Kimchi Mamas

Exposed

When I was fired by the law firm Paul Hastings six days after my first miscarriage in April 2008, I responded with an angry email to the partners of my department and senior management. I pressed "All Associates" on the cc button, a recipient list nearing 1000, and attached a copy of the ridiculous non-disclosure agreement the firm had asked me to sign. Within an hour after I clicked "Send," I received an email from the editor of a legal blog Above the Law informing me that he had posted my email and attachment. Within a day, the post generated close to a thousand comments.  I received hundreds of emails from people I didn't know and others I hadn't heard from in years. 

When news of my email was circulating in the virtual sphere, I didn't think to explain it to my parents in New York. They did not use the internet and did not have a computer.  I told them I was fired and explained the circumstances, but I did not tell them that I had sent a mass email.  I wasn't sure if they knew what an email was.  I told them in my simple Korean, "I told my boss that he shouldn't lie when he fires someone."  But I did not explain that I may have burned my career. My risk-adverse parents grew up in a culture that expected employees to brew coffee and to run errands for their bosses.  Would they understand?

Open Thread Thursday

Koreans and Karaoke!  Mardi Gras and Lent. 

What's on your mind today?

-The Kimchi Mamas

Complexities of Race Relations

Everything you may have heard about these Korean parents wanting a Korean partner for their children?  Erase them from your mind.  Not true.  In fact, far from truth, judging from some of the past comments I have seen here on Kimchi Mamas.

Because I am divorced with a biracial child, my mother is concerned that I am now dating a Korean man.  Actually, a man who has very similar ethnic make-up as I: 1/4 Japanese and 3/4 Korean.  He even comes with a biracial daughter.  How perfect, one would think...

Why is she concerned?  She is concerned that a man who doesn't look like her own father will enter my Little Nabi's life.  She couldn't insist on her original protest, when I had once mentioned wanting to marry a Korean man some day, that I would be a huge disappointment to a Korean mother-in-law; my man is adopted so I was able to curtail any Korean mother-in-law discussions.

History

This past week I had a conversation with my mom about how I learned about Asian American history.  There is no doubt in my mind that had my mom not prompted and prodded me to write my history papers on different parts of Asian American history, I would have learned nothing about the history of my own people in America.

In particular, I asked her if she remembered when she told me about the Vincent Chin murder.  She thought that it was in high school, which is kind of reasonable considering it was a brutal hate crime.  BUT, I am fairly certain that I was in 5th or 6th grade.  I specifically remembering thinking how dumb the whole thing seemed - dumb being my 5th or 6th grade way of contemplating hate crimes.

I wonder about how I will share stories of Asian American with my children.  I think that our stories still fall outside of the mainstream and don't always receive the attention and care that is needed.  I think that hearing about things through the voices of family, imagining things that my grandparents might have gone through - those are all important ways of sharing our past with our children.

I already have some books, but the stories are so hard to find.  And some of the stories are so sad!  I think it's important to teach my children about things like Japanese internment ("Baseball saved us" comes to mind), but at the same time, it's such a hard conversation to start.  Especially with a four year old who asks WHY to just about anything I say.  (I can picture it now, "Why did FDR think that Japanese Americans were spies?") 

How do you plan on teaching your children about Asian American history?  What questions are you nervous about answering?

~ eliaday

I am an Ummah once again

Up until he started preschool at 2.5 (I was pregnant and in need of some down time, and he was only there for a few hours a day until he was 3) my son, Noah, spoke mostly Korean.  I speak fluent Korean and think it's one of the best gifts my parents gave me, and wanted to do the same for him.  So I made the decision early on and the effort to speak mostly Korean to him and it was all going swimmingly. But then when he started preschool he realized that the rest of his world, including his new friends at school, lived in English and it was all downhill from there.

Literally within 6 months he was speaking and functioning in complete English.  On the first day of school he said "bye Ummah!" in his little baby voice, excited to get his hands on the new toys he saw on the shelves.  Then on the third day of the third week he said "it's my MOMMY!" when I arrived to pick him up.  My jaw dropped to the floor.  It was like he was calling me by a foreign name.  I was not his Mommy.  I was his Ummah.  I loved being his Ummah because I thought I had the world's best Ummah and I wanted to be that for him.  For me, Ummah just feels warmer, deeper, solid, just more THERE.  Is it just me?

He continued to call me "Ummah" at home because I requested it, but it was always "Mommy" at school.  Time passed and I realized one day that he called me Mommy at home too and it wasn't so strange to hear it anymore.  I thought about having a talk with him about re-renaming me.  But I decided that what's done is done, and if I'm "Mommy" to him in his head, I guess I could live with that.

He forgot most of Korean soon after, and when I did speak Korean to him, he'd ask me "not to talk like that."  It saddened me when he couldn't communicate with my parents anymore during a trip to visit them a few months after he turned 3.  But I was mostly amazed at how quickly he discarded one language for the other.

Then we moved into my parent's house in southern California.  (In case you don't follow my personal blog:  We lived in Hawaii.  Husband is a psychologist in the military.  Husband deployed last month.  I decided to move in with my parents who live in a heavily Korean populated part of Southern California for the year of husband's deployment.)  When I looked for preschools for Noah, I found that there were several well recommended Korean speaking/teaching preschools very near us and decided to send Noah to one of them.  He is currently attending Sunny Hills Preschool.  I had some reservations about sending him to a Korean speaking school and changing languages on him again, but the opportunity to give him  shot of in the arm and give him back his Korean was just too tempting to pass up.

The first couple of weeks were hard.  He's the kid who runs into school without a backward glance.  Even at 2.5 on his first day, he waved happily to me when I left him.  But the first day of the second week, after a long weekend, I left a wailing child behind, one I had to pry from my legs.  When I asked him about his friends at his new school, he solemnly told me "Mommy, my new friends don't know how to talk."  It must have been hard for him to go to a place everyday where he didn't know what anyone was saying.  He didn't know how to ask to play with his friends, he didn't know how to even ask to go to the bathroom.  I know it was hard for him because he'd come home and either tantrum the whole time, or talk manically about anything and everything.

But then, about three weeks in, he started understanding what my parents and I were saying to each other in Korean.  His teacher mentioned that he was following directions better in class.  Then around the 5th week, he started to sprinkle in Korean words and phrases into things he said.  And I noticed that I wasn't "Mommy" anymore.  I was "Momma."  I think he found a compromise between Ummah and Mommy.  It had a nice ring to it, and I responded as if nothing had changed.  And then two days ago, I was in the living room picking up some toys and Noah was in the playroom.  He called for me saying "Ummah!  Ummah!"  I turned towards his voice as my heart stopped for a second.  I realized how much I had missed hearing it, and how much I thought of myself as an Ummah to him.  I quickly made my way to him to scoop him up and give him a hug.  A big one from his Ummah.

-- by jooliyah who is relieved that Noah has friends who play with him at school now.

Open Thread Thursday

What's on your mind today?

--The Kimchi Mamas

Food Fight

When I was a kid, whatever Mom made for meals - we ate.  And because for a significant portion of my childhood we were “financially challenged”, that food wasn’t always something I wanted to eat.  But nonetheless it was eaten.

When given the choice between food or no food, rice and kimchi for the 2,524th day in a row was fine by me! 

When I became a parent to not just one toddler but two, I struggled with the idea of “kid friendly” food versus . . . food.  So many of my friends would make special meals for their little ones in addition to the meals they shared with their SOs or older children.  (One mom would actually make a meal for the family and then heat up chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese for the little one. When I asked her why, she stated it was because “that’s what little kids eat.”  Or another mom who said “my child will only eat foods that are white, yellow or orange-y” but none of the foods she listed were actual oranges . . . WTH?)

Open Thread Thursday

This kimchi mama got about 4 hours of sleep - and her children sleep through the night.  What the hey?!  Less than 48 hours until the waiter's second worst nightmare/most hated "holiday" (Mother's Day is #1) . . . South Korea holds onto their footballer's dreams at the World Cup.

It's Open Thread Thursday.  What's on your mind today?

-The Kimchi Mamas

Circumcision

A recent episode over at momversation got me thinking about this issue. 

It seems like circumcision is becoming less and less popular in the US and some are even calling it "mutilation" or "amputation." I had no idea that people were so passionate about this.

I know that in Korea, a lot of boys are circumcised when they are older... like in 5th, 6th grade or even when in high school. I remember watching a Korean movie about a gangster who returns to high school. He and a bunch of other teenage boys at his school get circumcised together. Boy, were they ever in pain. I don't know what the practice is now.

According to Wikipedia "Circumcision in South Korea is largely the result of American cultural and military influence following the Korean War. "

I feel like most Korean men are circumcised and that most Korean women prefer a circumcised penis.  Did I just make a huge huge generalization? (Please no lynching.) 

Uncharted territory

So, this isn't really a Kimchi thing, so much as it is a Mama thing.  I'm just hoping to tap into whatever Kimchi Mama resources are out there, because I'm in need of some guidance.

First, some background...  Last spring, I got engaged. =)  My daughter is currently 4 and a half.  We're not planning on getting married until the summer of 2010.  My fiance is a grad student right now.  He doesn't live with us, because I think the stress of moving isn't a good match for someone who is trying to finish his degree.

So, we're in limbo.  My fiance stays over at my house on the weekends, but we don't see him during the week because our schedules don't work in a way that it makes sense.  My daughter knows that he's part of our family (he's not her dad).  When we play house, I'm always the mom, and she's always the sister, and he's always the brother (and sometimes even the little sister). 

Part of me believes that this is because she doesn't have any other way of fitting him in to our family.  She has a dad; he just doesn't live with us.  So, I can see how she wouldn't see him some kind of a father - because she has no examples of blended families, or friends with step-parents, etc.  She doesn't even know what a step-parent is!

I've started doing some research to find books about blended families.  The thing is that nearly every book that I've seen focuses on the wedding.  I am really really reluctant to tell my daughter about the wedding - mostly because she's four and has zero sense of time.  I could barely handle her asking me every day in December if it was Christmas; I don't think I could manage talking to her about a wedding that isn't happening for over a year.

So, I'm wondering: Does anyone know of any good books about blended families?  And I know it's asking a lot, but I'd love love love to find a book about different families where the families were anything other than white.

~ eliaday, who doesn't quite know how to start a blended family that isn't quite blended yet.