled with indecipherable messages, speckle the wall.

***

Sometimes, on days when the chaos feels insurmountable, I think about the 900 square foot one-bedroom apartment I used to lease just a block away from the San Francisco Bay in my late 20s. There, my row of orchids lined symmetrically along my window sill, my column of New Yorkers perched on my night table, and my collection of literature sat undisturbed until I reached for one. My floors stayed clean, my counters free of clutter, my refrigerator never over-stuffed. I miss my chaise lounge where I spent many evenings, uninterrupted, with nothing other than a book and a cup of tea.   

But I am reminded that it is in my current house where I hear the crunch, crunch of my daughter as she nibbles on her Persian cucumbers, where I wash the dirt out of the crevices of little toes at the end of the day, where my children, my husband, and I rest and sleep to ready ourselves for another morning. It is in this house where my two year-old learns to say please and thank you and to make bubbles with her hands before running them under the water.  

It was in this house where my then four-year-old son scrutinized his sister for a long time as she sat on the potty before straightening up to ask, “Mom, why is her butt in the front?” This same child startled us months later by asking why everyone has to die . . . because he doesn’t want to die. As he cried, we held him and comforted him the best we could. 

In this house, we don’t pray, but we hug. Yet, despite the imperfect balance between chaos and order in this house, I cling to some undefined faith that here, we’ve found a haven from the harshness that nature can be, while abundantly reaping its fruit. 

The View

I'm taking a writing class and re-working some of my old stuff. Here's the one I read in class yesterday.

***

I spotted them from a distance as they trudged down the terminal, my dad with his hunched shoulders, tilting toward the ground, his ever-present determined grimace on his face and my mom, also sagging a little, fighting to stay upright.  He was rolling his carry-on, and my mom was carrying three mis-shapened bags with her outstretched arms as they clanked against her legs with every step she took. Their hair was rumpled, and I saw my mom reach up with a bag slung over her shoulder to pat her hair down. They must have napped on the six hour flight from New York.  

I put on a bright smile. We waved to each other.  “Hi, Mom, hi, Dad!”

As they approached, I could see how they had changed in the six months since Christmas.  A little more shriveled, a little more haggard, a little more faded.  

When they crossed over, I took one of my mom’s bags from her and slung it over my shoulder. I took the other and draped it over my dad’s carry-on. 

“No, no, we can manage,” my dad said, as he resisted my tug. 

“No, Dad, it’s ok. Here, I’ll take it.” 

I let him keep the last bag as we strolled out of the terminal. 

“Did you check any bags?” I asked.

“No, this is everything. They charge you now for checked bags, did you know that? Fifty dollars a bag! Why would I pay fifty dollars for them to put my bag on the plane?”

We walked to the parking lot. 

Once in the car, I told them the itinerary that I had mapped out months earlier. First, a drive to Half Moon Bay to show them the best view out here, then Sunday brunch at the Top of the Mark overlooking the city, then a quick stop at my studio in the Marina before driving them to the hotel in Sausalito perched over the water to spend the night before they headed back to New York the next day in time to open their dry cleaner’s by Tuesday morning.  It was their first trip to my city and their first vacation in over fifteen years, and I wanted to pack in as much as I could. 

“Mom, I think you’ll like Half Moon Bay. It’s so grand. So different from the beaches in New York…”    

"But what about all the food I brought for you?” My mom said. “We should put them in the refrigerator right away…”

"Oh, Mom, we don't really have time to go by my apartment first. I thought we could fit in Half Moon Bay before our reservation…”

"What if it keeps leaking?"

"What if what keeps leaking?"

"The kimchi. It was leaking on the airplane and the stewardess was giving us funny looks. I think the other tupperwares are ok..."

"Oh, you brought kimchi?"

I stepped out of the car and wrapped the containers in plastic bags. 

Then I started driving us across CA-92 toward the California coastline. 

It was just minutes into the drive when I saw the fog. Looming in the distance, a swath of white stretching out like a runway across the expanse of the horizon. It looked as vast as a tundra, as impervious as a prison wall.  Even from a distance, I could see how quickly it was rolling in, charging toward us, like a belligerent battalion, rearing to fight. 

It’s the same fog I had seen year after year of living in San Francisco. The same, predictable, summer fog. In my planning, I had somehow forgotten to consider it. 

As we drove closer, I could see it amassing, growing thicker, wider. It was stampeding angrily across the sky. Its silence was deceptive; it should have rumbled. 

I found myself driving faster. I wanted to beat it. I had my plans. I had mapped out exactly how the day should unfold.

As we neared the town at the edge of Half Moon Bay, I could tell I was losing. The entire town was enveloped in fog, and there was white haze in every direction. My parents stared out of the window to find what it was they were supposed to be seeing. Fine mist bombarded my windshield, and I turned on my headlights to find our way to the coast.

I turned right onto Cabrillo Highway and entered a parking lot. We opened the car doors, and a gust of wind rushed in. When we stepped out, the wind slapped our cheeks and whipped our hair. We turned our backs against the wind to catch the front flaps of our jackets and zipped up to our chins. 

When we turned to face the ocean again with our arms folded across our chests, all I could see was a stubborn swath of fog across the entire stretch. No vision, no vista. No ocean that stretched out endlessly, the way it had revealed itself to me countless times when I had come alone. 

For the next few minutes, we stood in the midst of this invasion, shivering and bracing against the wind as we stared at the white fallout. I’m not sure what we were waiting for. Perhaps a break in the fog, a ray of sun, a sign of mercy.  But we just got colder and colder, and the view, no more apparent.   

I felt tears coming to my eyes. I felt taunted, betrayed. I breathed slowly to give disappointment time to settle. 

“What a shame,” I said. “The ocean here is so beautiful. I wanted to show it to you. Usually, if you look this way, you can see these amazing cliffs, and there, by the cove, there are usually so many surfers, and if you look south, you can sometimes see as far as Big Sur…” 

My mom, huddled in her hooded red parka, turned with each direction I pointed out, even though her view remained constant. And as I talked, she nodded along to my words. 

After a couple of minutes, with her eyes still gazing out into the distance, she reached out, held my arm, and said, "I imagine it is very beautiful."

An Unexpected Sweetness

My dad is a bit shy. And a little awkward. In a crowd, he'll be standing near the periphery with a big grin on his face. And twenty minutes later, he'll still be there, with the same grin. Without even a drink in his hand.

He never drives the car over the speed limit, even when other cars backlog behind him, honking, and they finally pass, revving up their engines and craning their necks to see who the hell drives at 55mph during rush hour.

His weight never fluctuates. For most of his adult life, he weighed exactly 120 pounds, a slight weight even for his 5 feet 4 inches. Now in his 70s, he has the shape of a skinny pre-teen. At mealtimes, he used to lecture us never to eat until we were full. Just stop before you fill up, he advised, because your stomach needs time to register its fullness. He rarely eats dessert, never a bite after he brushes his teeth, and rarely snacks, only relenting when my mother goads him repeatedly.

When we were in elementary school, he was the guy who doled out our extra homework. He filled up pages and pages of composition notebooks with math problems in columns so perfectly straight that you would have thought he used a ruler to guide his handwriting. When writing his checks, he always wrote in perfect block letters that I have since seen from some other engineering types.

During his 50s and 60s, he spent most of his days hunched over a table shaped like an ironing board, surrounded by tubes of chemicals. I never learned the names of chemicals, but I knew they were noxious. He used them to clean the mounds of clothes that arrived by armfuls everyday at their busy dry cleaner. He went over each piece of clothing slowly, meticulously, as if he were studying some engineering problem to be solved. The clothes came out perfectly, but his fastidiousness irritated my mother, who often complained that they could leave the store at a reasonable hour if he simply worked faster.

When he returned home, he holed up in the bedroom to count the day's earnings, dollar by dollar, quarter by quarter. He logged the earnings into a composition notebook, in the column next to the date, along with the number of the day's customers. When he finished, he placed the notebook next to the other two dozen he had maintained for the past 20 somewhat odd years of running the business.

Then when he had free time, he read the New York Times from beginning to end, with the paper spread out in front of him, a dictionary to his right. If we ever needed to know anything factual, like the population count of the people in Indonesia, we would ask him first before consulting the encyclopedia, because he often knew the information on the spot. He would tell us what we needed to know, along with other tidbits, like its status as the most populous Muslim nation.

I never quite know how to interact with him.

He is the guy who established the rules in our household. The one who refused to let us grow out our hair because he said it would interfere with our studying. The one who refused to let us wear makeup. The one I was reluctant to show my report card to when it had anything less than straight As. The one I was afraid to ask for permission when I was asked to go to the senior prom my freshman year.

While growing up, my sister and I huddled around our mom to chat, but never our dad. We told our mom about our daily lives, and he learned about our lives through our mom. And when we needed his permission for something, we always asked our mom, and a day or two later, she would tell us his response. Even these days, when we call, he says a perfunctory hello and hands the phone over to my mom.

For most of my life, I rarely made physical contact with him, except for a stretch when I was in the second grade and decided that we should kiss our parents goodnight before going to bed as I had seen on TV. Even now, whenever I have an occasion to part from my parents, I give my mom a hug. But with my dad, I give him a quick bow of the head and an awkward, half-hearted wave with my hand as I mutter "bye" in English.

We grew up hearing stories of his upbringing, of how he lived in a room in someone else's house as a child so that he could be closer to his school instead of walking miles each day. Of how he moved in with a doctor family in Seoul when he was accepted into a university in the city. We accepted these stories as an explanation for the state of our relationship.

When my son was first born, my dad came out with my mom to help. While my mom hurried around to help with the cooking, the cleaning, and all other tasks that go with running a house, he sat around, unsure of what to do with himself, first clutching my copy of The Aquariums of Pyongyang and then the week after, The Rape of Nanking. But the minute we stepped out with the baby in a stroller, he claimed his spot behind the stroller. You walk, I'll push, he always insisted. No, no, Dad, I would say, it's okay. You guys walk and enjoy the view. He would refuse to release his grip from the stroller, and I would relent. Then we would walk, my mom and me, purposeless for a change, and my dad steady in his role.

During those walks, my mom never failed to remind me how he had never pushed a stroller when we were little, and how he never held a newborn until I popped my son into his arms the day he was born. When we were little, my dad was often abroad, sent to work in places like Europe and Japan. My mom told us of how my sister cried when she first met him because he was away during her birth and for the first months of her life. I didn't understand how long that was until I had my own children and found out how long it takes for infants to develop stranger anxiety.

This past month, we stayed with my parents in New York for a couple of weeks. My 18 months old daughter had met my parents a few times before, but this was the first time she was old enough to interact with them in more substantive ways than just crying or smiling at them.

The visit started out as expected, with my mom cooking up a storm and fussing over the kids and my dad just smiling from the periphery as our kids roamed around their house and reached for everything within grasp. Even though there were four adults and just two kids, we at times felt outnumbered. When my mom scurried into the kitchen to prepare this or that dish or cut the fruit, I always rushed in behind her to help, which left Jeff to play defense with two kids in a house with exposed stairs, doors that jam little fingers, and glass objects waiting to fall on their heads.

The first day, my dad, in his effort to help, scooped up my daughter before I even had a chance to explain how shy she is, how she hates being picked up by anyone other than me and Jeff, how her petite figure belies her ability to scream. Miraculously, she did not scream. Or reach out to come to me. Or bury her face in her hands to pretend that she didn't see my dad. Instead, she just sat there, nestled in my dad's arms, looking as natural as an owl on a branch. She stared back at our baffled faces with a look as if to say, "What? What are you looking at?"

The strangeness continued when my mother picked her up. Whimpering, my daughter reached out not for me, but for my dad. Once ensconced in his arms, she stopped whining.

As the week continued, our daughter surprised us even more. During meal times, she repeatedly blew kisses at my dad -- and only my dad -- and waved her tiny hand at him as she whispered "Hi, Buji" in her abbreviated version of Harabuji, Korean for grandfather. My mom would interrupt my dad in the middle of his slurping and say,"She's waving! Wave back! Blow her a kiss!" In the minivan, she often tipped forward as far as her seatbelt would allow to look for him and giggle as soon as their eyes met. Whenever my dad wasn't in the room, she looked around, whispering, "Buji, Buji." Then when he appeared, her eyes lit up, and the flurry of kisses and waves resumed. She soon discovered his hiding spot, behind the desk in my old bedroom. As he sat there reading the New York Times, she ran in and crouched down to tip her head to meet his face. Once in position, she dispensed more kisses and hellos, and ran back in every few minutes until he finally gave up and came out carrying her in his arms.

My baffled mother asked her daily, "What about me? I'm the one who feeds you. Aren't you going to come to me?"

In my Facebook posts, I refer to my daughter as my angel. She seems like an angel now more than ever. She's tiny, weighing no more than 20 pounds, with a vocabulary of 50 or so words. She loves to say "neigh-neigh,""moo-moo," and "no, no!" She eats everything in birdlike nibbles, except for bratwurst or salami, which she devours like a starving hyena. This little being somehow arrived with a secret knowledge of our needs, our shortcomings, and the magical power to free us from the way we thought we were supposed to be. It is a sweetness and a generosity I had not anticipated -- and a filling of sorts, a filling we had all been craving but had not known until now.