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.