A Simple Mistake

The few times my mom drops me off at the bus stop for work, it brings me to a grim place.  It brings me back to when my mom dropped me off for school everyday for thirteen years, and I remember practically every time, she leaned over to kiss me on the cheek to wish me a good day.  I wish I could tell you that I was a good boy, but I was always filled with embarrassment, as if my best friends were in the backseat judging me for obliging.  I refused.  Harshly.  Always.  I shut the door behind me to start another day, days that only began once the bell rings my first class in.  It took me until now to realize that that was the start to my mother's morning for years.  I wonder what kind of thoughts I left her with in that car when I left for school.  The echo of her son's screaming malcontent must've had some kind of effect on her at the very least, bouncing around a lonely cabin, drowning out the drone of that cassette tape churches distribute of that monotone Korean pastor that I'm pretty sure every Christian mother has.

Throughout my life, there were instances where I knew that my mom was aware that she had given birth to a bag of lit fireworks.  Completely impulsive, impatient, and selfish.  I grew up as the fidgety, loud crier.  I now stand as the loud, dogmatic asshole.  My mom can't catch a break.  But more than anything obnoxious, I was always quick to point out her mistakes, quick to compare her to other parents who seemed to have everything together, and quick to validate that my issues and my misfortunes were her fault for raising me the way that she did.  My parents were never invited to anything that required them to be in public, so she was denied a lot of things normal parents got a chance to be proud of.  Anything that challenged me or stretched me was immediately met with tantrums and complaining.  The seemingly interminable period between my father's death and now, I have definitely not made it any less difficult, until very recently.  Shouting matches and quarrels took the place of moments of candor and honest reflection, touting my ego replaced humble service.  I never let my mom have an easy moment.  This is what characterized our interaction for the better part of five years.  Misunderstanding, conflict, and an unwillingness to be vulnerable was spread across our time together like shattered glass all of us were too timid to pick up.  There isn't much else I have to say to warrant the guilt that wells up in my throat every time I see my mom, and there isn't much anyone has to do to make me feel like shit about it. 

One day, on an unassuming drive, there was a swell of things on my heart, things about where my life was going, things about my failures, things about not getting what I wanted.  I floated over a question of why I should even be alive, half-facetious, half-curious, and she told me, "Byunghoon-ah, if I lose you, I wouldn't be able to live."  And then there was silence.  The hum of the tires treading on pavement tried to bridge the lapse in conversation, but they couldn't keep up.  I guess I was too preoccupied with my own "problems" to internalize what she said, but it resonates with me now.  It resonates with me because she said it without even making eye contact, as if it was something that was so true, it shouldn't have even been brought up, that I should be embarrassed for even thinking about it.

I think what contributes to the agony I feel when I look at my mom is the knowledge that I have the ability to push her to apologize for a lie.  The untruth that she raised me incorrectly, or that she is deficient in some way.  And every time I present her mistakes to her on a silver platter, I remember that if I am to judge my mother to be a culmination of her mistakes, then I have to be placed under the same scrutiny, and I am not simply the sum of my many, many, failures.  I was watching a TED talk one day, and there was a quote:  "a simple mistake can tell me what you aren't or why I should love you."  And it's true, the path you take after a mistake shows a lot about who you are, and my mom is often responsible for pointing me in the right direction every single time.

There are times when I'm so unbearable that I think to myself how my mother must be conjuring up images from when I was younger, when I was a bit more tolerable, when things were a lot more worth it because the possibilities of who I could become were endless.  She must go way back to try and gather up enough reasons to love me, exhume jewels from way back when, when I was learning to walk, trying to play a sport, or was afraid of the water.

But she doesn't.

She looks at me, here and now.  I am the sum of my parts and the end to her means, everyday.  She still works because there's still a picture of our family, 10+ years of wear at the corners, still Scotch-taped to her wall.  She still apologizes when I'm childish.  Because when she sees me, I have all the credibility she needs because I am always September 16th, 1987 branded in her memories.  I am the soft child's face cradled in his mother's hands.  I am the boy who falls asleep in spaghetti.  I am the sailor of laundry baskets wielding paper towel roll swords.  I am the overweight, neurotic, teen struggling with identity issues. I am the overweight, neurotic, 20-something struggling with identity issues.  I am the same bundle of joy, with a different bundle of fears.

I am my mother's son.  Carer of two.  Humble, widowed immigrant of 25+ years whose strength is only surpassed by her own faith, in God, in her family, and what she fights for everyday with an almost unbelievable amount of quiet, patient fervor, for all of us to be better than yesterday.  I hope you all have wished your mothers a very Happy Mother's Day, I'm sure we all have a lot of catching up to do, me more than most.

Be Kind!

Being on set has left me exposed to a wide variety of personality types and work environments, varying from absolute pleasure to work with to "this person, myself, and anything that can be used as a weapon cannot be near each other".  During the rare down-times, I'd be able to catch directors and producers off guard and speak to them about their careers.  All of them have similar stories of how they traversed through long winding roads of odd jobs, rejections, miscommunications, and fortune, but one thing that remains constant with them (the ones that are pleasant) is the reason they have become such a delight to work for.

"My producer on this one gig, she was an absolute terror.  She actually hit me with rolled up newspapers and shit, and working for her was just absolutely God-awful.  I stayed, but I vowed from then on that I would never treat someone like that ever."

Although it makes me wonder how many bad times with bad people are needed for people to act appropriately, my point is that empathy becomes the vessel for kindness far too often to ignore.  It could be as simple as being extra generous to waiters because you used to be one and know the disappointment of being under-tipped.  And it could extend to much more profound territories like commiserating with the loss of a loved one.  It's because human experience has no language.  There are no barriers to conjuring up demons from your past watching a student getting bullied, a widow grieving, or a heart being broken. It is full on, no-holds-barred, unadulterated connection.

And that is why I am more convinced than ever that God came down as a man for that reason alone.  Not so much that He could empathize, but more so that His message be understood in the way that He created us to receive it, in a full on, no-holds-barred, unadulterated way.

Dad.

Dear Dad,

Some time ago, a friend of mine sent me this 30 Day Letter Challenge thing, where everyday you write one letter to whomever or whatever they tell you to send it to. Next to Day 11, it said 'A deceased person you wish you could talk to'. I wouldn't have written one except for the latter half of that, because to this day I really wish I could show you the swell of things in my heart that I've needed to say, that I've needed to share.

Nobody will understand the dynamic we've had over our years together as family, that's why I've given up trying. I barely talk about you at all and I can feel the sting of having you around in the past numbing the few times I do talk about you. That dynamic between us, it was different. I can chalk it up as something every first generation Korean immigrant has with their child, especially with their son, for the sake of making it a little easier to digest, but ours was more than just a pride issue. It was more than your fear to be vulnerable. The psychological damage was more than I could handle at any moment. Your words tore like yanking barbed wire wrapped around my heart. I cringe when your friends say I look like you and I pray that the resemblance is only skin deep, but it's a constant reminder that your words, your neglect, and your ignorance will be as indelible to me as our last names.

And yet, I believe in miracles, because of what your passion birthed to me on a daily basis. I respect you for the strides you've taken to provide, but I curse you for the damage you left beneath your feet. And what haunts me sometimes is the possibility that you left this family long before you died. Work can never be an excuse, dad. Ever. Work and family may be interdependent, but they are certainly not symmetrical.

You've given me an opportunity that's so invaluable and it's something that I am so proud of, but I can't help focusing on the things you've denied me. Insecurity-ridden childhoods aside, you couldn't even give me the satisfaction of proving you wrong. I'm going to be somebody one day and every single milestone I bleed for will always be a question, the coldest of uncertainties, of your approval. And yet, you were quiet. About everything. Too quiet. Which is odd, because you're the loudest and funniest guy your friends know. I'm scared that I've accidentally learned how to be silent from the best. Maybe it wasn't our words, maybe it was our intentions, our directions, our silences that were lost in translation.

But, like many other things, I will never know.

Your son,
Daniel

Time Travels

"There's something to be said about a glass half full, about knowing when to say when. I think it's more of a floating line, a barometer of need. Of desire. It's entirely up to the individual, and it depends what's being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste. Other times there's no such thing as enough, the glass is bottomless. All we want is more."

I'm not a big fan of Grey's Anatomy, I guess I should be at this point, but I caught one episode awhile back and this line stuck out to me in particular on my drive back from Maryland this past weekend.

I love road trips, or more specifically, I love driving. There's something cathartic to me about a long drive, down whatever road. I know the many that have been on road trips can relate, that these trips are rarely a point A to point B venture. It starts with the shuffling of bodies wanting to be next to each other and ends with the night drive back. The air smells different, food tastes different, and music sounds different on the road. The open road is an invitation to the microcosm of our own time travels. From back seat lovers in their fortress of suede solitude carving secrets into foggy windows to greeting the sun during those groggy morning commutes, the road is something I cherish. I cherish the obnoxious excitement of passengers, I cherish the inevitable descent into sleep, I cherish new car smell, I cherish old car stink, I cherish the leather that sticks to the back of your knees in the summer, I cherish the grip of the steering wheel, and I cherish the headlights and skylights that soften in the condensation of the windshield which are, in my opinion, the closest thing to stars on Earth.

There's a part of me that owes its sanity to the long drive, maybe even its character. It's always there when I need to go where I need to go. Never fickle, always straightforward. It laughs with me when I try to hit the high notes. It's silent when I need a moment. It's patient when I scream the frustration out of my lungs. It's relentless.

I share Jack Kerouac's admiration for the road. The vitality it brings and as the time spent and miles traveled add up, it is true what they say; there are no foreign places, only the traveler is foreign. Foreign to places, roads, even emotions. A stranger is always coming to town.

During those lapses of silence in between conversation, I find myself in a very pensive place. The kind of place people write stories about or the place where stories get written, and I notice how close I can drift over the dividing yellow lines and go into the other lane. The division is slight.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much everything revolves around lines. The lines that direct you where to go, the lines that tell you to stop moving, the lines that create boundaries, the lines you can't cross, the lines between love and hate, youth and age, funny and not funny, and the lines in between the hands of time. Maybe Dr. Grey was onto something. The division between the dichotomies of what we know are so delicate, that they're almost blurred, who's to say what's what anymore. Maybe it is a relative barometer of need.

During the mid-1800's, Americans would travel by Conestoga wagons and it would take years, what now takes hours, to get there. They would be completely different people by the time they got to California. I wonder if that kind of change still exists today, whether it's time or distance that brings about these changes. Can I say that I become a different person when I come home from the supermarket? Probably not. But I can say that every time I travel, be it for missions or leisure, a piece of me turns. I can say that it breaks my heart to see my family, especially my niece, a year older when I drive to see them on Thanksgivings. An entire year's worth of events I am completely disconnected from.

As I turn 23, I've learned that time travels faster than anything. Sometimes I look at the mileage on my odometer once in awhile just to see how many miles I've put on it and I wonder if that's an accurate representation of my life. Going places I've always wanted to go and then looking down to discover that I'm already at 40,000 miles. When you can lose track of time and thoughts from years ago can be summoned in moments, it really is a testament to the elusiveness of the speed of time, and that the speed of time lies in the potency of memories.

In a world that is filled with such delicate lines, where even twenty three years of time and distance can blur into the ether of the past, it stresses the importance of caring for the things that remain certain and steady, like God, parents, and, in my case, roads. Because the things that don't change know you the best, the ones that have documented your years and know your favorite songs, how you act when you're lost, your tendency for shortcuts. From my experiences, times with the constants of your life give you the perspective to deal with the constantly changing.