Monthly Archives: September 2013

Working It Out

I love the moments when my boys are like this:

But let’s get real. There are plenty of days when they’re like this:

This afternoon they left in high spirits to play tennis at the courts in our neighborhood. I’m still not sure what happened at the tennis courts, but they returned home separately, both filled with fury and absolutely certain that the other had been grievously, outrageously, unforgivably in the wrong. Venomous words and death stares were exchanged. Bitter tears were shed. They retreated to opposite ends of the house to marinate in their own bile.

I wondered if I should dispense a few bromides, make them hug it out, or exact insincere apologies from both aggrieved parties. Being the exceedingly lazy person that I am, I decided to do the easiest thing: nothing at all.

I was reminded of how my mother dealt with us when we quarreled as children…

One day my older sisters were bickering with each other. My mother frogmarched them into the kitchen, poured herself a cup of coffee, drew up a chair, and in a brisk, business-like tone instructed them to punch each other.

My sisters looked at her and then each other with intense embarrassment and discomfiture.

“Well?! You wanted to fight. So fight. Go on!” she said, drumming her fingers on the kitchen table.

They stood there looking miserable.

“Amie, you punch Annabelle,” she urged. Weeping now, my sister declined.

“You wanted to fight, so fight, I said! Go on! Punch Annabelle as hard as you can!”

Seeing that my mother would not be deterred, Amie weakly nudged Annabelle with a closed fist. Now my mother was really enjoying herself. She took another long swig of her coffee and said, “OK, Annabelle. Now you punch her back. Go on!”

When Annabelle, who was also sobbing by now, returned the nudge, they were both finally released from the horror show.

Years later my brother and I were squabbling about something or other when my mother remembered the diabolically clever penal scheme that had sprung like a miracle from her brain: the perfectly formed child of her fertile imagination. She couldn’t wait to relive the glory of the moment.

“You want to fight?! OK! Go on, fight! Adrienne, you punch Teddy.”

I can only imagine the satisfaction she felt as she watched the scene of her past triumph repeat itself.

“But I — don’t want — to hit him!” I blubbered and spluttered and managed to gasp out.

“I said, HIT him! You want to fight so badly, here’s your chance. I’m not stopping you! PUNCH him as HARD as you can!”

It was clear to me that we were mere puppets in this twisted demonstration of my mother’s disciplinary ingenuity and that the show would only end when we did as we were told. I delivered the first symbolic “punch,” a mere brush with my knuckles.

My mother pounced, practically spitting in glee, “Teddy! It’s your turn. Now you punch Adrienne!”

She didn’t need to tell him twice. He turned and punched me so hard I landed on my beleaguered ass clear across the room. That was the last time she ever tried that. But hey, it all worked out in the end…My brother and I love each other, and I even named my own son after him. The slurred speech and blurred vision eventually cleared up. And as for the memory loss? Who wants to harbor bitter, unpleasant memories anyway?

This afternoon I heard a lot of sniffling and muttering that went on for hours. Nicholas eventually started to do his homework in the dining room. Teddy took up his ukulele in the living room next door and started strumming it softly.

“Who’s playing the ukulele?” I heard from the dining room. I braced myself for the brouhaha that was sure to ensue and tried to head it off.

“Teddy,” I said, “Nicholas is trying to study. Why don’t you go up to your room and play?”

“No, I like it.” Nicholas said from the other room. “Teddy, you sound really good.”

And that was that. Peace in the valley once again.

Call Me Jezebel

Batman’s wife, (who once had a youthful dalliance with The Man in the Yellow Hat), is having an affair with Robin…

Call Me Jezebel

Hurl your stones and call me Jezebel.
You have no idea what a living hell
It is to be married to the Prince of Darkness.

Would it kill him to leave one lousy light on, I think
As I grope my way to the kitchen for a drink,
Praying I don’t wake that damn butler, (“His Highness”)

I could swear today I saw the old toady look at me and sneer,
As he purred – sotto voce – in his beloved master’s ear.
Then off He swooped – all dark glamour and leather menace,

Gunning the engine of that sleek monstrosity –
A monument to selfishness and impracticality,
Bordering on sheer malice.

How are we supposed to fit a car seat in that thing?
I asked him once, but that was in the beginning…
Before I gave up buying lamps and looking for windows to open.

So maybe I was a fool for trading in the sun for the moon:
The boy next door, who came to call on me one afternoon
Yellow hat in hand, tall and slim and soft-spoken.

Dazzling in his golden wholesomeness, he asked me to wait for him.
But when he ambled back, with a pet monkey peeking from under his hat brim,
My chiropteran Lucifer had long since swept me up under his black wing.

They tell me he still lives alone in that fairy tale house of his,
But can you blame me?  Who wouldn’t be suspicious
Of a grown man who shares his bed with a monkey?  In traitorous spring,

I’ll admit, I called him, one bitter, lonely night
But when he answered, half-choking with delight-
I hung up:  on him, on a life half-lived, half-loved, then lightly betrayed.

He was the bright peddler of my fondest, callow dream,
Too soon outgrown and cast downstream.
But sometimes I used to wonder, should I have stayed?

Until the night I saw a boy with a bird’s soul and name.
(A harbinger of my Spring?) He was awash in moonlight and aflame
With reverence for the Devil himself:  my husband.

Dynamic duo?  Hardly!  He suffers the boy to trail starry-eyed in his wake,
Chirping sophomoric punchlines that would make your teeth ache
Like a mere sidekick:  Sancho Panza or Doctor Watson.

But it’s this bejeweled bird who casts the unjaded, vital glow
That fleshes out and deepens his black shadow
And in so doing, animates the demon’s chiaroscuro!

It’s true I chose him for a ripe and gratifying vengeance
But in his guileless, openhearted innocence
I found light and sweet consolation…Oh, I know

It torments him.  He weeps and talks of betrayal
I cover his mouth with my own – to no avail.
The words I whisper fall glib and hollow.

I tell him we are necessary to one another,
Each to each:  an unholy trinity. (Father, Brother, Sister? Mother?)
This tripartite union is our shared lot. It is our fortune.

Not for me the storybook house with shutters and flower filled window boxes.
I’ll live out my life here, in a mansion built over a cave, breathing air foul and noxious,
Befitting an unworthy chorus member in a gothic cartoon.

I’ve relinquished the sun,
Sold my soul to the moon.
But I’ll never give up my starlight.

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Take me back to San Francisco

First published last September…

I’m on a plane heading to San Francisco for my cousin’s wedding. Actually, while I will be going to the wedding, I’m really going for my parents, who are using this happy pretext to revisit the place where they began their own life together as a married couple.

In February 1963, my father was a student in San Francisco. Against all odds, he had managed to make his way to the U.S. to pursue the education that had cruelly eluded him during a childhood filled with adversity and suffering.

School was a luxury, a beautiful dream that was constantly interrupted, snatched away, and cut short by real nightmares:  air raids, forced labor by the Japanese occupiers, disease…The sudden and premature death of his father was disastrous for his family, already reeling under the privations brought about by the occupation. My father witnessed beloved siblings die from malnutrition – the very thought brings me to my knees. The family was able to scrape together enough money to pay for only one son’s school fees. The others had to help on the farm so that the family could survive.

When my father’s older brother saw how desperate he was to get an education, and though he would sorely miss his help on the farm, he gave him his blessing to leave home at the age of 13 in pursuit of his dream. My father would have to find a way to support himself through school. He still remembers his brother’s sacrifice with deep gratitude.

He walked for days to get to Seoul, where he found a job sweeping glass in a watch factory. He worked during the day, went to night school, and at the end of every long day, he would sweep clean a place on the factory floor where he would sleep. Eventually, he enrolled in a new college that had the lowest tuition he could find.

The school’s president was the scion of a family of Catholic martyrs: three generations of his family were wiped out on one day. His own father had physically survived the massacre, but was a ruined, broken man. The president had gone on to become the leader of a Christian underground resistance movement. He was repeatedly arrested and tortured by the Japanese for his activities and was always on the run. Fearing for her own safety, his wife would dress as a beggar and hide in the busy marketplace all day, returning home to their children only late at night. Eventually, he led a large group of hundreds of refugees to Manchuria, an arduous journey on foot during which his youngest child, an infant, died. When he was finally able to return to Korea, he founded the college.

My father became the president’s star student. He had a fierce hunger and passion for knowledge. He gorged himself on philosophy, history, languages. Emboldened by a degree finally under his belt, and encouraged by American G.I.s he met while doing his compulsory military service, he took and passed a test, which would allow him to continue his studies in the U.S.

Before he was about to graduate, my father went to the president’s office to tell him that he was getting married. The president congratulated him heartily, and it was only then that my dad revealed that he was going to marry his own daughter, my mother. The college was (and is) an institution where skirt hemlines are strictly monitored and relationships between the sexes are discouraged. How my dad worked up the nerve to court and get engaged to the president’s daughter behind his back is unfathomable to me. His placid, gentle demeanor belies steely, ballsy determination that has carried him throughout his life.

So in February 1963, my mother stepped off the plane in San Francisco to meet her soon-to-be husband. Their separation had been long. Her arrival had been delayed by a year when an x-ray revealed that she had had tuberculosis as a child. She spent the year listening to tapes, trying to learn English. She still sometimes mimics the stilted, heavily accented recordings that she would listen to over and over again: “I am a boy.” “I am a girl.”

It was a difficult first year for my mother. She cried every day because she was homesick and so far away from home. The birth of my oldest sister, and my second sister soon after, brought comfort and joy. As their family grew and they settled into their new country, my parents began to build a happy life together. Painful memories of the past receded as they made new memories: outings to the zoo with their daughters, the taste of sourdough bread, eating watermelon in their little apartment under the belfry of the Hamilton Square Baptist Church.

Standing in front of Hamilton Square Baptist Church

Photos and more about our visit to my parents’ first home here. 

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Pets

A shortened version of one of my very first posts. Read the full post in two parts, here and here. 

When my parents moved back to Korea from San Francisco with three children in tow, they were concerned that we wouldn’t be able to get enough protein in our diet.  In America we had been raised with plenty of milk, cheese, chicken, and beef, all of which were almost impossible to find, and/or prohibitively expensive in Korea at the time.  My father acquired a pair of rabbits to remedy the situation.  We have photographs of ourselves feeding carrots to Veronica and Brownie through the bars of their hutch, our eyes wide with childish wonder and delight.  One morning my dad called us outside.  “Kids, look!  The rabbits are having a wedding!”  We ran out expecting to see Veronica dressed in a long white gown and veil and Brownie in cutaway tails and an ascot.  We were confused and disappointed to see that Brownie had merely mounted Veronica and was jerking furtively with one beady eye trained on the growing crowd of spectators witnessing the consummation of his marriage bed.  Soon there was a hutch full of Brownies and Veronicas.

Me and “Dinner”

I think it was Brownie Sr. who was first served up for dinner one night.  When it was discovered that we had just eaten one of our pet bunnies, bloodcurdling keening alternating with howling recriminations sent sonic shockwaves reverberating around the whole neighborhood.  My father quietly gave away the rest of the rabbits to a delighted neighbor that very night and that was the end of that.  My dad had learned an important lesson:  you don’t give names to your food.

His next idea was to buy some chicks.  Of course, this time no names would be given.  But we had also by this time acquired a dog, to whom a name most definitely was given.  My grandfather rather grandiosely dubbed him Sodeka, for Socrates, Descartes, and Kant.  Despite his extravagant name, Sodeka was unceremoniously kept in the yard tethered to a chain, just as all Korean dogs are.  Any wisdom Sodeka may have possessed was in realizing he knew nothing.  Perhaps he was even wiser than his partial namesake, because unlike Socrates, he grasped that the pursuit of truth and virtue were pointless.  He wasted no time mulling over the ethical ramifications of eating defenseless baby chicks too stupid to keep far enough away.  Cogito ergo sum?  How about:  My growling stomach tells me I exist, and I therefore deduce that those senseless birds won’t in a minute.  Screw Kant’s categorical imperative, he was hungry, and the chicks were right there!  Sodeka died a few years later when he got into the trash and ate some chicken bones.  In his dying act, he proved the existence of retributive justice in the world.

When we moved back to America we acquired an aquarium, which became home (and hospice) to a rapid succession of fish, fowl, and rodent.  The many, many fish all too quickly succumbed to spectacularly depressing, protracted deaths, despite my fervent prayers and earnest ministrations.  I would admit my patients to the hospital isolation ward:  a pickle jar filled with saltwater and warmed with my rickety old swing arm desk lamp that served as a heat lamp.  It never helped.  They would continue to float on their sides or backs until they finally took their last gasp.  Only once, the fish my little brother named Charlene Tilton seemed to be on the brink of a miraculous, unprecedented recovery.  Every day I could see that her body was slowly righting itself until one glorious day she finally regained her vertical position.  I was Florence Nightingale!  Clara Barton!  Hell, I was Mother Theresa!  The day I planned to present Charlene Tilton with her discharge papers, I rushed home from school to find that the arm of the desk lamp had slipped and the bulb was barely a centimeter over the water.  Charlene Tilton had been poached to death.  Oh, the bitter, bitter tears I shed over each and every one of those fish.

The next ill-fated resident of that glass house of death lasted for only a few days.  Butch was an impossibly adorable, fuzzy little chick, hatched in an incubator in my brother’s second grade classroom as a terribly misguided science project about the life cycle.  The teacher blithely sent Butch and his siblings off to their deaths at the hands of  a dozen or so second graders without so much as instructions on what to feed the poor doomed birds.  Butch chirped piteously all day long and would only quiet down when we took him into our hands, where he’d nestle contentedly and immediately fall asleep.  Every time my Dad caught us in the act, he’d make us put him back in the aquarium.  He said with authority (having grown up on a farm, after all) that our very touch was toxic to the chick and that we would hasten his demise.  Maybe he was right, or maybe Butch just got too cold in the aquarium.  I really don’t know what we would have done with a rooster in the heart of suburban Arlington anyway.

Then there were the two gerbils named Pee Wee and Flea Bag.  Once in awhile, I’d let them loose in the front yard.  They would frolic about in the grass until I called for them.  As soon as they heard their names, they’d come racing back to me.  Maybe those brief interludes when they could feel the sun on their backs and the wind in their little rodent faces put forgiveness in their hearts, so that they returned to me even though I routinely forgot to feed them for days on end.  Or maybe they made the cold, sober calculation that my negligent care was better than being eaten by a neighborhood cat:

“Yo, Flea Bag, that crazy chick’s calling us back.  Come on, man, now’s our chance.  Let’s do it!  Let’s run for it, man!”

“Yeah!  Let’s do this thing!  Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, I’m fr–!”

“Awww sh*t, Flea Bag!  There’s that damn cat, again.  Damn it!!  Come on, man, we gotta go back to the aquarium.”

“Dude, I’m so depressed.”

“Next time, man.  Next time…”

Those gerbils never did make their escape.  They lived to a ripe old age and ended their days in the aquarium.  I sobbed when they died, belatedly regretting all the times I’d forgotten to feed them.  My family tried to console me, assuring me that it was almost unheard of for gerbils to live as long as they did, but to this day I can’t think of them without pangs of guilt.

1 year later…

I started this blog one year ago yesterday as a test run for the blog I wanted to write with my siblings. Since then, I have:

  • become a teeny tiny bit obsessed with the project, and
  • been as disciplined as possible about posting every day, Monday through Friday, for fear that my natural inclination toward indolence would overtake me and I’d give up on the whole thing, and
  • regularly gone to bed at shocking hours in order to write, and
  • shared all sorts of deep, dark secrets, and
  • struck fear in the hearts of people close to me (“Are you going to blog about this?” “This isn’t going into your blog, is it?”), and
  • tortured my children with what basically amounted to a year-long photo shoot, and
  • been braver than I’ve been in a long time, because it really does take a certain amount of courage (foolhardiness?) to push that “Publish” button, and
  • published 222 posts (more if you count the ones I deleted after publishing), and
  • corresponded with people all over the world, and
  • made a new friend when she came up to me and introduced herself, because she recognized me from my blog.

But, I have:

  • had to face the fact that with a full-time job and three children, something had to give, and so:
  • let my house and yard go to hell in a handbasket, stopped exercising, and most shamefully: neglected to pay the bills. Fortunately, Colin has now taken over the bill-paying and I’ve started to exercise again. (That’s me, staggering around the neighborhood like a broken-down nag, bringing down the home values every time I go for a “run.” I’m so sorry, neighbors). The house and yard, however, may very well languish for all of eternity in their handbasket in hell. (Again: I’m so sorry, neighbors).

It’s all been worth it, because I’ve started to find my way back to the girl I used to be, who thought she could fly if only she practiced hard enough, and who used to think she’d be a writer when she grew up.

For the next two weeks, I’m going to republish some of my favorite posts while I give myself time to think about where I’m heading next with this blog. I’ll be back here with brand new posts on October 1st and am hoping to launch “Hangin’ With the Harpies,” (the sibling blog), around that time as well. Please stick around and keep reading, and if you’re so inclined – please share “owonderfulwonderful” with friends. This year has been a blast “wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!” THANK YOU!

 

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A guest post from my son

Dec. ’12
Sept. ’13

As a thirteen-year veteran of living with a mother, you could say that I’ve become an expert. Here are my top ten tips for handling mothers.

1. Never ever act like you’re stressed, even if that’s how you feel. The mom will stress out and a stressed out mom equals the whole house being stressed out.

2. When your mother says that she has a “surprise,” unless it’s your birthday, that’s a red flag.

3. When your mother asks you to do something you don’t want to do, don’t be obviously disobedient, just look for every possible loophole.

4. When the word “adolescent” comes up, change the topic immediately. If you don’t, you’ll be in for an awkward “talk.”

5. Moms are good at lie-detecting. Practice the fine art of blaming things on your siblings before trying this at home.

6. When your mother tells you to take a shower, turn it on and then go hang out in your room. Don’t forget to turn the water off eventually, or she’ll get suspicious.

7. There’s always some secret your mother doesn’t want her parents to know. Use this knowledge wisely.

8. When your mom tells you to clean your room, don’t just shove everything into your closet. That’s an amateur move. Be more creative. Stashing things in your dresser drawer, your siblings’ bedrooms, or under blankets is less obvious.

9. Before dinner time ask your mother to help you with your homework so she won’t have time to make one of her famous “experiments.” You’ll have a better chance of getting chicken nuggets.

10.  If your mom complains about how badly your clothes smell after soccer practice, act both shocked and hurt that she would be so mean to you. There’s a good chance she’ll feel so bad that she might even buy you some ice cream.

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Tried and failed again…

For twelve years I have tried and failed to write about 9/11. Last night I stayed up way too late laboring over the essay that I thought would finally express what that day meant to me. This morning, twenty minutes before it was scheduled to post, I read it again and aborted. At the last minute, it seemed to me that “no words” better expressed what I was trying to say than the 700+ words I had wrung out of myself like blood from a stone. Ironically, yesterday’s “no words” post, which consisted of just that, got more hits than many other posts I’ve spent hours composing.

Today I’ll just say that this is what kept me going that terrible year:

I lived for the doctor’s appointments when I could hear the heartbeat of my son, who was born about 9 months after 9/11.

I am truly evil.

In terms of my relationship with my adolescent, this past year can be summed up with a series of pictures and graphs:

rough roadThe rough road we’ve traveled this year with our son has lined my face with new wrinkles and has added gray hairs to my head.

At first there were road blocks that had to be negotiated. Eventually, the way was blocked off entirely.road closed

For a long time, there was no easy way to get through to the other side.

no bridgeBut just when I had lost all hope, the foundation of a new and stronger bridge was put in place.

rebuilding bridge

And then, one fine day:

new bridgeWhere once my son’s moods could be described by this sine wave:

fig. 1fig. 1

They are now more like this:

fig. 2fig. 2

Nowadays, when I open my mouth to say something, I can reasonably expect NOT to have my words immediately torched to cinders as if by a giant flamethrower.

Lately, I can generally get through the day without being reduced to a quivering mess of raw, exposed nerves because of some act of poor judgment or lack of impulse control on my son’s part.

It is so sweet.

It’s time to celebrate this time of intellectual and emotional growth that has come hand-in-hand with my son’s physical growth. It’s time to rejoice in the relative peace and harmony that has descended upon our household.

It’s time…for payback!

I am now going to reveal a delightful secret to those of you who may have children on the cusp of adolescence…Right now, your young adult is at the most sensitive, vulnerable time of his or her life. They are yearning for approval and acceptance by their peers. It doesn’t take much at all to embarrass them. Think of this embarrassment as the very wellspring of your own illimitable powers. Yes! Be glad! Breathe deep the heady aroma of your own might, (while at the same time willing yourself to ignore the stench of the sweaty socks strewn about your minivan and home). These days, even as my son grows taller than me by the minute, my power over him grows at an even more astonishing rate. I have in my clutches the ultimate weapon – the power to embarrass, and the shamelessness to deploy this cruel, cruel weapon.

This past weekend one of Nicholas’ friends came over for a sleepover in the middle of the night when his parents had to make an unexpected trip to the ER. I got out of bed to help Nicholas blow up the air mattress while Colin went to pick up the friend to bring him back to our house. Nicholas kept insisting that he could handle it himself, and kept urging me to go back to my room. He was getting more and more agitated about my presence and I simply couldn’t comprehend why until at last he said, “He’s going to be here soon. Don’t you think you should put some pants on, or something?”

I looked down at the ratty, oversized tee-shirt I was wearing as pajamas, and because I am an evil, evil human being, who suffered the tongues of flame in the deepest bowels of adolescent hell this year, I replied nonchalantly, “Nah. He’s just like family. He won’t mind at all.”

Oh, how I relished every second of my son’s squirming until I finally took pity on him and went to change. When I considered all the many battles we fought over his wardrobe over the course of this past year, I couldn’t help but think that I’d let him off too easily.

Later in the weekend he told me that he was going to DJ for the upcoming school dance. The perfect opportunity, once again presented to me on a gleaming silver platter! How could I possibly resist?

“So, I’m sure they’ll want parents to chaperone, right? Because I’d love to be there for your gig.”

An eerie silence immediately filled the car. The words “shock and awe” sprang unbidden to my mind.

“Mom. I love you so much, but...”

I cut him off with my wild, demonic cackling.

My God! Life really IS good!

Thus Spake…

A few quotes from my favorite Nietzsche-reading young philosopher with companion quotes from Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Thus Spake Zarathustra: “Behold, I bring you the Superman!”

Thus Spake Zarathustra: “How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?”

Thus Spake Zarathustra: “Good and evil, and joy and pain, and I and you – colored vapors did they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself, – and so he created the world.”

Happy Monday!