If you were to rate me on my Korean-ness, I would probably be a “2″ on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being a church going Korean who has a perm and drives a Honda). I don’t speak Korean. I barely know any Korean customs. I am neither a doctor nor a lawyer – or an accountant for that matter (basically the three professions that every Korean parent pressures you to become). However, if you were to rate me on how much I love being Korean, I would rate my Korean pride at a “10″ which is basically: “I can’t fucking believe I come from the country that created kimchee and bulgogi!!!”
While Seattle has a diverse Asian population, most Koreans I know of live just north or just south of the city in the suburbs. Sadly, I can only think of one Korean restaurant that is worth eating at in Seattle proper – I personally think this is a travesty. The last time Paige and I tried someplace new, her bulgogi came out stir-fried with broccoli and carrots! This is enough to make a Korean grandmother roll in her grave.
So last Saturday, Rene, Scott and I went on a field trip north specifically to eat good Korean food and to visit HMart, a Korean grocery and variety store. We first met up with our friend Jeff and his cutie pie daughter Emma at a restaurant called Ho Soon Yi. I don’t know why we do this but every time we eat together we end up ordering so much food that it is completely ridiculous and embarassing. Stuff like Bulgogi, jap chae, seafood pancake (hae-mool pah-jun) and soon dubu barreled out of the kitchen in gigantic portions. Seriously, I could have just made a meal out of the banchan and rice, but nooooo, we had to order the family meal for what seemed like 20. The waitress actually had to pull up another table to accomodate all the food we ordered. They probably looked at us and were thinking, “oh they must be taking a day off from the freedom fries.”
After lunch, we took our engorged bellies to HMart to get our shop on. I had never been to HMart and now I can’t wait to go back. I generally can’t shop the first time I go someplace new like this because I am so overwhelmed by the choices. When you go to a store and you see 20 different varieties of rice – well, it gets kind of exciting for this old girl (What already? I shop at Safeway and I have no life) and I can’t make a decision to save my life.
Since then, I have had a couple of listless nights dreaming of their kimchee deli. They had so many varieties that it was like taking a walk through my childhood. And of course, one of my favorite things was in the food court. While there were a bevy of Korean food options that looked really wonderful, I just couldn’t get over the kaiten sushi cafeteria deli:
“I tell you the story because I was raised the Chinese way. I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, and to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out the same way. Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl, and I was born to my mother and I was born a girl, all of us like stairs, one step after another, going up, going down, but always going the same way.”
- An Mei, Joy Luck Club
Sometimes when I get smug and think that I have gone through some quantum leap in consciousness I get knocked back down again and am humbled by how childish I can act. Take Thanksgiving morning for instance. I was in the throws of getting ready to head out the door to spend the holidays at the beach when I realized that my shiny 3″ silver faux snakeskin peep-toe pumps were missing. This could only mean one of two things – either there is a shoe bandit roaming our neighborhood bypassing the Apple and Sony electronics for highly impractical (unless you want to get laid) shoes or Paige took them without asking. Suffice to say, it wasn’t a shoe bandit.
There are a lot of ways that I could psychoanalyze what ensued next but the simplest is to say that I snapped. I am not proud about it, but it’s the truth. After I realized Paige had snuck them out of the house so she could wear them to a party, I spewed some diatribe at her that went something like, “can’t I have ONE thing that’s just mine?” and “is nothing sacred?!?”and “you’ve already sucked the youth out of me, now you want my shoes???” Perhaps I am exaggerating a bit, but you get the point. I had a nuclear meltdown and everything within 3 miles was obliterated. In my own defense, Paige’s laissez-faire attitude, “So what?” and “I didn’t think you would care” and “you borrowed my mascara so I thought it would be okay” only served to fan the flames.
We can now laugh that I had a meltdown over a pair of shoes that cost less than $100, but those shoes mean something to me. They are the opposite of my Dansko clogs – instead they represent something completely impractical. I would even say that their sole purpose is to make me feel happy and sexy. Like a reminder to myself to have more fun and to not to take life so seriously and to feed the non-mommy parts of my soul. For years I loved my daughter more than anything, including me. This is definitely not what I want to be teaching her but I know that in some ways I have been … just like my step-mothers and Aunties did and as I am sure my mother did too. How many times have we put ourselves last? When will we get to the point where we realize when we do this in front of our daughters, we are perpetuating this mindset?
It’s taken 34 years of personal development to bypass the ingrained tendencies of growing up as an Asian woman or even more accurately, an Asian and a Woman. And even though having a meltdown about a pair of shoes is nothing to be proud about, I am proud of the fact that I am no longer pouring all my hopes and dreams into Paige and that I am giving relevance and importance to my own hopes and dreams.
I was just reading the Too Beautiful To Live blog, which correlates with an evening radio variety show hosted by Jen Andrews and Luke Burbank. Under the caption “Explain Please” was this Youtube video of a Korean baseball game where some sort of fight or interpretive dance ensues. I don’t really know.
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