Cherry blossom memories
"...I put you in a stroller and walked around the park."
This past weekend, we took Brianna to see cherry blossoms. It was her third time visiting this particular park to see the beautiful trees. Her favorite part of the trip was the playground, of course. But it was still a nice time together. Now that she's older, it's fun seeing her zip around on her own and see her ask for one of our phones so she can snap photos of us.
That night I selected the photos from our trip to the cherry blossoms and shared a link to them with my father via text. These days this is the primary form of communication we have: I share some photos of Brie, he responds and asks a question, I answer.
This time, he responded with:
"Oh, [name of park]! There are beautiful cherry blossoms. When we lived right near it, I put you in a stroller and walked around the park."
His text message made me pause. It caught me off guard a bit, since my dad's texts almost never draw from his past, let alone his past with me when I was a child. He and my mom parted ways when I was around 7 years old, and my dad hasn't really shared much about his time raising me when I was a baby, apart from one-off stories told for laughs. But this was different.
I envisioned him pushing me – baby me – in a stroller past splendid rows of cherry blossoms. Thanks to photos I've seen of my dad and me from my early years, I was able to hold a faint vision of what it must've looked like in my mind's eye, out of focus and dim, but perceptible.
I wondered if he took me there out of pleasure or a need to run out the clock before my next nap; if I was paying any mind to the trees above me or not; what the stroller sounded like as its wheels traversed the walkways and grass; whether I was munching on a snack during the walk or not...
Before becoming a father, I wouldn't have tarried too long on my dad's reply. But now that I've become a father, one who has had many experiences taking my child places in a stroller, I allowed myself to linger with it for a few moments. I speculated about possible parallels between our two experiences, between ourselves as fathers of young children, between ourselves at the age I currently am.
I wish I got to experience fatherhood more with my own father. I wish I heard a bit more of his parental nagging during my first months with Brie. I wish I heard him talk more about raising me and my brother when he still lived at home with us. I wish it didn't feel so awkward, unnatural and complicated to even think about asking him to share some of those stories now.
But maybe next time we meet, I will.
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Things I have thoughts about:
- "Succession" (no spoilers): The final season isn't over yet, so I'll probably mention this show again in a future newsletter. But I just wanted to say that while I've thoroughly enjoyed the show so far, there's something that makes it feel a bit hollow: the absence of redemption or any hope for it. I haven't thought this all the way through, but I think all of the shows and movies I've greatly enjoyed have had a streak of redemption in them – a character, main or not, who either redeemed themselves with an act or who gave viewers a reason to hope for redemption.
For all its strengths, "Succession" has absolutely no morsel of redemption for any of its characters. In fact, it seems nearly everyone has been on a steady downward path to forlorn conclusions, and those who aren't quite on the most miserable paths wish they were. Any victory someone seeks or gets will be of the Pyrrhic variety. While that doesn't mean I dislike the show or frown upon it for what I think it lacks, it does mean that there's a cap on how much it resonates with me. It's a weird thing to express, since I love the show so much. But there it is.
That said, I can't wait to see how it drops the curtain.
- "Crying in H Mart": I've shared my thoughts about this book via Instagram Stories already, but I can't get over how much I appreciate this memoir. Michelle Zauner's recollections and reflections on losing her mother (which she conveys with unflinching skill) and clarifying her identity and relationship with her mother through the lens of food are stirring. There's a lot I appreciate here, but one theme that reverberates is the struggle to neatly fit into two cultures that supposedly belong to you...or that you supposedly belong to.
While I'm not biracial, the tension between my Americanness and Koreanness has always weighed on me. Because of how I look, I know I'll never avoid being considered "other" in the country I was born in, no matter how good my spoken or written English is, no matter how much I try to blend in and not stand out. But because of how poorly I speak and understand my mother tongue, I know I'll never avoid being considered something less than fully Korean by those that share my ethnicity, no matter what I look like on the outside, no matter how low I bow.
It's this latter sense of alienation that cuts me deeper than the former, that feeds into my already ragingly low self-esteem and confidence. I feel the most shame when I get a haircut at a Korean salon (because I'm convinced non-Asians will never master the art of cutting an Asian man's hair) and am limited by the short leash on my tongue; when I go to Korean restaurants and sense my anxiety when the time to order comes; when I want to express my appreciation to my mother, especially during holidays, but have to either resort to pushing it through Google Translate or stifle it for some other time in the unknown future.
What makes this all even more of a tangled internal mess is that I genuinely want to ensure that I pass on to Brie the Korean culture that's rightfully hers, that she belongs to. There's only so much I can do to teach her the language and culture, I know, so lately I've wondered more and more whether I can achieve this in a small way through food...which is made difficult because of her pickiness.
I've made sure she's had her share of homemade miyeok guk (seaweed soup) and galbi jjim (braised short ribs; she loves beef), along with one-off attempts at foods like kimbap (seaweed rice rolls). But this week I was inspired by Ms. Zauner's book and will try to make Brie some jatjuk (pine nut porridge).
And when I serve it to her, I'll call it by its Korean name.
Things Brie has enjoyed lately:
- "Just pretend...": Brie sometimes gets into intense "pretend" modes when she runs around and constantly says things like: "Daddy, just pretend that I'm a baby penguin." After saying this, she'll make a sound that's her interpretation or guess at what befits the thing she's pretending to be and try to interact with me as that thing. It's cute and I love seeing her dive into the deep end of her imagination, but it can also get a bit tiring to keep up with her, to constantly acknowledge her pretending and try to play along. But I know these are the kinds of things I'll miss when she's all grown up.
- Disney audiobooks: During our times in the car, Disney audiobooks or stories have been a godsend. Brie loves listening to them and now even has favorites she'll request, which is nice because it means she requests screen time way less often than she did before. Her go-to audiobooks are the ones that are essentially abridged, narrated versions of her favorite princess movies, songs and all.
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