Every Sunday until I left for college, I spent at church with my family.  I can count on one hand the Sundays when this wasn't the case.

The first, because I had missed so many Sunday birthday parties that I finally gathered up enough courage to ask if I could skip church for Beth's pool party.  Just this once, please.  Perhaps because her oldest never asked for anything, my request struck a chord with uhmmah.  I was made to wait a day or two for the decision, and my father surprisingly granted permission.  Even more shocking, this nine-year-old was spared both a lecture and warning.  My parents knew what I knew, that this was a one-time deal and that I was not foolish enough to ask again.

The second was actually before the first.  My sister and I were sent to church on our own.  I wasn't able to get my mother to explain why she wasn't going; or why, since she was insisting that her daughters attend but wouldn't herself, she couldn't drop us off and pick us up.  Leaves rustling around my dress shoes.  Sunday dresses.  The deacon's coat, a light camel tan.  My mother and the deacon quietly, just barely, bowing to one another before he walked us to his car.  My father missing once again.  Twenty some years later, it's just now dawning on me that there might have been an abortion that day.  I don't know if clinics had Sunday hours in the eighties.

For the past three weeks my body's been waking up between four and five every morning.  Like clockwork.  The cold urges me to stay nestled in bed, so it is there, curled into a ball, that I wait for the light to take over the living room.  Only around seven does sleep finally return.  The daily radio alarm streaming from my sister's bedroom is the only thing that stops the vivid, unsettling dreams.  There have been naked people that I don't care to see naked.  There have been insignificant replays of recent conversations.  There have been snippets of childhood memories that I unquestioningly follow without hate or regret or pain.  It's only when they spur revelations like this one that my indifference momentarily disappears.

A Good Wife

I sat at this piano for hours at a time as a kid. Every minute was a temporary reprieve from the crazy in our household. I could never quite articulate what drew me to the piano, but now I realize that it was the one noisy activity that did not set my mother off. I craved not the activity itself, but what engaging in the activity offered: a brief moment of solace between the long days in and days out of a childhood that in many ways was not.

As a toddler, I stood on my tippy toes (well, except for those pinky toes - what's going on there?) to reach the keys. Let's skip over the fact that my head's the size of a bowling ball and that the right side of my diaper looks precariously loose. And those hammy pint-sized legs? Good grief. You can't see it, but the front of my t-shirt reads MOMMY AND DADDY DID IT. Apparently my loudness started even before I knew how to talk.

That is some major baby pudge.
One of the last exchanges I ever had with my grandmother took place as I sat on this very piano's bench. Halmoni was visiting my parents from Toronto. Restless, I found myself at the piano. It sounded flat, the keys stuck a little, and there were a lot more knicks on the wood than I remembered. Away from the noise of the family, I stared down at the ivory row before me. My fingers pecked suspiciously while my brain tried to catch up. The circle of fives eluded me. I gave up and turned my back to the keyboard. I sat squarely across the piano bench, cross-legged, before I realized that my grandmother probably wouldn't think that very ladylike were she to see me. I threw one foot down and crossed the other over my knee. That was better.

Unbeknownst to me, halmoni had quietly made her way down the stairs and taken a seat on the couch across from me. She caught my gaze as I looked up from adjusting my sitting form. Her look said that she wanted to talk. The thing is, we had never really done that before. In all my twenty-some odd years, the majority, if not all, of our interactions during her occasional visits consisted of prayers. When our heads were not bowed, she would give gentle reminders. God loves you. You're a good girl, how much you help your parents. Keep studying. Pray. These formed the foundation of our relationship, if you want to call it that. They are what I associate most with my father's mother, these instructional reminders of our family's faith.

She addressed me by my Korean name, the only name by which the elders in my family know me, and when I looked at her with a blank face, she asked me something that she had never asked before. In fact, no one had. Maybe she was too afraid of the answer. Now that her husband had passed, maybe it was time.

"It was hard, wasn't it?"

She caught me off guard. I knew exactly what she was referring to. But was this really happening? I didn't know what to say.

What could I say? That your son is terrible? That he is a lousy excuse for a human? That I was constantly thrown into the middle of my parents' issues? That I was cooking on the stove by first grade, laundry soon after, and bottle-feeding infant brothers at night? That I struggled to keep my eyes open in the classroom after a night taking care of a newborn? That I'm sitting here wondering why I feel the obligation to come spend time with a grandmother whom I maybe saw once a year until I was twelve around which time you and his father, your husband, disowned your miserable son through a posted letter makes my brain rattle. You're asking me how life's been now? Really? We're going to do this now?

"Things were hard for you, weren't they?" She repeated herself and patiently waited for my response. I could feel my brows furrowing as I returned her gaze.

"Yes. It was." I had nothing more to say.

"I know. I know how hard it was for you. Doing what you did. Your mother..."

And then she caught herself and stopped. More silence.

"I'm sorry I didn't help."

Now that last verb, I don't quite remember if she said didn't help or couldn't help. Ahn doh wah joh suh or mot doh wah joh suh. Ahn or Mot? Funny how one syllable can alter the meaning so. But it doesn't matter because even if she could have helped, it was probably her husband who forbade it. Halmoni took her duties as a wife seriously. She was loyal. She followed her husband's lead. She was what they called a good wife.

I can still hear it, her voice. I can still see them, her soft eyes set against the lines of her aging face, peering at me. I tried to make sense of what was happening. Was I hearing her correctly?

"I'm sorry I didn't help. I know how hard it was for you."

There it was again. So halmoni knew. All this time, she knew? I felt like someone had taken the chair out from under me. I was speechless. And then, before the tears could fall, I dabbed the corners of my eyes, stood up, and walked away quickly. I heard myself say, "It's ok, halmoni." The timbre and volume of my voice remained unaltered. "It's ok," I repeated.

My grandmother is gone {+}. She prayed endlessly for her babies and her babies' babies. I know because she told me every time I saw her. But prayers aren't always answered, not even halmoni's. Sometimes, you pray and pray and pray and live with the faith that something will finally change. Later on, when that's no longer enough, and the strength and clarity of hindsight settles, you might even apologize to the little girl who isn't a little girl anymore.

Merry August

Let's talk about Christmas.  Because it's August, if nothing else.  Specifically, let's talk about the expressions of everything good that the holiday season evokes and how their existence is evident in the [almost - read on for my take] everyday, not just the cold days of December.

Christmas is, to be perfectly rosy-cheeked about the situation, pure awesomeness.  There is a mindful re-focus on the celebrated components of what builds and drives fulfilling lives: family, community, love, warmth, grace, kindness, humility, forgiveness, acceptance, and joy, to name a few.  It is an annual tradition where individuals reconvene to showcase these pinnacles of our society's value system.

I'd like to say that these elements are present in each of our daily journeys, pocketfuls of posies anywhere and everywhere just as long as you look for it in every situation, but nay, I can think of several cases where this simply isn't true.  This is probably because I witnessed humanity's worst sorrows as the child of a pastor and his wife.  Churches lend support to congregants in difficult times; if you're spearheading those efforts and thrown deep into the trenches of it, your children can see a lot of the ugly, too.  My parents didn’t buffer any of that.  Part of that is because they are Korean, part of that is because they are who they are, and part of that is because I am their oldest.  From too early an age, I learned that it's tricky to see the good when the bad is all around; sometimes, it's impossible because it's just not there.

  At the start of one holiday season, what would turn out to be my last home before I moved to New York.
Rittenhouse Square. Philadelphia.
2004.  12 November.

What I have learned is that in times when there is no joy to be had, it isn't always necessary to break the impossibility of the situation by conjuring something that balances out the darkness.  Sometimes, there is a great deal of merit in staying in that moment and waiting for it to pass.  Why?  Because it always passes.  It does.  And the resilience required to get to that next point is what makes the next happy moment even brighter.

I hope life is good for you all out there.  If it isn't Christmas now, it will be soon.

The Youngest

As are all the relationships that crisscross the ridges of the brokenness that is our family, theirs as brothers is a fumbling exercise of patience.  Or so I observe, without the Korean privilege of being either of the two sons in our fateful pool of four.

I've been racking my brains trying to remember the last time I had seen my youngest brother.  I come up blank over and over again.  He came up once with uhmmah, I think, but no one else seems to be able to confirm this and my memory's too hazy to pinpoint even the year.  The last time I can recall with confidence was his hyung's graduation.  In 2009 {+}.  That was Three.  Years.  Ago.  Could that be right?  That can't possibly be because that would mean three Thanksgivings.

       Three Christmases.
       Three birthdays of mine.
       Three of his.
       Three of my sister's.
       Three of my other brother's.

Because that makes for a lot of birthdays we didn't celebrate in each other's company.

That time three years ago, he was not well.  I hadn't seen him since he had moved back in with my parents.  When he wasn't stone silent on the couch with terse lips, he was screaming.  His anger put us all on edge.  He refused to eat the first day.  He said he didn't deserve to.  Eventually, he finally had some cheesecake.  Uhmmah smugly looked at me and said, "See what I have to put up with?"  She forcefully scolded him for ruining his hyung's college graduation.  This is how we do it, our family.  In useless circles.  The same ones.  

He's had his ups and downs since then, at least from what I heard through the grapevine.  But after seeing him this past weekend, I can say that he is still not well.  Able-bodied, he most certainly is.  Able-minded, not a hundred percent.  His world is filled with paranoid absolutes, with no room for logic or reason or perspective.  His persistence is unmatched by anyone I know.  Trying to hold a conversation with him is like a never-ending marathon of intersecting streams of consciousness.  It is alarming.  It is exhausting.  It is distressing.

This is the last post I wrote about this brother back in 2010, {+}.  Very little's changed.  I admit it: I've made little progress on managing this part of my life.  Somehow, this shameful lack of movement makes my love and concern for this sibling grow even deeper.  At the same time, with every brief family interaction like this past weekend's, my faith that he will be all right weakens just a tad more.

And so I guess this is where I start praying.  Not because prayer should be a last resort, but because there is no one I can comfortably talk to about this, at least not in a way where I don't feel like running off to some remote hill in the Alps.  And if there is comfort in whispering thoughts to God, whom I have not met, I suppose it's the very same reason why I feel safe sharing private thoughts here in this public space.  Writing openly about this sort of thing sure beats cautiously talking with someone peering into my eyes, someone whose thigh might be wedged next to mine or whose arm is just across the table.  I'll feel safe enough one day.  With the right person.  I hope.

At our childhood home.  Philadelphia.

8:01 pm.  Saturday.  2012.  23 June.

I Think She Finally Met The Big Guy This Morning

Our grandmammy died this morning.  It was 4:45 a.m. local time in Vancouver.  We didn't call her grandmammy.  Not even  close.  I just said that because that's what popped up in my head.

Halmuni had waited on her husband hand and foot (literally), her entire adult life.  She bore six children, five of whom survived their childhoods.  When she and gramps would visit Philadelphia every year or so, she'd sleep on the floor while halabuhji would take the bed (there was enough room for both of them on the bed).  She'd never lift her chopsticks before he did.  She'd lay out his clothes.  She'd polish his shoes.  She'd scrub his back in the tub.  She was, in a word, devout.  When halabuhji passed, I had hoped that she would live a little.  One of our cousins would inform us years later that she watched the VHS video of her husband's funeral on repeat so many times that the tape wore thin and snapped.  Foolish me to think that her newfound freedom would make up for a lifetime of loyalty.

My mother's voice announced the news of her death as I sat at my desk and retrieved her message.  I was in a meeting when she had called.

There was a story my grandmother told me when I was very little.  She was a devout Christian, wife of a poor Presbyterian minister, and her faith was solid as a rock.  She wanted to teach me the power of prayer and faith.  She had been separated from my grandfather and captured at the beginning of the Korean war.  She spent her days reading her Bible and praying.  Eventually, she was presented with her last meal.  Her belly swollen with my father, she prayed that she and her baby would somehow make it through this ordeal unharmed.  She ate the meal before her.  Then the kind soldier guarding the pregnant woman took pity and let my halmuni go when nobody was looking.  It was the kindness of a stranger - some would say, a miracle - that saved my halmuni and her unborn child who would, thirty years later, father one bratty little Korean babe named Julia.

I don't have a relationship with my father.  This is a very deliberate choice.  But today, as I impatiently raised my voice to remind my mother to stay focused and put aside her deep resentment against my father and his family out of respect for halmuni, I wondered how difficult it must be for my father to just be.  He is the eldest son in his family and has not provided anything of benefit to anyone in his immediate familial circle.  His own children have no respect for him.  His wife has no respect for him.  His siblings have no respect for him.  In turn, he has no respect for his children, his wife, or siblings.  His father had even disowned him at one point.  How frail, how miserable, and how damaged one's ego and spirit must be that he conducts himself the way he does.  My greatest fear is that I am the fruit that does not fall far from the proverbial tree.

I didn't spend a lot of time with halmuni.  When she did visit every now and again, she'd always have toast with jam and peanut butter as part of her breakfast.  She stood a mere 4'10", if that.  She couldn't carry much of a tune, but that didn't stop her from loving her Korean hymns.  Prayer was her passport to happiness.  She'd remind me to always be thankful to God, do well in school, and pay heed to my parents.  And then, poof, she'd be off again, heading home to Toronto or visiting her other grandchildren.  But not without a group prayer first.  Prayer was serious in our household.

There was a brief time when halmuni and halabuhji had their own unit in the same apartment complex as us.  They had come to America to live with their eldest son, my father.  Halmuni worked at a sewing factory.  My grandfather would watch me.  At the end of her shift, when it was dark outside, he and I would pick her up.  Occasionally, he'd suggest that I stay put in the apartment while he fetched her.  It wasn't far, but I'd usually want to go with him.  He'd oblige with a sigh and a smile.  Some days, I'd walk to the supermarket with halmuni.  Often, she'd buy me bubble gum.  Grape Bubble Yum, to be exact.  Great big rectangular prisms of purple sugary goodness.

Halmuni must be drunk on joy right now.  How happy she must feel to see her husband again. How beside herself she must be to finally meet our father, the one who art in heaven and gives us our daily bread.  She is, quite literally, in heaven.

A Prayer of Thanks

Dear God:

Thank you for bringing by a few of my college buddies to our humble abode yesterday. Although we are now scattered all across the country, it is so very rad of you to bless us with the occasional opportunity to catch up in person. We made sure to make use of the speaker phone feature on the new iPhone 3GS and make a round of calls to tell those that weren't in Manhattan that we wished they were. The group tele-chats included, as usual, healthy doses of laughter and silliness that so readily accompany our gatherings.

For providing everything necessary to make a respectable brunch meal for my friends, I will not forget. Bacon, eggs, H&H bagels, fresh strawberries, cherries, watermelon, OJ, grapefruit juice, jams, spreads, oh I just know I'm forgetting something... there was so much grub. It was perfect.

Thank you for bringing us together. Thank you for taking care of my friends; for keeping them safe, healthy, and happy.

In Your Name,

Julia

Need Food. Amen.

Soeur's friend got royally defensive yesterday when I casually asked if he went to church. My question was prompted by his pointing out a popular church across the street from where we were standing. He responded by widening his eyes, pointing his finger at me, and dramatically proclaiming, "No, I don't. DON'T JUDGE ME! I'm a very spiritual person." Dude, I wasn't judging; just asking a follow-up question to your comment about a popular Manhattan Church that most non-church-goers wouldn't know about (and the very one where in fact my mug occasionally makes an appearance). Geez. Sensitive topic, I guess.

Have you heard the phrase, "Scripture is food for the soul?" I have. And my soul hasn't eaten lately. It's actually freaking starving. I think it went into hibernation mode. To address this hunger and unable to shake yesterday's alarming late-night hysteria exhibited by Soeur's friend, I got mine butt to church this evening.

God lives. This is how I know: Tim Keller's sermon today on Paul's words in Romans centered on the act of judgment - the very thing that Soeur's friend freaked out about last night. Tonight's message reiterated that it is indeed not within my right to judge anyone, their actions, their thoughts, or motives. It is only within my right to do as I would hope others would do me. It is our role to forgive and leave the judging to the big man. That Jesus will judge us on how well we ourselves hold up against the same standards to which we hold others is a firm reminder of the Christian faith; that there is someone bigger than us all who calls the shots. Word. I mean, Amen.

Sunday Stories

[Note to reader: this post was originally drafted prior to juliaipsa on February 17, 2006.]

It was my mother’s folly, or maybe God’s, that landed myself and my three younger siblings in the chapel of the First Korean Baptist Church in October of ’96. That would make me 15 and a sophomore. We returned to our Upper Darby church that Sunday evening to attend the ordination ceremony of none other than our own father. The minister leading the service beckoned the immediate family to rise from their seats. My parents obediently rose from their seats as my sister and I glanced at one another briefly. In typical Korean fashion, there was no rehearsal. The ceremony was a tradition perhaps familiar to the present members of the Baptist Association, but certainly not to a Korean immigrant congregation whose acculturation was still in the works. No one told the children we actually had to participate in the ceremony. My two little brothers sat oblivious to the grossly sacrilegious event unfolding around them and droned out the Korean-led service that proved too demanding a task for their young ears and attention spans. When I didn’t budge, my aunt poked me from her pew behind me and alerted me to the instructions in a forceful whisper. “Ya, ee-rhuh-na-ya-jee.” I had heard and understood every Korean syllable from the minister’s mouth just fine, thank you; I just refused to get up.

That was my wholehearted, yet weakly professed, denial of that day’s sacred occasion. It remains fresh in my mind – my quiet refusal during that brief liminal moment before the Church would officially recognize my ass of a father as one of its leaders. Ha. It was a ludicrous comedy. One where the eldest deadbeat son of a retired Presbyterian minister had a daughter, his eldest one, who quietly sat at his ordination ceremony ruminating the events that tell the disagreeable story of her childhood: driving along a dangerously curvy Kelly Drive in uhm-mah’s gray Nova to bring appa and his Korean workers a Korean picnic lunch at Crystal Cleaners; spending summers stuffing the sleeves of his Germantown client’s suits with fresh white tissue paper; playing with Maria Kim while appa led the weekly Friday night church choir rehearsals; seeing uhm-mah in her pink bathrobe sitting in the kitchen bent over a letter unusually addressed and written in Korean; watching her look up at me with no attempt to wipe away the tears; holding the bottle for a hungry infant brother in the wee hours of the dark night, my eight year old eyes struggling to stay open as my mother rested in the room next door; waking on Christmas morning to find no gifts; and then, after a long day of Mrs. Petersen’s fourth grade class, seeing my father and mother in the living room together unpacking the contents of his new suitcase (for he did not have one when he left) after his longest disappearance act yet, going on six months (or was it four months? I don’t remember). That day, he was wearing what looked like a new heather grey sweatshirt with Mickey Mouse on the front. How happy and harmless he looked.

Like a silent war protester, I stiffly sat there like a lump on a log, continuing my internal dialogue, counting the many ways that I detested the man of the hour. And then I tried to think of any good memories, because perhaps they would balance it all out. But sadly, I realized there weren’t nearly enough to cancel out his innumerable transgressions against his family: not even when he spent the night with me at the hospital because I was afraid of being left alone; not when he turned the hospital upside down looking for cheesecake at my request only to find that I would only eat the graham cracker crust; not when he brought me my lunch at the Franklin Institute after I cried on the school bus realizing I had forgotten it for the class field trip; not when he let Soeur and me watch the Three Stooges on Sunday morning instead of getting ready for church; not when he’d enthusiastically call us to the living room to watch The Sound of Music every Christmas season; and certainly not when my mother told me how, when he and a few of his buddies decided to move to Chicago, Mickey Kang’s father witnessed my father constantly pulling out a picture of me from his wallet. Touching, yes; but simply not enough.

The minister didn’t wait much longer for we four children to respond to his request, but eventually my aunt’s voice invaded my ears again and I found myself on my feet. That day was the culmination of the biggest farce in my life: my father. It was the day that he acknowledged defeat in his role as a brother, son, husband, father, and committed his life to serve others instead, all in the name of Christ. The mere memory of consecrating such a weak soul makes me nauseous.

On a Sunday shortly thereafter, Timmy Hwang innocently inquired about the whereabouts of my father after his two - going on three - week disappearance act. I awkwardly turned my head away in silence and fiddled with my flute. His brother Danny thought I didn’t hear him so he asked, too. The overwhelming shame was debilitating. In that very moment, instead of actively cursing my father for putting our family in such an awkward predicament, I begged my brain to come up with a reason, and a good one at that. Instead, I came up with nothing and sat angry, defeated, and abandoned. Naturally, I wondered which church congregation we’d join next. Simultaneously, I wondered how long it would take my mother to get over the embarrassment stage this time. At times, I thought my mother would never leave the house again. But she somehow managed, as she always did.

Later on, during my junior year, there would be a pivotal Sunday when, after a particularly fierce confrontation with my father, I would storm out of the house into a cold and wet Sunday morning without an umbrella. I would walk miles in the rain. My fingers numbed quickly but it was of little concern. Through the heavy rain I would watch the ghost of a blurry grey Pontiac station wagon slowly turn a corner in the distance. I didn’t stop. I marched west and when the rain momentarily hesitated, I found myself across the street from a small neighborhood playground. My legs stopped and the world stood still with me. My hair was wet and my skin was cold, but I was warm inside. As I stared at the empty swings, I calculated the number of days until I could leave my childhood home far far behind.

It's Been A While

Yesterday I found myself seated on a pew in a church. If you know anything about me, you'd know that this is a strange occurrence. In the past eight years, I think I've attended maybe five proper services. That may not sound like much, but if you knew that I spent every single Sunday of my life until I was 17 in a church heavily involved in church activities, you'd know something was up.

How the heck did it happen, you ask? An acquaintance invited me to her home church where the concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra was performing in a free string recital. It was pouring in Philly all evening and without an umbrella, I arrived and uncomfortably sat atop a bright green pew cushion with water dripping off the ends of my hair and my trench coat. It was an old church and smelled musty. I remembered what a friend had told me recently about the source of mustiness: black mold growing inside walls. But then why did the smell seem so comfortingly dry?

I thought physically being inside a church would strike me in some way, but it didn't. Throughout the performance my mind went blank. I found myself staring not at David Kim, but at the architecture of the chapel. In the middle of the god-awful Shostakovich trio in E minor (I confirmed that I detest 20th century composers), I wondered what my offering would go towards. For kicks, I reached for the Bible shelved on the back of the pew in front of mine and opened the good book to a random place. My eyes fell to Genesis 31:9, "Thus God has taken away your father's livestock, and given them to me." I read the full chapter for context, and I had several profound interpretations, but in the end, I just sat there like a bump on a log not moved in any particular way. Not by the music, not by the people around me, not by the Bible verse and certainly not by the sacred structure in which I quietly sat. What's up with that?

Tithing in Laguna Beach

As poor as my family may have been while growing up, my parents always faithfully provided to the church. Not a Sunday went by when each child didn't enter the church door without a filled offering envelope. On special occasions, uhmmah saw to it that separate cash "thanks offerings" accompanied the weekly offering envelopes. Tithe was always placed first.

I'm unsure of the historical context of tithing, but I imagine it originally supported priests' official responsibilities. It makes complete sense - a church cannot function on its own and must rely on its congregation for financial support. What gets sticky is when the church's leaders mismanage the money. This is perhaps one of my larger hold-ups with the larger Korean-American Christian community. In my personal experience, money supporting the mission of a church has only interfered, confused, and in many cases, permanently damaged a church community. Churches have become a business enterprise and to say the least, I'm not ok with that.

Remember when "Laguna Beach" first aired on MTV? One of its cast members was the daughter of famous televangelist Robert Schuller. He took over this year for his father as the head pastor of Crystal Cathedral Ministries. It wasn't that Christina was friends with the spoiled overprivileged rich brats of the O.C. that bothered me: it was that Christina's grandfather's enterprise landed her in a neighborhood populated by members of the highest socioeconomic stratum of America. They're in the business of ministering the gospel! Why do the minister and his family live in affluent Orange County? (I suppose Christians everywhere, even those in Orange County, need a church and pastor.)

While I am familiar with the Scripture calling for beautiful houses of God, aka churches, look at Schuller's impressive sanctuary (see photo on right from website link above). For a modern church, isn't it a little bit excessive? The annual budget allocated for maintaining that sanctuary - how many mouths could that feed? Something about gaudy material comfort and wealth just don't fit my idea of a humble servant of God. I have a wildly difficult time reconciling this reality with my notion of doing God's work. While servants of the ministry certainly have the right to reap the benefits of their devoted service to the church, must it be so gaudily done when there's so much more to be done for the less fortunate?

I find myself wondering how young adults today handle the obligation of tithing. How much does one give for tithe? Moreover, how do they know that the funds will be used effectively to support the larger good of the community?