who i am
pearl street
an original song
My Oasis
In college I miss my mom’s cooking the most.
The endless warm, Korean, hugging food that erases all of my struggles with eating as I intake the steam of the kimchi stew and taste the seaweed soup. I always try to learn from her–when I ask her how to make it she always exclaims in response “It’s easy!” as I watch her throw together a million ingredients without any measuring cups or spoons and try desperately to hold the information in my head. Then I go back to college, to my small apartment kitchen, where the pots and pans and knives aren't too good and every cupboard and the fridge and the food scream “don’t eat, you’re going to gain weight” and to drown out all those voices that are so loud that I’ve been trying so hard to ignore can only be done when I call my mom and ask her to guide me step by step her recipe on how to make the spicy soft tofu soup or the porridge for my sick friend.
It only is a mere makeshift attempt and blocker to deal with the real rooted issue in my mind and habits.
But calling her, learning how to make what she makes, temporarily brings me home where all my worries dissipate and I don’t have to think so hard about what’ll contribute more to my insecurities and very false picture of what beauty looks like, but it’s in enjoying the taste of my favorite food in the whole world, where the comfort and the person who made it for me is enough to thwart the million voices that rage in my head.
Where food isn’t the battle of my day, but my Oasis. My escape hole, where I can finally find
rest.
Older
March 23rd, 2024 my mom sat me and my sister down having said earlier that she needed to tell us something about our grandpa, and although I asked her to tell me then, she had a quiet determination that it must be done with me and my sister together and that it must done at the right time. So I didn’t bother her about it. But sitting there in the late afternoon with the sun angling into our home setting a gold haze over the house we’ve lived in for 20 years, after having spent time with my dad’s side of the family the entire weekend, with her hands clasped, she suddenly looked older—no longer the mom of my childhood who was as tall as the sky, as strong and as constant as the blue sky—and tired and wearied, as sorrow came in the form of pools in her eyes and she told us news I don’t think anyone is ever really ready to hear.
His cancer spread to all his organs,
He has 3 to 6 months.
In the face of Death, we have nothing to offer but a kleenex to wipe away the reaction.
In the face of Death, we see suddenly so clearly all the ways we’ve failed to love someone.
And it hits you in terrifying, heart wrenching moments
It hit me when my grandma called my mom telling her that he hasn’t really eaten since the news
It hit me when calling my grandma and the first thing she said was not hello, but I love you in English, then said in Korean that she was starting to cry just hearing her grandchildren’s voices over the phone
It hit me seeing my grandpa on the phone and seeing how much weight he’s lost
It hit me when I saw a rainbow in the sky
And we beg, plead, cry for the world to stop,
for once
for Time to stop.
Please can Time stop so I can think so I can grieve so I can find some kind of peace so I can finally breathe so I can figure things out so I can cry so I can just stop and–But it doesn’t.
It never does.
Because Death carries on and hits over and over again, it has no pattern no rhythm no melody but like the sound of broken piano keys and haunting chimes it comes when things are happy and it comes with no plans but to ruin whatever plans you have and to remind us that
we are
physical beings.
Hopefully with infinite souls.
I’m praying it’s true like the stories I’ve heard from youth because suddenly with Death sprawled out we have our worst fears and nightmares come to light with a sudden banging, yelling, screaming loudly in our ears:
I'm getting older.
My parents are getting older too.
My grandparents are getting older too.