Kimchi Mamas

My cousin and me

“What happened to you?  You were supposed to become someone amazing: some kind of a great success!  Look at you, you are just a mom and a housewife.  Why?” my cousin asked me about six or seven years ago.

“I’m working on my graduate degree and I’ve been writing.”  I replied, feeling defensive.

“Everyone used to talk about how smart you are.  They all said you were going to be very successful someday.  You used to be brilliant.”

“Everyone said that?” I asked surprised.

“Yeah.  But you didn’t do anything special with your life.  You became nothing.”

I was hurt, to say the least, but I dismissed it as one of my cousin’s brash moments.  What I would remember later, and what I didn’t think to say to her at that moment, was that when we were kids, I was also being told by my mother and other family members about all of my cousin’s great accomplishments and how creative and amazing she was.

My cousin and I have always had a kind of bond, almost like sisters.  We played like sisters and fought like sisters.

I am thinking now that the fights and the competition between us were orchestrated by the adults in our lives.

My mother used to show my cousin’s published poems to me and explain to me how amazing she was to get published in Korean papers at such a young age. After a few years of hearing about her poems getting published, I entered a nationwide songwriting contest and won fifth place.  My mom was proud of me and hung the little flag where everyone could see.  But still I never got published in any papers, and I knew that I had failed my mother.

I recently reconnected with my cousin after a few years of not speaking to each other after an argument.  I had said some very harsh things to her, and I know that I hurt her feelings.    

When we reconnected a few months back, I first told myself that she is the same person, and that I could not trust her.  But last night when I spoke with her, I sensed a more grown and mature woman who is actively working on herself and focusing on doing things for others.  She is adopting her nephews since her brother is not doing so well financially.  He is an artist and is struggling to make it.

She and I had a wonderful heart to heart, and we carried it through to this morning in text.  I for the first time felt really connected to her, and felt thankful to have a cousin who is more like my sister.

After I had texted with her, I began to realize the impact our family had created in our lives. I think that our families saw two bright and talented girls full of personalities and energy.  I think that they assumed that if we were competitive with one another that it would cause us to realize our full potentials.

My cousin did become, and continues to become, something special.  She fell in love with an American businessman that she met through her work.  She married him and came to America.  She then divorced him after a few years of what felt like abuse, and at one point became completely broke.  She worked at shops as a seamstress and took classes at the local colleges to improve her English.  She then took an intern position with a large clothing company and now, after a few decades, she is a buyer and quality controller for that  company, traveling all over the place and making herself a very respectable salary.   She married a man more than a decade younger and has created a family life for herself and is happy.

I cannot blame our families for trying to get the best out of my cousin and me, but it did affect our relationship in a negative way.  We antagonized each other, never really knowing why.  We at times resented each other, and so we followed a pattern of being friendly, and splitting apart at our individual offenses, before coming together again and repeating the pattern.

I wonder what would have happened to our relationship if our elders had not induced a competitive relationship between us? I wonder if she and I might have even manifested something wonderful together, a successful enterprise of some kind?  Food for thought for people raising siblings, aunts, uncles and other family members out there.

- Nancy 

A Holocaust Ignored

I feel nauseated!  I have never before in my life read something that gave me a physical reaction like this. I have the physical urge to throw up! I don’t even know where to begin. I’m going to try... Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who otherwise looks to be a human, said that the rape of women (comfort woman) was ok because it relaxed their rapists (Japanese soldiers).

Comfort women were NOT prostitutes! They were set up to be raped by Japanese soldiers by the Japanese government.  

Comfort women were kept in small cubicles that resembled micro-sized portapotties.  They were forced to stay in these cells without being let out except every couple of weeks to wash themselves. These enclosures had chamber pots within them.  Every fifteen minutes a Japanese soldier would enter and rape the woman inside the cubicle, and if the woman in anyway rebelled, she was pulled out, put to death and left where other women could see her as a warning.  The soldiers gunned down lines of women if they caught STDs, instead of treating them. The women were treated as less than human all those years ago, and now Hashimoto dehumanizes them again.

What if a German politician came out and said that some part of the Holocaust was necessary? What if he said that the victims of the holocaust deserved kind words, but that killing them, torturing them, using them as slaves made the German soldiers relax, made them feel good because they were at war, and provided needed relief?  How would the world react to that statement?  How would the victims of holocaust feel?  Is there inherently some difference between how the world views the victims of one country-wide tragedy to another? I wonder why one article on the BBC website is all the press this has received, and I wonder how different it might be if it were about another set of victims. 

I cannot understand where Hashimoto is coming from but you can read it for yourself here:

“Japan WWII ‘comfort woman’ were ‘necessary’ - Hashimoto

- Nancy

His own purple trail

 

 

Did I ever tell you what a wonderful hapa-child I have?

When he was three years old his favorite color was purple.  He loved purple because it was the color associated with Donatello, his favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  He declared that his first car would be purple.  When I said, “Well, you might change your mind about that,” he began to cry, and I learned that he was a sensitive soul.

When we bought him a bike, we knew that we had to find a purple one, and finally did at a garage sale.  It was purple and in fantastic condition, but it also happened to be a girl’s bike.  The very next day he proudly walked out to the courtyard full of boys who were mostly older and larger than he was.  I nervously listened from my kitchen, fearing the reaction that he might get and how he might feel afterwards.

Sure enough, the boys all yelled, “Hey that is a girl’s bike!”  The next few minutes of silence lasted almost too long for me, but it was broken when I heard the indignant little voice of my son:

   Dash:   Am I a boy or a girl?

    The boys:   A boy.

    Dash:  Whose bike is this?

    The boys:  Yours.

    Dash:  This is my bike?

    The boys:  Yes!

    Dash:   And I’m a boy?

    The boys:  Yes.

    Dash:  Then this is a boy’s bike.

    The boys:   Oh.  Well alright.

I quietly held up my fist and shook it in the air, the proudest I could imagine of my little three year old!  The boys never mentioned it again.

Later he entered UC Berkeley School of Law at nineteen years of age, and was one of the youngest students in the fiercely competitive environment.  As a kid who grew up playing and listening to punk rock music, his style was heavily affected by this, and in spite of the formal attire of most of his peers, my son dressed to fit his “punk” roots with skinny jeans and graphic t’s..  One of the older students took a photo of him wearing a pink t-shirt and his tight black pants, in pretense of liking it, and then sharing it around the campus, causing my son to become butt of many jokes. 

He decided to wear that shirt every day for months (washing it, of course) in response to their antics and would not back down.  I urged him to stop wearing that shirt but to no avail.  It broke my heart to know what was happening to him but looking back now, I am impressed with his fearlessness.  He almost quit the school, but finished the grueling three years of law school with those same bullies graduating around him.  In his tradition, after successfully graduating with his law degree, he refused to practice law, pursuing instead comedic acting, writing, stand up, and producing. 

The photo above is of him playing a character from an upcoming web film project of his that he is writing/producing/directing, a project that combines his love for superheroes and passion for creating his own path: his own purple trail.

- Nancy

Welcome brand-new Kimchi Mama Nancy!

A new week, a new contributor!

We asked Nancy the two questions we ask all new Kimchi Mamas: what makes you Kimchi, and what makes you Mama?  Please welcome Nancy to the fold!

Love, the Kimchi Mamas

 

I am kimchi because I am a full-blooded Korean.

When my son was two years old I began a novel about Korea. In the book, I wrote about a woman who was taken away from her son and her husband, forced into a comfort camp and eventually driven to lose her mind due to the horrific experience. The woman in my story somehow managed to get on a boat back to Korea after the Hiroshima bombings but she was never the same.