So please post a comment with your guess. Thanks~Number 1
To my grandmother
I didn't know her at all. My grandmother, I clarify, the violently passionate and hot-tempered one who quietly, silently passed away early morning October 2, 2010. At her death, I felt neither sadness nor the slightest urge to cry. I was immune, impervious to any type of emotion. Rather, her death reminded me that at one point she had existed - however distantly embedded in the background of my life - that the 87 year old unpleasant woman had, at one point, been my grandmother.
And so I prepared something for her memorial, dedicating my time to reminisce the sparse knowledge I retained about her. Compiled below is my list:
1. The time I sprung open the bathroom door while she was having bowel movements.
2. The time she yelled at me for being afraid to go to the supermarket alone.
3. The time I made her instant noodles for lunch.
4. The time she was happy that I knew how to say "hand" in Korean.
5. The time she accidentally dyed her hair pink.
6. The fact that she hadn't loved my father, and in doing so hadn't bothered to love his children either.
The moment I concluded this list, I realized that I had been mistaken. I felt, and indeed still am feeling, a subdued discontent. I say subdued, because this protest I feel isn't volatile enough to be fully acknowledged, and I say discontent, because it is not strong enough to be called anger. My feelings toward that woman lying stone cold in her bed are at the most, mildly lukewarm just like microwaved milk.
I analyzed that subdued discontent to be frustration. I find myself frustrated with questions. Questions for my grandmother and questions for me. Questions I had had no courage to ask: What is your name? And your favorite color? Why did you like to run? Why did you favor your second son so much? Or better yet, why didn't you bother to see how much my father pined away for your affection? Why do I find it so hard to feel the smallest stirring of emotions for you, even faced with the reality of never seeing you again?
But these are questions that cannot be answered anymore. The answers burned to ashes and floated gently over the fishes and frogs until they sank down and became silt, their fragments disintegrated into unconscious earth, forever mute. And if I must say I experienced something from the nothingness of our bond, and if I have to organize a clear purpose from my confused and unresolved sentiments, then I decline the expected demand. It would be presumptuous for me to claim learning an apocalyptic revelation about life, because I only encountered the infinitesimal and ephemeral brush of death.
No, I stand firm in my resolution to offer my own vague, cautious statement: I've only minutely grasped at the slow pain of regret. The regret at my inability to seize the moment among the countless opportunities open for the past 17 years of my life. The regret of never yelling my questions at her. The regret of never knowing her.
So I struggle on with my own conflicting emotions while grandma sleeps soundly away with the fishes and frogs.
Number 2
The Trauma
A masterpiece. I knew it instinctively as I hugged my third grade novel full of coffee-stained pages, childish cursive, and unbounded imagination. Everyone would marvel at its excellence. Especially the dialogue:
I asked Mama ,"What's the matter with them?
Mama didn't know, so she asked Papa, "What's the matter with them?"
Papa didn't know, so he asked the man next to him, "Hey, what's the matter with them?"
But life is a box of chocolates. The reception ended not in a standing ovation, but in humiliation and downright hilarity. And the joke was on me. My father initiated the rite of shame. He stood above me, his arms and legs lanky, angular, sporting a mane of black greasy hair parted straight down the middle. His face stretched as taut as a guitar string, suppressing the smile that threatened to run rampant. My father managed three words before he lost control to his shrieking laughter: What's the matter? Now, as though to reiterate the point my mother and younger sister chanted in unison, their voices rising in crescendo. Haha. Ha.
That experience chased away my childish dream, my naiveté that I was someone and that my novel was something. Something big.
I swore to never write again, being the average third grade drama queen, and kept away from my collection of ratty notebooks stained with ink and graphite. But slowly and secretly it fattened itself once more with random markings and tiny passages.
However, one Saturday morning many years later I confronted my childhood trauma. The circumstances differed because I no longer brimmed with confidence. Still, the core of the matter remained; there was a story, and the audience was my father.
However much his appearance changed over the years, his rambunctious sense of humor had lived on. He didn't tower over me anymore, his arms and legs were rounder, softer, and less gray hair covered the crown of his head. My father leaned over the counter with his hands clasped behind his waist - examining an object: a familiar notebook with familiar handwriting. At the moment of realization, a flood of emotions overwhelmed me - shame, regret, curiosity, and a tiny bubble of hope.
His sharply intelligent eyes behind clear shades arrested mine, as he noticed my entrance. "Did you write this?" He asked, pointing to the notebook on the countertop. Unable to deny, yet unable to claim, I shrugged half heartedly, a universal teenage defense mechanism. "It's..." he drew out his statement, ignorant of my pounding heartbeat, "interesting. You should make it a coming-of-age novel." Wow. My mind reeled, because I had been expecting only three words: What's the matter?
That was the only time my father approved of my short stories, but it was the only approval I needed. He taught me that writing exists not for instant gratification, but that gratification from writing comes after patience, effort, and the strength to prevail over the chocolates in your box.
Now those notebooks hide themselves away in shelves, but once in a while I'll pull them out and dust them off. I'll carefully pry them open, and scrutinize the messy contents page by page; I'll laugh at each awkward phrase. And perhaps I'll scratch a pen against its wrinkled papers and scribble a few lines of arbitrary nonsense. But I'll be content with the knowledge that - word by word - I am on my way to writing something. Something big.
Number 3
The Art of Chicken Fighting
Ancient snow whirled down from distant mountains to spiral around our parka armored bodies as the silent wind whispered the beats of battle drums. From afar, pale streaks of early, pink sunlight weakly showered down their blood lust upon us. Our feet crunched cruelly through the pure, white substance, leaving uniform footprints in a binding circle. The porcelain powder landed in our hair, melting and sticking like parasites siphoning the fury of our emotions. A Chicken Fight was about to begin.
There was no why or how to any of our Chicken Fights, it just was. A traditional cycle with no beginning or end. An opportunity to show bravery and mastery of the learned techniques. It had become a sacred ritual, one that started in our mother's belly as we fought for superior DNA, for breathing space.
And so the moment arrived! An angry horn blared and... both of us scrambled to run away from each other. Then, when we realized neither was advancing, we again scrambled to half-heartedly attack. This was our legendary Chicken Fighting: chaos and a complete inability to achieve anything. So when I accidently kicked her, and she accidentally lost, the complete foundation of Chicken Fighting shattered into pieces.
Time stopped as our faces crashed in disbelief and the red blush of amazement colored our cheeks. Blood throbbed through my brain as realization shocked me: I had won - a total victory. The exhilarating rush of that victory coursed through my veins as my face smirked in gleeful contempt. I dimly remember thinking that just for that instant, we had become savage chicken fighters.
But then her face creased in pain and big globs of salt water and mucus flooded every inch of her skin. She was the mirror reflecting my own guilty conscience.
My mother silently observed our strained awkwardness, and perceived the seriousness, because she later called me over to her side. She never failed to take delight in measuring our same hands and repeatedly cooing how lucky we were to be each other's best friends. In fact, my mother had been the one to coin our little spats as Chicken Fights. Ironically, it was not because our zodiac animal was the rooster. Rather, she named it after the way our bony legs would scratch and scrape at each other.
"You're the older sister," she reminded me, a chant she had recited until it became part of my identity. It didn't matter that I was born only a few seconds earlier, older was older. And as the older twin, I had hurt my sister in an act of immaturity, a battle of dominance.
Later, I purposefully bumped her shoulder as we passed each other in the hall. The death stare match was on once more. But then, someone's eye crinkled, and before we knew it, a giggle had escaped and brought forth a waterfall of laughter. There was no need for apology, because frankly, our Chicken Fights never had reasons.
We fight to compete and to coexist, to pull and push each other to new heights - not to win or lose. The art of Chicken Fighting is all about compassion through violence. It is about understanding what it means to be a twin and a proud Chicken Fighter.
Number 4
WORKING ON SATURDAYS
Today's Special is Chicken Salad on a pita with chips and drink. Tomorrow's Special is probably Chicken Salad on a pita with chips and drink. And so on. Our family's sandwich store has a familiar, next-door neighborhood feel in the way Our Special never changes. And in the way my parents always need me to help out, even if we're not busy (which is most of the time).
If someone were to ask me, "What do you like doing in your free time?", then I would think deeply and reflect, then speculate a little bit more. And when I have pondered the question enough, I would reply, "I like working on Saturdays." I don't mean to distinguish myself as a hardworking, diligent teenager whose daily thrill is making a sandwich. But if I had to choose from all the shifts I pull anyway, I'd definitely choose Saturdays.
I like working on Saturdays because of what we don't have to do. We don't have to lockdown into ultra-panic mania. We don't have to frantically slap slippery mayo, assemble cold deli, and top it off with fresh (most of the time) tomatoes and lettuce. We don't have to crush pale chicken breast between our gloved fingers. We don't have to chop up firm celery. We don't have to knead that amalgam into some recognizable salad. Not on Saturdays.
On Saturdays, my father and I will languidly arrive at around perhaps 11 o'clock. He might open his Korean newspaper and I might pop a Baked Lays Original for a light breakfast. Then we might stretch a little or I might pretend to do my homework. And then, as if to make up for the general nothing-to-do aura, we'll start to talk. We'll talk about impossible things. We'll predict that Korea's going to win the World Cup. Or that we'll strike it rich by selling Mona Vie to billions of people. We'll even vividly draw our life in California flipping destitute houses into mini-mansions of galore.
Our dreams are conditioned to grow only on Saturdays. For any other day of the week, my father and I have to acknowledge reality. We admit that Germany, Spain, and Brazil play decent soccer. We calculate the immense odds of becoming a Black Diamond in a Multi-Level Marketing Corporation like Mona Vie. We recognize the abysmal state of California's mortgage market.
But on Saturdays, there are no fences or limitations; those inconceivable hopes bloom along the beige walls and counters, stretching their tendrils across the blue tile floors, peeking their fresh buds out into the breezy and fresh air - blooming until they become conceivable, until they cover everything we ever wished to forget.
And when we are so immersed that we wouldn't be able to find our way out of our magical garden, the door softly chimes, "ding". Reality crawls in.
A customer with her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag and aromatic perfume strides in wanting an egg-salad sandwich. The sweet fragrance of our imagination flutters away as our ideas shrivel up into bread and knives, mayo and mustard. Around our feet the withered buds of our tiny dreams coo softly until they too are no more.
But then, when it is just us two again, I might tell my father, "I really love the weather. You know, California's." And that will be all it takes, because it's a Saturday. The day we cultivate our impossible dreams, patiently waiting for them to bear fruit.
THANKS FOR READING!
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