Kimchi Mamas

Giving in to Hope

Having a family of my own makes me think about the one I had growing up. My parents, my brother, my sister.  The way we related to each other, or didn't.  The way we treated each other.  Some of the things that went right, but mostly, what didn't. 

I think about my parents when they first started out.  Younger than Jeff and I currently are by almost two decades.  No one starts out intending to have a fractured family, and I'm sure they didn't. I imagine them as a newly married couple as they appear in the wedding photos we have at home -- with years to look forward to, with plans and hopes, and with the same kinds of excitement and anticipation Jeff and I have about raising our own children. Now their oldest child is in his 40s, and the other two, in their late 30s. Do they look back and wonder if things could have turned out differently?

Processing

Ever since I had my baby five months ago, my head's been one big muddle.  The adorable little guy fills me in a way I didn't know was possible and brings out a degree of love and devotion I didn't know I was capable of having.  At the same time, he arrived with a jolt that seemed to knock off balance various delicate pieces of my life that I thought I had put into place over the years.  

Since his arrival, I've been trying to unmuddle myself.  To work through the various reactions I've been having and try to sort them out.  The reactions have ranged from deep feelings of contentment and cloying affection to unshakable anxiety.  Some days have been better than others.  On some days, like today, I feel like I've emerged from that cloud and have happily moved on.  On other days, I'm convinced it's just the hormones.  But when, all of a sudden, I find myself emotional and overwhelmed, with my little brain feeling like it's ready to burst from a slew of endlessly trivial demands, I find myself squeezing my hands against my skull, as if to keep it contained.  Other times, I feel the urge to bang my head, as if to knock out some of the excess junk that clutters the limited space up above.  But then I return to my placid state when all seems perfectly fine, and I wonder what the hell was my problem.

New York Times Article re KA Suicides

Here is an incredibly sad article about suicides among Korean-Americans in the New York area.  It is a reminder about how isolated some individuals and families can be and how so many people may be devastated in this hard economic time.  Please take extra time to reach out to others in your community and support local Korean businesses. 

- Shinyung

The Threat of Domesticity

When I was 14, my parents bought a hamburger stand after my dad quit his company job.  That was when my mom, who had always stayed home and made us after-school snacks, started working full-time for the first time in my life.  They started leaving at 5:30 in the morning and returning after 10pm, six days a week.  That left us three kids to run the household.

I don't remember how much housework we had done before my mom started working.  I remember helping her with the laundry at times and assisting in the kitchen.  And learning how to make a dish here or there.  But I can't recall if we even had regular chores until then.

On Mothering

My parents stayed with us for three weeks to help us take care of our newborn. 

When I first asked her to help us out with our baby, my mom responded, "I think American babies are different than Korean babies."

"What do you mean?"

Vigil

I used to be awakened by the sound. A deep, raspy cough that repeated again and again. As if the lungs were held hostage. But insistent enough to puncture the wall between my parents' bedroom and mine.

In the hollow of the night, I used to lie awake and listen. Captured and paralyzed by it. Quieting my own breathing to listen, even though I didn't want to hear. When all else was silent, it sounded like a rhythm from an Edgar Allan Poe tale. At a time when we were all meant to be asleep, getting our rest after a day's worth of living.

It hadn't always been this way. There used to be a time when we all breathed healthy breaths. When we had slept soundly. When coughs hadn't raise the specter of something more.

Cleaning Out the Closet

We've been busy cleaning out our 1300 sq. feet hobbit house to prepare for the arrival of the little guy.  We have clutter all over the place.  I used to live here alone until Jeff moved in almost three years ago.  We merged two households into one and banished most excess belongings to a storage unit in the South Bay near where Jeff used to live. We now live surrounded by a hodge-podge of mismatched items and piles of random things that have no place to call home. 

We've been slowly trying to bulldoze through the debris for the last few months.  I hear the little guy is going to be pretty darn little, but boy, talk about all his stuff. Just dealing with the necessities -- mainly the crib -- has been a challenge.  Two weeks ago, we moved our wardrobe down to the garage to make room for the crib in our bedroom, where we expect him to stay at least three months.  I have since been sorting through our clothes in our closets and drawers to make room for his tiny outfits, diapers, and toys, buying extra bins to place under the bed and figuring out what needs to stay, what can go.   

All In a Name...

The summer after I finished fifth grade, my family moved from Flushing, Queens to the suburbs of Houston. For the past three years, I had attended P.S. 20 just two blocks from our high-rise apartment building. We played in the asphalt-covered playground at P.S. 20 and sometimes hit tennis balls against the handball court wall. By this age, I had done enough research to know that this was not the childhood I was meant to have.    

One or two Judy Blume books would have been enough to teach anyone about the proper American childhood. I had read them all. For starters, we were supposed to live in a house. Our own house. Not in some apartment building where the downstairs neighbor banged on his ceiling the minute you ran from the bedroom to the kitchen. And this house, our house, was supposed to be in the suburbs. And everyone was supposed to have a lawn. With sprinklers. And the house was supposed to come with at least one pet, preferably a quadruped. 

Hot dog nuggets

One of my most memorable fights with my mom featured Nathan's hot dog nuggets.  Sixteen of them.  You know, those that look like miniature corndogs, but without the sticks.  They came in a green and yellow paper box with a flimsy cut-out latch, the kind that never kept the box properly closed.

I picked them up at Nathan's in the Long Island Railroad terminal in Penn Station on my way home from work.  I was in my early 20s, living with my parents in Long Island, and working as a paralegal at a law firm in midtown Manhattan. On the nights I worked late, the firm allowed me a $15 stipend for dinner.  On this night, instead of buying dinner while I was working, I waited until I got to the train station to get the hot dog nuggets.

To Wear or Not to Wear

I was the only one in my family who didn't throw her shoes on the pile behind the front door. As soon as they entered, the other members of my family took their shoes off and chucked them where they landed. The left pair of my mom's florescent yellow plastic slipper often sat between my dad's brown strapped slippers that he had owned since Korea and his tennis shoes, whose back flaps had been permanently folded down. My sister's sandals from the past summer were piled up on top of the sandals from the years past. My mother's pumps gathered dust next to her various pairs of $8 black, thick-soled, orthopedic-like shoes that she picked up from a Chinese vendor under the bridge on Flushing's Main Street. My brother's assortment of sneakers -- all of which looked the same but served some mysteriously distinct functions -- provided additional heft to the pile.

Unlike them, I kept my shoes in my own closet. The ones out of season, like my winter boots, were in their original boxes stacked in the back row of my tiny closet. The ones in current use, like my sturdy pair of rubber-soled black leather shoes that I purchased in the Village, sat prominently in front row, along with my favorite summer sandals and running shoes.