My Big Sis

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One day my oldest sister and I were discussing our middle sister, Annabelle.

“Annabelle never does things the normal way,” she said.

“When we moved from Texas to Korea and had to go to school and didn’t speak a word of Korean, I threw temper tantrums every day, because I was so miserable and mad at Mom and Dad for dragging us there. Annabelle was immediately voted class president.”

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Annabelle is on the right, wearing her special class president’s badge.

“Instead of just going to any old college, she went to MIT, and made straight As, and then while she was at it, she threw in a masters degree to boot!”

“Instead of just becoming an engineer, she designed a revolutionary, industry-changing water filtration method.”

“Instead of just having one baby, she had THREE at a time!”

C'mon boyz

On that note, my very traditional Korean dad once told me, “Well, Adrienne, I used to think you were the lucky one, because you have two boys…but now Annabelle has you beat.” Not only does my sister have a beautiful, brilliant, and accomplished daughter, she has triplet boys. For Koreans, that’s like winning the Mega Millions lottery three times.

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Somehow during those sleepless years when she was designing water plants and raising her family, my amazing big sis also wrote a novel.

As you would expect, it’s not just any ordinary book. Tiger Pelt received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and has been named as one of the Best Books of 2015. Alexander Theroux writes:

A passionate, absorbing novel, Annabelle Kim’s Tiger Pelt with its South Korean backdrop is a seismic tremor of a book. Kim who is a writer with bold insights fixes on two interwoven lives with humane irony, antic imagination, and an unsettling perceptiveness that includes much fascinating lore about that country and her wounded but ultimately triumphant fictional creations. It is a stark, often unsparing book.

One seasoned editor has called it “Pulitzer-worthy.” I’ve read the book from cover to cover at least three times now. Every single time it makes me laugh and weep. The story knocks the wind out of you; the book’s moments of poetry leave you breathless. I promise you that Tiger Pelt is not just any old book. My big sis wrote it after all!

Tiger Pelt is coming out this Monday and is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

 

Pentecost

IMG_5633We had to scramble a bit to make sure everyone had something red to wear, as we were instructed to do, for Pentecost Sunday.

“What is Pentecost?” my daughter asked.

“I have no idea,” I replied as I pulled out a red skirt from my closet for her to try on. I’ve grown up going to church all my life and have never once celebrated Pentecost.

A quick internet search set me straight. In case you don’t know what Pentecost is either…Pentecost means “50,” because it’s the 50th day, or seventh Sunday after Easter. On this day a sudden rush of winds filled the house where followers of Christ were gathered together. The Holy Spirit appeared to the apostles in tongues of flame (hence the red), and everyone began speaking in different languages. The apostle Peter preached his first sermon to those who were gathered, and so this day is celebrated as the birthday of the Christian church.

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Musical Saturday

My son opened and closed his recital with Bach’s Prelude in C Major and Kern’s All the Things You Are…

IMG_9346IMG_9351IMG_9355IMG_5606A couple hours later we headed to another special concert. It was the 25th Anniversary Concert for a group from Charlottesville…

But unlike the rest of Charlottesville, who were at John Paul Jones Arena for the Dave Matthews Band’s 25th Anniversary Concert, we were at St. Paul’s Memorial to hear my husband sing in Zephyrus‘ 25th Anniversary Concert!

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Motherlode

IMG_1898Have you seen the news about the woman who just won her second lottery in three months? The two wins add up to $1,250,000. The odds of something like this happening are staggeringly slim. Incredibly lucky? Yes. But the main reason her story has made the news is that the money is going to help her pay for ongoing breast cancer treatment.

I once went to an art fair with my roommate when I had just started graduate school. As we entered, we were asked to fill out an entry for door prizes. I carelessly filled out my form, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that I would never win. I’ve never once in my life won such a thing.

I was astonished to hear my roommate say, “I’ll probably win this.” At that time I’d only known her a few weeks. I thought she might be delusional. “My family always wins these kinds of things,” she said. She went on to list all the things they had won over the years: money, a car, a television, a refrigerator. Sure enough – hours later the phone rang at our apartment. She had won the grand prize.

I’ve always thought that people have different kinds of luck. My prize-winning roommate is one example. The un/lucky lottery-winning cancer patient is another case in point. As for me, I know I’ll never win a door prize, sweepstakes, or lottery. My luck has always been with my family; and the beating heart and soul of my family is my mother. Her love, strength, and character inspire me. It’s an improbable jackpot I hit every single day.

Posts about my mother:

Lessons from My Mama, Pt. 1

Lessons from My Mama, Pt. 2

My Mama, the Drama Queen

The Sound of Music

Golden

How my Mom Got a Patient Sprung from St. Elizabeth’s

63 Bowls of Seaweed Soup

Lost and Found

This is my mother…

Migration

 

 

Weekend Project

This boy decided that we needed…IMG_9311…a putting green in the backyard!

He and his dad got to work with the lawnmower.

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On Mortality, Banality, and Boobs, Part 3

My last post on the subject – promise!

I’ve heard it said that when one is suddenly face to face with one’s own mortality, the heart’s true desires come into focus with startling clarity. Hopes and aspirations, which may have been forced into dormancy or lost in the daily grind of existence, suddenly push themselves to the foreground with urgent insistence. Having recently experienced the looming specter of my own death, I can report that in my own case this was absolutely true.

Often people in extremis are consumed with the impulse to create a legacy in words, music, or art. Some remarkable souls choose to use their time on Earth to do good for others. During those few weeks when I was traveling through the valley of the shadow of death, I sat on a committee to award a prize for a student who demonstrated a commitment to community service. We ended up choosing a student who, while in no danger of dying, was bedridden with a serious injury for over a month, and spent that time spearheading an ambitious fundraising campaign for men’s health. I know of at least one other person who, faced with a terminal diagnosis, spent the last years of his life raising enormous sums of money for research into a cure for the disease to which he succumbed. Others create bucket lists of extraordinary experiences to have or places to visit before dying.

During the few days when I was waiting to hear the results of my needle biopsy, I tried to formulate a mental list of my own:

  • I would quit work immediately to spend whatever time I had left with my family and friends. There was no place in particular I wanted to go, and no exciting adventure I wanted to have with them. I simply wanted to be with them.
  • I wanted to play with cute baby animals. “You’re probably going to have to get me another puppy,” I announced to my husband, “and then take care of it after I’m gone.” God bless that long-suffering man – he remained stoically silent.

“Good Lord, woman. Get a grip!” I thought to myself. “Get a goal that’s not so pathetic!”

I tried, I really did try to rouse myself to come up with a list that was less trivial.

I recently re-read one of my favorite novels of all time – Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. It’s a novel teeming with striking, memorable characters. One of my favorite characters is Lizaveta Epanchina, a blustering, tyrannical, warm-hearted eccentric who is both the soul and comic relief of the novel. She reminds me so much of my own larger than life mother. Epanchina beats her breast in agony over her own unconventionality, but it’s a trait she obviously values and seeks out in others. I’ve always been struck by a scene in the novel in which she picks a fights with her daughter Alexandra, because she’s so annoyed by the banality of a dream she has, which “had the peculiarity of being as innocent and naive as those of a child of seven.” As I struggled to come up with some worthy goals, I imagined Lizaveta Epanchina clutching her head in despair at my list, or maybe even boxing my ears in frustration.

I managed to scrounge up one more item for my list:

  • Eat delicious food. I live in Charlottesville, a culinary mecca filled with award-winning chefs and restaurants for which people cross state lines. But by delicious food, I was thinking of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Funyuns, and Andy Capp Hot Fries. I could visualize myself snarfing these from a bowl balanced on my stomach while I lay bedridden, watching bad reality TV.

Alas, this episode in my life has revealed the truth to me. I am no Lizaveta Epanchina. I am her daughter Alexandra. Now I know what my greatest aspirations are: to live a normal life, to spend time with my family and friends. Oh, and to eat some Funyuns every now and then. I’m so grateful that I can.

Related posts:

On Mortality, Banality, and Boobs, Part 1

On Mortality, Banality, and Boobs, Part 2

Goddess of Wisdom

It was a particularly rough morning with my 16 year old son.

As I drove my 10 year old to school, I muttered despairingly…

“I just don’t understand WHY he’s so crabby!”

From the backseat I heard my daughter say, “It’s hormones and Monday, Mom. Hormones and Monday.”

On Mortality, Banality, and Boobs, Part 2

At the rather bluntly named “Breast Care Center,” a nurse escorted me back to the same room, where I had learned I would need to have a needle biopsy just a few days earlier. I couldn’t wait to get it over with. The sooner they got the pathology results back from the biopsy, the sooner I would know one way or another what my life would be like for the next few months, or perhaps years.

The nurse told me that a doctor would come in and talk with me in a little while. She left a clipboard and a brand new marker sealed in a plastic pouch on the counter and walked out. As I waited for the doctor to arrive, I idly wondered if the marker was for me to doodle with in case I got bored.

Suddenly, an adorable little boy dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt popped his head into the room. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, and smiled at me from his twinkly Asian eyes. I wanted to pinch his cheeks, give him a lollipop, and then help him find his mommy. He could have been my own son. It turned out he was my doctor.

He opened the marker, wrote something on my chest above the breast in which lurked the “areas of concern,” and then tossed the marker into the trashcan. He explained to me what was going to happen next and then we headed to the room.

Another young doctor and two nurses were waiting for us in the room. I lay on my side on a stretcher and they wheeled me up to the mammogram machine. They clamped my left breast into place and once again I got up close and personal with the cold hard surfaces of the mammogram machine. I couldn’t see anything or anyone, but I felt one of the nurses grab my fingers. She told me I could squeeze hers as they numbed the area with four or five shots of lidocaine. Disembodied voices asked me meaningless questions. I knew no one really cared where I was from, or how long I’d lived in Charlottesville, but I understood that these questions were meant as a kindness and so I gave answers as if they mattered. Every now and then throughout the procedure one of the nurses would give my hip a pat and then let her hand come to a rest there. I usually hate being touched by strangers, but I think I will remember the warm weight of her reassuring hand with gratitude for the rest of my life.

The area numbed up quickly and they extracted a tissue sample and inserted a titanium marker in its place as a permanent souvenir of my visit to the Breast Care Center. As for the tissue sample, they put it in what the nurse described as “our Suzy Bake Oven” to make sure they had enough and wouldn’t need to go in for more. Once they took a few more photos of my traitorous appendage, I was unclamped and wheeled away from the machine.

And now the second young doctor was mashing down my boob with both of his hands…hard.

“I have to do this for the next ten minutes,” he said apologetically, “It will stop the bleeding.”

“OK,” I said and I turned my head away to look at the clock. Making eye contact in such a situation did not quite seem the thing to do. The horrible thought suddenly crossed my mind that the two young doctors who had worked on me that morning, from Asia and India, might easily be one of the many international students who pass through my office on a daily basis for a travel signature or a program extension. I see so many students that it is impossible to remember all of their faces or names. Maybe I helped this young man file for work authorization so that he could be legally permitted to be here pinning down my boob as if it were going to run away. This thought – like so many of the other thoughts that had been racing through my head for the last couple of weeks – had to be shoved away just as quickly as it reared its ugly head.

After the ten minutes were up, I was bandaged and the nurses gave me my post-procedure instructions. It had seemed like an eternity, but the entire procedure was over in less than an hour.

“You’re heading straight home now, right?” one of them asked.

“I was planning to go to work, actually,” I answered.

“No, honey,” the nurse shook her head, “You’re not going to work. You’ve been through a lot and you’re going to be exhausted. Go home, get into pajamas, take some Tylenol and watch a movie.”

And so I did.

Related post: On Mortality, Banality, and Boobs, Part 1

On Mortality, Banality, and Boobs, Part I

I can’t stand suspense…not in movies or books, not in sporting events, and certainly not in real life. The past couple of weeks have been one long, suspenseful nightmare because I thought I might have cancer. Let me tell you right upfront that I do not.

It all began with a callback mammogram. I got a letter in the mail explaining that it was sometimes difficult for mammograms to produce clear images for people with “dense breast tissue.” Dense breast tissue — hunh?! After nursing three babies, more like droopy, flaccid hackysacks that have lost all their stuffing. But – whatever.

This was not my first rodeo. I had been called back for a second mammogram once before so I knew what to expect. I knew I would be in for a torture session that would somehow manage to be simultaneously futuristic and medieval. I would be asked to mash the side of my face against the plastic and metal of a mammogram machine. I would be made to sling my arm around it as if in a lover’s embrace. A stranger (a lovely and kind nurse, but a stranger nonetheless), would pat and squash and arrange my breast as casually as if she were making a biscuit…if making biscuits also involved mashing the dough impossibly thin between two cold, hard plates. I would endure the torture with stoicism, wincing only when I simply couldn’t bear it.

“Too tight?” the nurse would ask as she turned a knob that would cause the boob vise to clamp down ever tighter.

“Yes,” I’d gasp.

She would loosen the crank a touch, but then with a cruel, deft flick of her wrist, she would tighten it right back to its original position.

“I saw that!” I would think bitterly each time it happened.

Never mind. It would all be over soon enough. I’d receive my benediction and be dismissed to go on with the rest of my life. Only this time I wasn’t.

I knew something was up when the nurse escorted me to a back room I’d never seen before and told me that a doctor would come talk with me soon. I was pretty sure she was trying to avoid making eye contact with me. The doctor spoke to me in gentle, soothing tones. She told me that there were “areas of concern” that would need to be further examined. I would be scheduled for a needle biopsy. Once the pathology report was back, if there was evidence of cancer, we would discuss my treatment options.