europe 2016, day 3: amsterdam (april 30)

[continued from previous post, which was written on the same day as this one - broken up to separate Stockholm from Amsterdam]

Cue 5am the next day, and Judy gently but desperately pleading Tiff and me to get out of bed - "Friends, please wake up" - and all of us learning a lesson in overestimating our ability to do early morning flights. Mildly miserable start, but we made it to Arlanda Airport without a hitch, and onto our flight/two-hour nap to Amsterdam smoothly.

We landed at around 10am, and got to Lucky Lake Hostel (a name to die for) around 12:30pm, getting picked up from the metro station by the hostel shuttle, driven by an employee who, whatever else her merits, had definitely not been hired for her driving abilities. On the ride to the hostel she somehow succeeded in hitting not merely one, but four, bollards on the side of the road, causing Tiff to see her life flash before her eyes and Judy and I - who hadn't seen what happened but heard the four successive loud thwacks - to wonder uneasily how much of the shuttle bus we would reach the hostel with still intact.

Lucky Lake Hostel is easily the most adorable hostel I've ever stayed at. It's exactly what it looked like in the pictures that convinced Judy and me that we had to book it, even if it's a little farther out from central Amsterdam. A cluster of pastel pink and blue and yellow and white trailers with communal picnic tables in the center, an outdoor kitchen, and a "breakfast bus," for, well, breakfast. It's just all so cute. The bollard-murdering employee who picked us up gave us a quick tour after we checked in and it took all my self-control not to burst from the cuteness when she said, "This is the breakfast bus." From what we could see, though, there's definitely a certain kind of people who stay at this hostel, something we all immediately noticed - and we are not it, it seems. Continuing the trend we started at Tranan in Stockholm of sticking out like a sore thumb wherever we go, or rather three sore thumbs clad in black North Face jackets.

First destination in Amsterdam once we recovered from the cuteness of the hostel and the trauma of the drive there was Winkel, for their famous apple pie. We shuttled back to Holandrecht Station (thankfully with a different driver this time), took the metro to Central Station, came out from underground, and stopped pretty well near speechless once we emerged outside. At first sight, Amsterdam is spectacular. The canals, the grandeur of Central Station, the whimsically crooked buildings with big, white-paned windows. Too, too much to take in.

Winkel is in the Jordaan district, which was once upon a time a poor district inhabited by working class people and struggling artists and came near to being completely destroyed after WWII, but which was saved by "a few impassioned individuals," thank goodness. Today it is a hip, thriving hub for young people, artists, and plenty of charming boutiques, bustling over with life. But back to Winkel. Their apple pies are celebrations of the art of baking, and the toasted sandwiches we ordered alongside them were like manna for our ravenous selves. We left extremely content.

There was a market right by Winkel, so we finished off our afternoon lunch by sampling every possible type of cheese in sight, and then exploring the rest of Jordaan. Judy and I stopped at one shop for fresh oysters - only 1.60 euros each, how does one resist - while Tiff inspected every real estate window we passed to figure out when and how she can move here.

The last main thing from today was our visit to the Anne Frank museum, something I'd been highly anticipating. (And also something that half the tourist population in Amsterdam had been anticipating, apparently, from the length of the line to get in, which wrapped around the block.) Hard to really describe this experience. How do you talk about walking through a building which once hid people trying to escape the Holocaust? Heavy stuff. But also inspiring, wonderfully inspiring. I got to see up close the spirit and faith and determination that one little girl carried in her in defiance of the darkest of times. And it was something extraordinary to realize just how far-reaching the power of her spirit and her writing. Her diary has carried to every corner of the earth, and people all the world over have been touched and uplifted by her. Who can ever say that a child can't change the world, can't light it on fire with hope and resilience? To anyone who does, one can simply point to Anne Frank and tell them not to be an idiot. Very glad I had the privilege of visiting the Anne Frank house today. Hopefully it isn't something I forget too soon - but I don't think it will be.

The other sobering part of today: walking through a section of the red light district on our way back to Central Station. It wasn't too active when we went as it was still early in the evening, but I saw enough in the neon light windows to feel a weight on my heart. Not an easy part of town to walk through, but important, I think, to see it, confront it, be reminded of what is happening in this part - and many other parts - of the world.

Back to the hostel after that (and a quick couple of stops for some stroopwafels for coworkers to appease them for disappearing for two weeks and dumping all my work on them), and settling into our cosy but cold little trailer. Amsterdam feels totally, starkly different from Stockholm, much more touristy and chaotic, but I can't help liking it despite this.

europe 2016, day 2: stockholm (april 29)

End of second full day in Europe (today is April 30th) and rather a sobering one, but since I didn't have time to jot down some scribbles about our very full day in Stockholm yesterday, I'm going to back up a bit and start there.

April 29 - started our day fairly early and made our way west via bus from where we were staying, in Lidingo, to Ostermalm. Once we got off the bus stop we accosted a kind-looking young man for directions, which he gave somewhat un-confidently. He seemed so dubious of his own direction-giving skills that I almost wanted to pat him on the back and reassure him that he had done a great job, but I didn't, obviously, not being insane, and we moved on. Following his directions, we headed down some very pretty, very pale-yellow-brick-y streets and eventually found what we were looking for - a Fabrique, which a friend of Tiff's had described as "like the Starbucks of Sweden, with really great pastries."

We made a lovely simple breakfast of a Swedish cinnamon bun, a cardamom bun, and a hazelnut rhubarb tart, questioning as we ate the suitability of Tiff's friend's analogy. Fabrique is about 100 times nicer than Starbucks in the realm of pastries, although since said friend had added the qualifier "with really great pastries," maybe this critique was slightly unfair. After Fabrique we popped into - where else - a McDonald's, because America, and because Judy had been talking nonstop about french fries ever since we had walked past it thirty minutes earlier.

After our french fries stop, we headed toward Sergels Torg, a sunken square in the city (in Norrdmalm) with patterns of diamond shapes on the ground in bright pink and yellow. Emily told me later that she had been extremely underwhelmed by Sergels Torg, but fortunately since I hadn't the remotest idea what it was before we went, I was neither underwhelmed nor overwhelmed ("Can you ever just be, like, whelmed?" Thank you, Clueless), but mildly interested by its appearance and how it added to the lively scene of the city.

We then stopped at the visitor center, a place of such helpful information and consistent Wi-Fi that it caused us all to break out into enthusiastic praises of tourist visitor centers, and then, under the recommendation of our oh-so-friendly visitor center staff helper person, meandered over to an outdoor market and indoor food court (called Hotorgen, I think). There we filled up on some cold smoked salmon, potatoes, and chili-marinated chicken, and there Judy learned a valuable lesson in the importance of reading menu items to the end of the line. She had thought we were ordering chili and was visibly perplexed and disappointed when our chili-marinated chicken arrived. It would have been kind of sad had it not been so funny.

After lunch, we got on a bus to the eastern island of Stockholm. Our first stop on this island was Skansen, a strange combination of zoo and open-air museum featuring traditional Swedish village buildings. I think we had thought that this would be an important way of learning about traditional Swedish culture, but the only thing I learned on that little visit was that European bison are very large, very smelly, and there aren't that many left. The views from Skansen of the rest of the city across the water were lovely though. But overall, we were all a little bemused by Skansen. Tiff, in particular, seemed less than thrilled with the place, and like she couldn't leave fast enough. To top off an already underwhelming experience, I also lost my bus pass somewhere in the park, and learned an important lesson in not putting things into my back pocket.

Thanks to this piece of irresponsibility on my part, we had to walk to our next destination on the island, Djurgarden, about fifteen minutes farther east, where we found ourselves at a delightful well-actually-I'm-not-sure-what-it-was, called Rosendals. Tiff described it as the result of a greenhouse and a cafe having a baby, and also as her dream bridal shower spot. (Judy and I took notes, or at least we pretended to.) She also learned a lesson there in not passing up things she wants to do on the spur of the moment, as we ultimately skipped out on taking an afternoon tea/coffee break there, a regret that Judy and I got to listen to laments about for, just about, oh, the rest of the day. Rosendals was a pretty place though, and I was sorely tempted to buy about a hundred jars of jam there, but nobly resisted.

We then walked over the bridge back to Ostermalm and then bused south to the little central island, Gamla Stan, or Old Town. Gamla Stan was beautiful. Easily my favourite part of Stockholm. Nothing like those narrow cobbled streets with colourful houses had I ever seen before. Vibrant colours, but not gaudy. It all gave off an impression of youth and gaiety and confidence. It was all so quaint, and so simple, and so relatively unsullied by modern uglinesses that it was absolutely delightful. After a not-long-enough time there, we headed farther south of Gamla Stan, to Sodermalm.



When we came out of the Tunnelbaum station there we emerged in a completely different world. Modern, lively, loud, hip, brimming over with life and especially swarms of young people. We grabbed dinner at a pub, and then walked to Fotografiska, Stockholm's photography museum, where we learned just how liberal the city is. Also saw Ai Wei Wei photographs - the only name I recognized there - and more pretty views of the other islands across the water, since Fotografiska is right by the water's edge.

Home to the glorified closet we've been calling an apartment at 10:30pm after a very long, very packed day, and I've never seen anyone jump into bed as fast as I saw Judy do then; the wisest thing to do, since we had to be up at 5am the next day to make our flight to Amsterdam. Why did we do this to ourselves?

europe 2016, day 1: stockholm (april 28)

Two weeks in Europe - two blissful weeks away from work and ministry and life in the Bay - have truly, finally kicked off, after months of detailed planning and weeks of the involved parties texting each other, "We're going to Europe soon!"

Judy and I met what we detected was a faintly antsy Tiff in the check-in line at the Norwegian Air counter at Oakland International Airport, all of us with our backpacks on and varying degrees of dorky tourist accessories - me at the lowest end of the spectrum, Tiff at the highest with a separate iPhone case hanging around her neck awarding her super-tourist/old person status.

Thanks to the obliging-ness of other Stockholm-bound passengers, we all got to sit together on the plane. Tiff and Judy promptly conked out for the next ten and a half hours while I had my own movie marathon of Anastasia (oh, John Cusack), Juno, and Brooklyn, before catching a few hours of sleep myself. When I woke up, we were in Sweden.

We had what I am assuming to be the first of many travel adventures - or mishaps - on our way to our Airbnb. Per the Google Maps directions Judy had pulled up at the airport, we got off the airport shuttle bus in central Stockholm and started walking through the streets to our building. We found the address easily enough, after perhaps five minutes of walking. A minor problem presented itself when we tried to punch in the access code, however, as there was no # key on the box, but no matter - a lady who was walking out of the building just then let us in.

We hiked up to the third floor, where our apartment was located, and where a not-so-minor problem presented itself: there were no key pads in sight, on any of the doors. This was bizarre. Also not the kind of situation you want to be confronted with when you have just stepped off a ten hour flight and are carrying 20 lbs around on your back.

Judy pulled up the Airbnb listing again on her phone. Tiff peered at it over her shoulder, and then groaned.

"Judy, this is the Airbnb we cancelled because it was too expensive..."

The Airbnb we had replaced this one with was about half an hour away, apparently, news which sort of made me want to sink to the floor and cry quietly. But being the reasonable people we are, we decided simply to adjust our itinerary for the evening and head to dinner first, a decision which was reached without any sinking to the floor or quiet crying on our any of our parts.

We walked over to Tranan, which Samie had recommended as a great spot for Swedish meatballs, and which, it turned out, was on the fancier end of the scale, as restaurants go. Undeterred, we went inside, backpacks and all, and were greeted by a blonde lady with pursed lips and her nose in the air.

She looked at our giant backpacks and sneakers and untidy hair and general unkempt and painfully touristy appearance and scrunched up her nose ever so slightly, sending it even higher into the air than it already was.

"Do you have a reservation?" she asked.

Does it look like we have a reservation, I wondered.

"Er... no," said Judy.

"Okay. You can be ready by 7? We have a lot of people with reservations coming in tonight. Full house."

"You mean we should come back here at 7?"

"No, you'll need to leave by 7 before our reservations start coming in."

I looked at my watch. It was only 5:30. I got the impression she was offended by our apparent lack of appreciation or awareness of the decently posh nature of the restaurant and the fact that we had just showed up with three backpacks and zero reservations. Offense or no offense, however, we were seated and tried to hide our backpacks under the table as best we could and attempt to look respectable. Grubbiness aside, we enjoyed our Swedish meatballs, potato puree, lingonberries and fried Baltic herring with a relish, and managed to leave before the appointed 7pm kick-out time. I was tempted to steal the cute postcard which they delivered our check in, but didn't want to leave a worse impression than we already were leaving, so I just took a picture of it instead.

Given that it had started raining fairly hard by the time we were done eating, and that we were bordering on exhausted from our flight, we decided to call it a night and called an Uber. It arrived in a few minutes and we loaded up our packs into the trunk happily, and then climbed into the backseat of what would turn out to be a fantastically grotesque Uber ride.

As Judy and I entered the car (Tiff was still loading up), our driver asked us with what I am sure he imagined to be a charming smile, "So, are you girls from Hong Kong or Japan?"

I glanced at Judy, whose face had clouded over with a dark scowl, and who clearly was not planning to deign to respond.

"California," I responded resignedly, once I realized it would be up to me to carry on the conversation. I tried to sound as polite as I could in the face of such aggravating idiocy. The effort to do so became increasingly more difficult as I found myself obliged to respond to a seemingly neverending torrent of astonishing stupidity and vulgarity that poured forth from our driver's mouth for the rest of the ride home. At one point this fascinating man remarked that he liked LA because "there are lots of girls, lots of blonde girls, like Barbies" and then immediately contradicted this by declaring that these girls wore too much makeup, so fake, and that he preferred "natural, strong, intelligent girls, like you girls."

The real crowning moment came about halfway into our drive, just as I was beginning to wonder how much more of his chatter we would have to put up with. He'd been quiet for a few whole seconds, and it seemed he was still thinking about the question of where we came from, as he presently asked, "So, California?"

I nodded.

"So you are all adopted?"

I almost lost it then, and I thought Judy might demand to be let out of the car then and there. Tiff seemed, blissfully, not to have heard.

"No," Judy responded tersely. And through gritted teeth, I imagined.

"Ah, immigrants! From China?"

"Korea."

"Korea! They have the best education system there. Very good. And you?" he asked, turning toward Tiff.

"Taiwa- er, China." Evidently Tiff had no hope that the guy knew where Taiwan was and chose to make it easy for him to understand.

"China! Very hardworking people, Chinese people."

I resisted the impulse to kick the back of his seat and pretend it was an accident. Heroic of me, really, considering.

Finally, after an eternity, we reached our (actual) Airbnb, leaving the car significantly grumpier than when we entered. We wandered around in the cold and rain in a confusing apartment complex before finally being directed by a kind old man to our building. Our apartment is tiny - actually, "tiny" might be generous; the kitchen is literally inside a closet and the table folds into the wall - but it was paradise to us after a long day.

A comfy fold out couch and a camp bed made it exquisitely cosy and homey, and we spent the rest of the evening happily listening to Judy's playlist of pop songs from our middle school years and finalizing tomorrow's agenda. I'm stoked. From the little we saw today, Stockholm is very, very pretty. Totally delightful. The buildings here all have a pleasingly uniform colour palette of tasteful pastels, and the streets are clean and open and quiet. (At least, they were in the area of town we were in today.) I can't really fathom that I'm here. Still seems very unreal.

And two whole weeks of freedom and fun and food and adventures ahead! I wouldn't switch places with the Queen of England today for anything.

october 19, 2015

three things i did well today:

one. i kept calm when i had a hundred different things thrown my way at work. i'm decently proud of this one. when the storm came, i wanted to take my computer and my tea and hide out in one of the tiny rooms with the door locked even though our doors don't have locks, but i resisted the impulse. mostly because i needed two screens to do my work. it still counts.

two. i made good on a long ago promise made to buy someone dinner. a yummy dinner, at that.

three. i made not one but four cups of tea. green tea. (which i strongly dislike.) because i'm sick. so the thing i did well here was: take care of my throat.

today i had trouble focusing at work because i kept getting distracted by my recent typical-millennial internal dilemmas about work and meaningful work and whether or not i should be where i am now and what does it all mean anyway. but that's ridiculous, i think, because God did not mess up, of course i should be here where i am now of course i am in the right place for the right now.

i bought old postcards at a quaint little bookstore in the mission today in san francisco. 85 cents each. i half-wondered if they were actually old or if they were just reprints, copies, made this year with an old date stamped on them to make them appealing to people like me who like old things or who want to like old things. i picked three cards after sorting through that whole box on the counter. one was a 1985 cover of the new yorker (the magazine) - it was a man and a woman leaning against the wall of a rooftop and against each other and looking out and up in to the new york night skyline.

another was an (allegedly) old photograph of a group of fancy looking women, glamorously dressed and fabulously made up, sitting around in an elegant room. there's one lady at the forefront of the scene wearing a gigantic bonnet - no that's not right, those are the old-fashioned quaint little ones with the ribbon underneath i believe - a gigantic sun hat and a coat that's more sophisticated than any i can ever aspire to - and she's got a little smirk on her face and she's walking away from the room like she's thinking she has better places to be. or maybe that was just how she smiled. anyway, i liked that one for some reason. or no, i liked it for no reason, i think. we're allowed to just like things without having any particular reason for liking them, right?

the last one had a man leaning his bike against a signpost in a grassy field with nothing else around except a little old building. one of the pictures that made me pause as i was thumbing through the box of cards. i turned it over. photograph was taken in essex, many decades ago. made sense that i stopped at this one.

i took BART home and halfway home i was hit with the thought i wonder if the man next to me thinks i'm afraid of him thinks i'm racist because my body is tilted away from him. i was consciously tilted away from him because i'm sick and visibly and audibly sick and coughing and wheezing like a hideous gremlin and i didn't want to gross him out or get him sick. but then that other possibility hit me and regardless of whether he was actually thinking that or not or even paying attention to the gross coughing grampus on his left it made me wonder what it must be like to wonder such things about other people and what they are thinking about you because of the colour of your skin and the way you look talk dress sound smell appear

i tilted my body to face directly forward so i was parallel with him. in that moment i think i thought i would rather have this man think i am not racist and risk getting him sick with my germs than let him think whatever he wanted to think knowing that i've spared him a horrid throat cold. i wonder what that says about me.

i think i am incredibly self-absorbed.

either way, he got off at the next stop anyway, leaving me to my coughing and my self-absorption.

the bubble always pops eventually

as an undergrad, berkeley was an explosion of happiness and excitement and freedom and learning. four years of college, which i like to think i excelled at. kick ass, take names, et cetera, et cetera. i skipped through campus as if i owned the place with my northface backpack, flip flops and cal crewneck, jamba juice strawberries wild in one hand and A paper in the other. i pored over my beloved victorians and scribbled insightful notes like "symbolism for industrialization" in the margins and forced my roommates to listen to me read dickens out loud to them for class assignments (one of us enjoyed this particular experience, two did not). i stayed up late the nights before papers were due and felt the 2am despair of writer's block and the 6am euphoria of hitting "print." i wrestled with the mysteries of black holes (literal mysteries, since i never understood the lectures) one day and the rhythms of middle english the next. along the way, i met some of the kindest, smartest, most motivated, most fearless people i have ever met in my twenty-one long years (cough) - people who were well on track to change the world in a positive way.

all of these things are great things. i understand that getting to spend four years at a top institution reading my way through the literary canon and being surrounded by thousands of extraordinarily driven people was a wonderful privilege. i appreciate the many opportunities that were thrown wide open to me because i was a student at this school. berkeley is a special place. i believe i am incredibly lucky to have passed through its gates.

but. oh, but! there is a downside to going to a top-notch school filled with so many highly motivated people. there is a downside, and the downside is this: you live for four years in what i'll call the Bubble of Insanely High Motivation, a bubble in which everything and everyone is going at warp speed. and you never recognize just how fast everyone is moving because you are in the middle of everyone and you are just going with the flow and you are moving forward and life is exciting and you are twenty-one and invincible and you and everyone else around you are going to make a difference. you are going to be a somebody.

it's only when this bubble pops that you realize you were in a bubble in the first place. for me, this was several months after i walked across that massive stage at greek theater, where the likes of zooey deschanel and jason mraz had danced around and sung a few months earlier and where ed sheeran and sara bareilles were to sing a few months later, and turned my tassel from the left to the right. in other words, several months into my current job - my first real full-time job - when i realized that what i was doing was not what i wanted to be doing for the rest of my life (shocker!) and the job i was getting good at was not necessarily the job i wanted to get good at.

then i realized that the anxiety that i had been trying to outrun for the past couple of years and thought i had successfully left behind in the dust had actually caught up to me. had blown past me and waited around the next corner for me to run smack into it. that anxiety that i have to remind myself that every twenty-something experiences of not knowing what i wanted to do with my life.

when you go to a school like berkeley for four years, a school with a ridiculously high concentration of budding entrepreneurs, engineering geniuses, future policy makers, and brilliant writers, you can't help but feel constant pressure. everyone around you, it seems, knows exactly what they want to do and how they are going to get there. everyone has a game plan, a perfectly concocted exit strategy that will take them from A to B to C to D and so on until they reach Z, which is a nobel prize, or a seat in congress, or a network of successful orphanages in africa, depending on who you talk to.

now that the bubble has popped i am beginning to realize that i whizzed along at warp speed in college but never figured out my own exit strategy, the what-next of life after graduation. or rather, the exit strategy i came up with may not be the right exit strategy after all. i am learning in my first job that there are some things i like about public relations and some things i don't like, and i am realizing that maybe this initial, perfectly crafted and polished plan of pursuing a meteoric career in public relations may not actually be what i want.

this scares me a decent amount. mostly because it means i have to backtrack a bit. backtracking is not something i enjoy doing. backtracking means saying, "just kidding, i thought i was going in the right direction but it looks like i made a wrong turn. sorry everyone, let's turn around and hike back those five miles to the fork. also, i drank what was left of our collective water supply. please don't hate me." backtracking means reverse progress. backtracking means slowing down. and it's hard to slow down and turn around when it seems like everyone you know is moving forward.

but here is what else i am learning out of college: i am much younger than i think i am. life is not a race and there is no hurry to move forward and move up. who ever said life was a race? no one? okay, so maybe i made that one up and tricked myself into believing it was true. but life is so much larger than this tiny sliver that i can comprehend of it at twenty-one. not everyone has a game plan. it is, indeed, okay to slow down and turn around.

if my application to get a work visa to stay at my current agency isn't granted, i will head to boston this fall to get a master's in public relations at boston university's college of communication - my backup plan. i don't think i want to pursue a lifelong career in comms... that is strange to think about. (i applied to schools back before i was thinking about all of these things. now here i am. life is weird.) but if i do go to boston, i know i will get to live in a new and beautiful city for a year, have the chance to work and study in los angeles for a semester, meet new people, and take several more steps toward figuring out what i enjoy doing and what i don't. and that sounds pretty great to me.

the more i think about it, the more i realize how lucky i am to be able to worry about what i want to do. so many others don't have that luxury. so many others have their futures carved out for them by poverty or injustice or oppression or pressure from their families. how fortunate i am that i can worry about these things. how silly of me that i actually do. how truly, truly first-world my problems are.

i think i'm giving up making game plans for a while. it just takes too much energy -- energy i'd rather spend doing fun things or burning calories from all the ramen i eat. because there are, of course, some things that haven't changed much at all since college.

that one day when i was about three

his english name was lawrence. i always thought lawrence was an impossible name for a baby, the kind of name that people grow into and receive as a mark of adulthood when they reach the age of eighteen. like maybe when they're born they're really just 'law' and when they get older they get to add the 'rence' and become lawrence.

it was a name my little brother never got to grow into, because he died when he was one, leaving my parents with one short year's worth of memories of gurgly laughter and chubby hands grabbing, and me with only photographs and faint recollections of fleeting moments.

that one day, when i was about three -- i don't remember what season it was -- the doorbell rang and my parents' friends, the percys, were standing on the doorstep. they hugged my mother and then she looked down at me and told me i was going to go to their house to play with nicole and joe for the day. why mummy? because lawrence is feeling poorly and mummy and daddy have to take him to the hospital so you'll be a good girl and go with uncle simon and auntie helen, won't you?

and you can stay for tea, said auntie helen. we're having bangers and mash today, your favourite. okay.

when i arrived at the percys' house, nicole, who was two whole years older than me and went to school, let me use her red colouring pencil to draw a big heart on a sheet of paper to give to my mother. that's a really good heart, she said, and i felt very proud but i was too shy to say thank you.

we had the promised bangers and mash for dinner and then nicole and joe and i watched who wants to be a millionaire in the living room until auntie helen came in and told me she was going to take me home now. after i finished putting on my coat she looked at me sadly -- at least, i assume she looked sad, but i don't remember how her face looked just then -- and told me i would have to be a brave girl and comfort my mum and dad when i got home because they would be very sad. okay, i said.

when i got home, my mother was crying. auntie helen hugged her and said she was so sorry and i didn't understand what she had done to make my mother cry so much. and then my mother hugged me, so tight that i wanted to tell her mum you're squishing me but i didn't have the breath to say so.

i didn't understand the weight of that one day and how that one day would ripple forward and touch all the other days to come until i became much older. when, as a teenager, i began to understand this idea of putting yourself into another person's shoes. and when i tried on my mum's shoes for the first time, and thought about what it must be like to be a mother and to have your beautiful son, who you think is the most perfect little baby boy in the whole world, taken away from you.

that's when i began to understand. i asked her about it one day when i was in high school and she cried, and she immediately ran to her dresser drawer and brought back a picture of little lawrence. i think she was almost relieved to know that i still remembered him and thought of him too. and i had to soberly chastise myself for ever wondering if she did. i can never fully be healed from the scar that his death left as long as i live, she told me, but she said it in korean and in the fluidity of her first language it sounded even more painful, and that's when i began to understand not just what it means to be a mother who has lost her son but to be a mother.

***

you look back on that conversation, a few more years later, when you yourself have crossed over that threshold into adulthood - or you think you have, which may be an entirely different thing - and when you find yourself only a few years younger than your mother was when she married your father - -

you look back on that conversation from that moment in high school, and a whole host of other conversations and moments come to the very forefront of your mind, now under the almost fierce illumination of all of the meaning and intensity of emotion in your mother's voice, that one day when you were in high school. all of the times you walked out the door to meet a friend and your dad tells you have fun and watch out for cars and the times you smile and roll your eyes and say i will dad, see you later, and the other times when you just roll your eyes and say when have i ever not looked out for cars; all of the times when your younger sister was sick and your dad was somehow mad at your mum for it like it was her fault instead of being concerned and nice like a normal dad; all of the times your mum worried about how skinny your other younger sister was and how poorly she ate and how much she obsessed over her health. and that one time, that one time you haven't thought of for so long but now remember, when your mum told you in a quiet little, confiding voice, that when eugenie and izzie were little babies, appa would walk into their rooms at night and bend close to their beds and check that they were still breathing

all of these moments illuminated and all, now, comprehensible because of that one day when you were about three.

because this is what it means to be a mother and this is what it means to be a father and this is how it hurts to lose a child and how it hurts and hurts and hurts and some days it hurts less than others but it always hurts.

and umma and appa i'm sorry that it took me so long to walk in your shoes and to figure it out and to understand that you were never obsessive, or mad, or annoying -- you were always just remembering that one day and afraid that you would have to live it again.

i promise i will always watch out for cars, appa, and i'll always dress warmly when it's cold out, umma, because as much as it is in my power i don't want you to live that day ever again, for as long as you live.

an interrogation

this winter break, my mum told me she's a christian now. she said it casually, yes of course i am, in reply to a hesitantly asked question in the kitchen.

"WHAT?!" i shouted, perplexed. "how come you didn't tell me?!" the biggest decision she'd ever make in her life and an answer to a prayer prayed only for eleven whole years and she didn't think to share this with me of her own accord. alright, cool. "when did this happen??"

"what do you mean, 'when did this happen,' i've believed in God for like a year now." she was almost annoyingly unruffled, stirring jjigae on the stove top. i kind of wanted to swat her on the head for taking this so complacently, but there was no good swatting material in sight.

"did you like, pray the salvation prayer and ask jesus to come into your life and everything?"

"yurie-yah, if you believe in God, like i do, you're a christian. and i believe now. i've seen him take care of our family this past year -- that had to be him, i'm sure of it. knowing that gives me a lot of peace. i've been happier now. you've seen it."

"do you... do you believe in jesus? and that God sent him to die for your sins and he was crucified and then raised back to life? do you believe all of that?" always double checking, of course.

"yah, i told you i believe all of it now."

"..." this was my response as i tried to take it all in, thrown off by this incredible example of nonchalance. while i was musing, my mum started up again.

"but you know," and here she turned and gave me a joky smile, the kind she gives me whenever she's about to say something she knows is going to ruffle me, "i was always a goooood person to begin with."

"no, NO, that's the exact opposite of what christianity is about! you weren't a good person. you are a sinner!" i almost yelled it at her, half exasperated and half amused. i knew she was teasing, or at least, i really really hoped she was.

"i know, i know, i'm just kidding." she has been my mother for twenty one years but she still gets a kick out of winding me up. something tells me this will not change. i tried again.

"do you ever read the Bible?"

"eh. i've always hated reading."

"umma!!" groaning at the thought of her fragile salvation. lord, have mercy.

"i read the verses that my friends send me on kakao talk...does that count?" her eyes were laughing, rainbow-shaped and crinkled at the sides.

i was not to be deterred. i tried to steer back the conversation to the important topic at hand and, resuming my most earnest and grown-up tone, i asked another question: "do you believe you're going to heaven when you die?"

my mum's response to that one came easily, "of course i'm going." she paused, and then: "especially since junghoon-ee's there too."

she smiled -- there's no other word for it but serenely -- at me. no teasing this time. i smiled too, silenced out of my questions for the time being.

i always thought that when the day came that my mum finally told me she was a christian, i would weep and weep and weep with joy. instead what i got was this bizarre, bemused back-and-forth with her, daughter interrogating mother to triple check that she was for real. (i guess the things we look forward to the most usually end up happening in a manner entirely unaligned with our expectations.) even after all my persistent questioning, i'm still not sure, exactly. not sure how much she knows and understands, not sure how she interacts with God, not sure how she pursues him in her daily life.

but there are other things of which i am dazedly, joyfully sure. sure that the same mum who used to try and prevent me from going to church in high school now believes in God with a beautiful, childlike certainty. sure that the mum who once told me never to expect to convert our family to christianity now talks of how God has been watching over our family all along and prays for the rest of them to be saved. sure that the worried, anxious mum of last year now has faith, joy, and peace that things will be okay for our family -- a peace that can only come from the Lord.

and most of all, i am sure that He is faithful and good and that He has heard every single prayer that has ever been lifted up for my mother, my father, and my sisters. may His name be glorified through this household in the days and years to come.


but do not forget this one thing, dear friends: with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. - 2 peter 3:8-9