A Family Thing

I can't talk to my grandparents about things that matter to them or to their predecessors because I never learned to speak Korean.  I know my grandpa on my mom's side lived in Korea when it was occupied by the Japanese and that apparently he spoke (he passed away when I was younger) better Japanese than Korean.  And I know he and my grandma came down to South Korea from the north before it was divided.  I know they had five children and sent them to America before they themselves came over, and that their littlest daughter, my cool aunt (there's always a cool aunt), felt severely abandoned by her parents -- feelings which I only witnessed when grandma died of breast cancer when I was in middle school.

Most of what I do know has come from my mom.  As I got older and we became people to each other, she began to tell me things.  I know she was self-conscious in high school because she couldn't speak English very well, and that she often wouldn't say anything because she wanted to get her sentences just right in her head before she said them out loud, but that by the time she had gotten it right, the moment had passed, and she wouldn't be able to say anything.  I know that there was a Chinese girl in her year who wanted desperately to be her friend but who my mom didn't want to be seen with because the girl looked like a monkey.  I know my mom wore the same dress to prom two years in a row.  I know that one of my mom's best friends in high school, a sweet and beautiful girl named Karen, now lives in Santa Barbara with her husband Dana and that they adopted a daughter and named her Jenna and that Jenna is now a junior in high school and pregnant with a son, and the names of the father and son are Manny and Angel, or maybe Angel and Manny.  I know my mom and my dad eloped.  They met at Berkeley, at a party.  He was technically a freshman and she was a senior, but he should've been a sophomore, he'd entered the high school system late when he immigrated to the States.  He was still two years younger than her.  I think it was one of those classic romances where she wanted to change him or make him better.  He played the guitar and rode a motorcycle.  He smoked heavily and was well on his way towards becoming an alcoholic.  He was skinny and wore leather jackets.  His hair was a wild, wiry mess.  He liked to make her laugh.  He thought she looked like Audrey Hepburn.  She had, after all, won a beauty pageant in kindergarten in Korea.  She always knew that she was better than him at things, that her mind was just as sharp as his, if not sharper, but she wanted to make him think that he was better, the best.  This is why she tells me to find a guy who will treat me like a princess.  She treated him like a prince and now falling in love with that kind of charismatic alpha male wears on her completely and actually she's fallen quite out of love with him.

As for my dad, he is the oldest of three brothers.  All three of them have vices.  My mom blames my grandma for this.  She thinks my grandma is irrational and stupid.  I like my grandma.  She laughs frequently, especially when she doesn't know what's going on, and she washes the fruit at the sink standing on a step stool, and she loves me.  But my father's vice is drinking.  His two brothers are both doctors and were too overweight to ride the ziplines when we took a vacation to Mexico.  Uncle Paul's vice is eating.  Uncle Al's vice is gambling.  My dad is a businessman, and the three of them work together to conduct clinical trials for my dad's nutraceutical products so that they can get FDA approval and make it onto the shelves in Walmart and Costco.  Once I know my dad punched Uncle Al in the face.  I'm not sure why.  But they're men, and maybe that's something men do.

In telling the story of my family I am very much limited to the stories of people who are alive today.  My legend is a young one.  It'd converge on me, but at the most macro level it'd probably be a story about America, a non-white America.