I’m Sorry - I Contributed Two to the Millennial Generation
I’m sorry. I contributed two to the Millennial Generation. As soon as I saw the two lines on the pregnancy test, I knew I would take...
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A Korean American with Mommy Issues
ONE FOOT IN EACH WORLD
a Korean American with mommy issues
I started this blog after my futile attempt to get on a plane to Japan and then to Korea. My brother and niece had made elaborate plans for us to eat a traditional multi-course meal at a Japanese tea house in Kyoto and then take a scenic guided tour of Jeju Island. But the universe had a different course of action for me and my daughter, Brianna.
We went down a rabbit hole getting mixed up with a fraudulent business doing illegal booking of flights to lay over locations as final destinations. Twenty minutes before boarding our flight, we were told we needed a visa by chagrined gate desk workers at Japan Airline. Our supposed tickets to Tokyo were sold to us with a hidden final destination to Vietnam and even though we made it clear to the Japan Airline personnel that we had no intention of going to Vietnam, we nevertheless needed a visa from the Vietnamese Government in order to board the plane. We were rejected outright.
Just like Alice who didn’t think things would get any stranger, we treated the event as a minor snag and kept drinking the potion of good faith and adventure. We booked another flight for the following day which had a layover in Seattle. Our 11 hour flight had now become a 16 hour haul. Just as we were walking into the airport the next day, Brianna received an email from Alaskan Airlines saying that our flight was cancelled. Directed to stand in a line to review our options, we heard angelic voices of hymns I did not recognize. A 40-member high school a cappella group and the teens’ chaperones were also stranded due to the flight cancellation and were ahead of us in line. Two hours and many hymns later, we were told the only flight available was for the following day with a layover in Dallas - 30 hours total.
So we went home defeated. Brianna told me that I had manifested the cancellation of this trip. Maybe I did. In my heart, I did not want to go to Korea, partly (or maybe wholly) because we were scheduled to meet with my relatives, including my mother, in Seoul, and I had projected my mother’s meanness to all Koreans. Because of her, I disliked all Koreans. It is clear that I had, and unfortunately still have in my ripe old age of 56, mommy issues.
I had written a “book”, if you call it that, on my mother after closing my law office of twenty years in order to resolve my mommy issues. I thought this would be easy; after all, I read a book a week and I can write or so I thought. I made it to about 120 pages before I realized that all I was doing was counting pages and trying to make myself look good and my mother evil within the pages. It was fake even as fiction goes with no real emotional insights. Just words on a page, page after page.
It is true I’ve never felt like I belonged as a Korean or as an American. That was what the book was intended to be about - my journey from Korea as a child to the United States and the associated challenges of growing up as an immigrant with mommy issues. But I kept shying away from any real emotional details because I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to admit to myself how lonely, sad and lost I felt all the time. I just didn’t feel like I belong here on earth. Coupled with my personal insecurities, I’ve somehow became a worthless human being over the course of the last several years, armoring myself with antidepressants and pot. I can blame the pandemic but it is I who actively decided to hide out from the world. And I’ve become mean like my mother which is distressing on all levels because I had tried all my life not to become her. Brianna alluded to my meaness while in line listening to the angelic hymns of teenagers who had no awareness of the varying emotions surrounding them at the airport.
Something about that experience of almost stepping a foot in Korea to meet up with my mother after almost 40 years of leaving Korea behind shook me to my core. I want to do more than binge watching mind numbing shows for hours while high. I want to be more than getting myself prepared to die.
So here I am resolved to log my journey on this blog twice a week until I finish reworking my book to self publication; until I feel ready to step onto Korean soil with my head held up high and arms wide open to accept myself as a Korean. I wasn’t ready for Korea yet — the universe has made that clear. But I vow that I will be ready after doing the hard work of soul searching and opening myself up to accepting who I am and who I can be. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
The title of my book, The Eldest Son, makes it obvious that the main character is the oldest of the siblings born male. What is not obvious is the burden and obligations traditional Korean society places on the eldest son and the rippling effects his tribulations have on the rest of the family. Below is the first two paragraphs of the book in progress. Please follow me on my blog for information on the other main characters.
I am the eldest son. It is meant to be an honor bestowed on to only the select few by scrupulous and humorless gods. This honor provides my father and I a platform upon which a filial piety relationship can be built. I am to be the second in command to step into my father’s shoes should he no longer be able to serve as the head of the household. Not only do my siblings, Leslie and Cyrus, need to adhere to my commands, but my mother does as well. Power, honor, pride, respect - all comes with being the eldest son.
Yet, instead of feeling powerful and in awe with the authority granted to me at birth, it feels like a noose around my neck that tightens more and more with the passage of time, causing my throat to constrict, leaving me short of breath, tingling and weak. No matter how hard I try to forget, ignore and evade, the overwhelming sense of duty and responsibility to carry on the family name, not only for my immediate family but for my entire linage, is trapped in my subconsience to resurface and taunt. I am an over inflated balloon stretched beyond its ability to release tension and I am about to pop.
MY WORK
PROLOGUE WITHOUT CONTEXT
I am proud of this prologue I wrote for my yet-to-be-overhauled novel, The Eldest Son, even though it may not be clear how the prologue fits into the story. For me, the prologue contains reminders to me to match my perceptions with reality. Whether you are wealthy or poor, old or young, your perception of life at a single moment triggers your sensory and nervous systems to conform therewith; thus, perception becomes reality. To say it another way, reality differs for the same event experienced by multiple people because each individual’s perception differs. It is wondrous how the mind can literally alter reality. I hope you enjoy my prologue:
Our lives seem awfully short, years flying by, tracked only by holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries, during which we plaster a smile on our faces and lift ourselves out of the day-to-day drudgeries to celebrate our existence. For most days, the hours appear long yet months fly by as we move through our daily routines like robots without consciousness. The few limited extraordinary days are so dramatic, so intensely filled with emotions, that time simply stops and becomes irrelevant.
Our minds are fascinating filmmakers, clipping away the mundane daily routines in order to highlight the dramas — the joys and sorrows; the celebrations and embarrassments; and the emotional elations and face-plants. These eclectic scenes play and replay in our minds.
Human stories, some heroic and others evil, can be reduced to a common theme — our desperate desire to survive. We are no better than animals in that sense. Those who have been either reared to be compassionate, or were inherently born with compassion, find ways to survive without the need to destroy others who cross their paths. Others, that is most of us, who fleet in and out of inflicting harm and suffering onto others, particularly to those closest to us, sometimes, as an attempt to equalize our karma, take overtly flashy acts of kindness to strangers to wipe away the prior harm we caused. The remaining few, who have no consciousness, no ability to be compassionate, due to physiochemical defects or a traumatic childhood event which cannot simply be erased, are or become truly evil. Unless you are afforded a blueprint of a person’s life with a full understanding of his or her psychological and physiological makeup, we are in no place judge. We must view others as we view ourselves - struggling to survive in these uncertain times.
THE ELDEST SON
Yoo Suk Han/Moore Han
It is obvious from the title of my book, The Eldest Son, who is its main character -- the oldest of the sibling who is male. What may not be obvious is the tribulations of a traditional Korean eldest son bearing the burden of carrying on the family name for his entire lineage. The below is the first two paragraph of my book-in-progress. Please follow my blog to discover other characters in The Eldest Son. Enjoy!
I am the eldest son. It is meant to be an honor bestowed on to only the select few by scrupulous and humorless gods. This honor provides my father and I a platform upon which a filial piety relationship can be built. I am to be the second in command to step into my father's shoes should he no longer be able to serve as the head of the household. Not only do my siblings, Leslie and Cyrus, need to adhere to my commands, but my mother does as well. Power, honor, pride, respect - all comes with being the eldest son.
Yet, instead of feeling powerful and in awe with the authority given to me at birth, it feels like a noose around my neck that tightens more and more with the passage of time, causing my throat muscles to constrict, leaving me short of breath, tingling and weak. No matter how hard I try to forget, ignore, and evade, the overwhelming sense of duty and responsibility to carry on the family name, not only for my immediate family, but for my entire lineage, is trapped in my subconscious to resurface and taunt. I am an over inflated balloon stretched beyond its ability to release tension, and I am about to pop.
The Eldest Son
Im Suk Han/Leslie Han
This second main character of The Eldest Son is closer to my heart, although factually there may be not many similarities, emotionally, Im Suk Han (or Leslie Han, her American name), is me. Her introductory chapter and other chapters putting forth her perspectives will be the most difficult to re-write because the first draft contained very little real emotions due to my subliminal attempt to make her look good, bolstering her standing and contribution to this world. I must do better and learn to be more vulnerable and quite frankly, truthful. Here are the first few paragraphs of the re-write.
I am the only daughter to Wan Chi and Jung Ho Han. I was destined to be married off. And join another family, more wealthy and of higher caliber than mine or so my parents had hoped when I came out of my mother’s womb blotchy and screeching. Discussions of a potential future husband by talking about available sons of their friends’ started when I was 16 years old. A relative would drop a name of a boy around my age into whatever conversation would be occurring at that time which quickly turned in to an extensive discussion of the boy’s family wealth, education, jobs, ill-fated illnesses, or scandals, whether truthful or pure speculation, until such time that that family is dissected and fully exposed before us.
The adults, whoever was in the room at that time, would join in the conversation eagerly, hoping to unveil a piece of gossip no one else had about the family, simply to get a reaction of outrage, laughter or jeers. The anticipation of a new tale to be told can be seen in the beaming eyes and the twisted lips of anticipation, bursting to retch up whenever he or she found a stall in the discussion. “Did you know…” or “I just heard…”, he or she would start, which caused everyone in the room to lean in simultaneously as if in a huddle to strategize the next move.
Even though the conversation was about me, I was not addressed, nor did I contribute. I simply sat in the corner of the room, imagining that same conversation was occurring in that boy’s home and my family’s circumstances laying naked before his family. I shudder at that possibility.
To find out more about my past or current work, contact me today.
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