Confessions of a non-Korean mama

I have so many dear friends expecting babies this year. Come October, I'm expecting a veritable traffic jam of storks in the sky. It's reminding me of the joy of bringing our own little dumplings home. Our first experience in doing so is forever illuminated for me...

January 2008

As we are leaving the hospital with our dumpling, our pastor and his wife from the Korean church call Loverpants. They say they are on their way over to our house. There is no asking and there is no refusing. I mean, my belly has just been on the butcher block and I am having volcanic eruptions of hot hormone lava and we have a new family member that we just met, but no bigs!

Going home from the hospital

Our pastor and his wife meet us at home. They march through the apartment toward the kitchen where they dutifully stock our refrigerator with noodle dishes and potatoes and bread and seaweed soup P.S. GOOD FOR BREASTMILK. And then pastor offers a prayer in Korean and his wife looks askance at me trying to breastfeed.

The following week, the pastor and his wife are back for a second go-round. This time, with friends! And more seaweed soup. Ahjoomah General’s warning: Contents may make breasts explode with ample milk supply. After several hymns and prayers in Korean, all of which may have been pleas to the Almighty to make our next child an heir, the church elders begin to leave. But not before several of the ahjoomahs (Korean elder women) compress my abdomen, exclaiming “Aygoh!” I believed at one time that Aygoh! meant “Hot dog! She’s still a postnatal fatty!” in Korean.

But after reading a thing or two about samchilil, I know why they are squeezing me. Samchilil, which means 21 days, is the Korean practice of letting a woman who has just given birth to rest. Doesn't that sound amazing? If mama rests then she will regain strength and be able to take care of those around her. But my impression is that it is a fear-based rest. The postnatal mama is resting to avoid her bones going soft and all of her teeth falling out. True fear. The mother is to stay indoors, drink miyuk-kuk (seaweed soup), avoid cold (even drinking an iced beverage), and sometimes she even wears a girdle. Not kidding, players, an honest-to-goodness girdle. Hence why the ahjoomahs are squeezing the place where a baby used to be. Aygoh!

Exit: Team Ahjoomah, stage left.

Irritated and exhausted, I walk to the kitchen to see the spoils of the meals on wheels. I open the refrigerator and there it is: the familiar pots and pans, the kimchee and the burnt rice. The potluck ministry had come to love on me today.

I’m told no matter the denomination, it’s the same scene at any Korean-American church. The potluck is the thing. I’ll never be able to consume the topographic mounds of rice that my church sisters manage to wolf down, but I always enjoy it. Is there really no such thing as a free lunch? Have I paid for my meal ticket through every awkward encounter at K-church? Perhaps. But I’ve never been asked to contribute to the potluck. For the most part, I’ve been a taker. For me, this is God’s grace come to life in a silver pot. We’ve done nothing to deserve it and done everything wrong to be denied it, but He lavishes it on us like a smiling Korean ahjoomah whose delight derives entirely on its acceptance.

Our first time at church as a famiLee

The Korean church loved me through my twenties. The ahjoomahs loved me in a way that I found peculiar, in ways that I never would have chosen to be loved. But there’s no menu at a buffet. Only a bounty of the interesting and colorful, the flavorful, sweet, sour, and spicy.

What I unlearned about the word #interracial

I was doing some research last week and scanned Twitter to see what articles might appear under the hashtag "interracial." Oh my lands. I am not old enough to see what I cannot now unsee. A whole stream of fetish links and images came waterfalling, and it made me so so sad. I understand that interracial marriage was once outlawed in this country. I understand that some people would still like that to be the case. But is this why the word is now in the domain of the fetishists? Because it was once a taboo relationship, it's now relegated to X-rated content, exclusively? Or was I too quick to accept this as a single story?

***

If, at any point in the late 80s or early 90s, you came home after school and switched on the TV, chances are you became acquainted with this guy:

Remember Britannica Boy? His report dilemma? How he got a B+ on his eventual report because of too much information--"overkill"? Didn't we all just go racing to call that 1-800 number to own ourselves the greatest encyclopedia in the world? Imagine the comprehensive reports about plankton and Cherokee tribes and Papua New Guinea we could write!

I still remember a time when this was how we researched. We sought out texts, dusty old books and periodicals in archives. We skimmed microfiche, and by "we," I most certainly include myself because tedious, arcane forms of research were my jam, man.

I am not such a reactionary that I believe old school research was just inherently better than what Google nets us, but it certainly felt to me like it was more of an investment: of time, of brain power, of a desire to really be satisfied about The Whole Story.

***

I've lost some of that. I've lost the Britannica Boy in me, and I suspect I'm not alone. I'm too quick to accept the single story, despite the fact that every year, I invite Chimamanda Adichie into my advanced reporting class via Ted Talk and am cautioned once again against accepting the single story. It's the difference between knocking on someone's door versus searching for someone. It's the difference between accepting "Ah, nobody's home" and going to the next door to see if the neighbors know anything. I'm a lazy researcher and what does that say about me?

I thought about the single stories that could be written about me if no one was doing comprehensive research. If someone just observed me or knew me in a certain context, they could easily observe:

1. She is a mess--look at how all her library books are overdue. 2. She is so selfish--look at how she parked like she was the only car in the lot. 3. She has ADHD -- her ability to concentrate on one task is nil to none. 4. She is a health nut--look at her lunch, so healthy!

I am guilty of writing these kinds of character profiles of others in my head. I relegate people to the Minivan Mafia, to the ranks of the Holier than Thou, to the Den of Sinners. Who benefits from these single stories. Not the characters in them and least of all the author. So why do we write them and why do we accept them?

My desire is to keep knocking on doors and keep writing the story. It's what I would want for myself, for my family, and the child of the 80s in me knows it can earn me at least a B+ on the report, right?

Vows not seen in the NYT

The only way to read the Sunday NYT is to dart right for the Sunday Styles section. Otherwise you are dead inside or you are illiterate, or possibly both. Maybe you take a quick scan of whether or not you know anyone in the "Vows" pages. (I never do.)(I was born in the Midwest.)(I think these parenthetical facts are related.) Maybe you snicker at the brazen journalist who capped off the profile on one couple-to-be-wed, "The groom's previous two marriages ended in divorce." What would the hashtag for that one be? #bestwishes #threesacharm These little profiles are always so unapologetically namedroppy and vomitus. Yet they are also a rare celebration of union, against the wails of the thousands who have lost loved ones in the Phillippines this week, against the din of celebrity break-ups of the hour.

But what if they told the real story, gave us the real scoop. Here's how ours would read:

Kendra Stanton, the daughter of a redheaded mother and a silver-haired father, was married on Sunday to John Lee, the son of Mija and Jae. None of the parents have amassed great fortunes due to their Ivy league educations, though if filing taxes on time made one a rock star, these people would be a bunch of Mick Jaggers. In fairness, Kendra's father is a lawyer but prefers to reference his glory days working the steampress at Schoolbells school uniform suppliers, when he was 18.

Ms. Stanton, 24, is a serial jobhopper who is not living up to her potential and is accruing credit card debt rapidly, probably because she keeps reinvesting her profits from her part-time retail job into her wardrobe since her full-time job working with at-risk youth is making her depressed about the state of humanity. It's better than eating her feelings, because, hello, wedding dress fitting in two days! She graduated magna cum laude from a small liberal arts college on a hill that is highly obscure. She no longer remembers her major. Her parents are no longer married. They have never taken her to Europe. She doesn't know it yet but she will not be taken off the waitlist at her top law school, so she won't go after all.

Mr. Lee, 26, is an anomaly: a male, Canadian-born Korean social worker who likes fashion, frisbee and football and loves Jesus. He might actually be the only one. Like, on earth. He earned his MSW from a college that happens to be all-women for undergraduate, which was not as much of a problem as one would imagine. In his own undergraduate years, he was not the most stunning student. He did swim all four years and has the wristwatch to prove it. His parents own a dental lab, which is a useful thing for a variety of reasons, particularly for making free mouthguards for future daughters-in-law who develop TMJ for unknown reasons.