Angela E J Koh » Mom

From My Sketchbook

angelaejkoh — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:54:47 +0000

Knew This Would Happen

angelaejkoh — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Just got back from visiting Mom and Dad in Korea. We drove to Busan where an octopus fell onto the snowy gravel in the fish market. Even stopped by Dae-jeon’s pig-blood restaurants with stew on sale for two. I was ready to come home. But my mom does this thing. On the flight back, I found napkins and breath mints in both of my jacket pockets. When I unpacked, there were vitamin bottles tucked between socks. I unwrapped my boots and they were stuffed with ginseng drinks. Like I need to be reminded of our distance as it grows.

In the empty apartment, everything I touch aches with me. The shivering cup or the cold counter. I wake when it’s dark outside–my clock still 15-hours fast from jet lag. It reminds me of the winter night in Seoul. Dad peaks in the snack cabinet and Mom closes it after him. Their life continues. But mine seems at a stand-still (least for the next few days). I can’t seem to get going. I keep waking up when the day’s over. Keep waking up in Korea.

It Must Have Felt Heroic

angelaejkoh — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:25:00 +0000

Sounds like stretched cables, a ringing tucked in my ear flap.

I’m moved by need, it takes me from this day to the next. Like money, I think, how much I’d like to shower my parents with it and say, I’ll take over from here. Hearing them leave that for this, their wet cheeks pressed to my face. I carry them on my back and sometimes it gets so heavy, my ears start ringing. This amour of affliction and pressure made me feel strong. It must have felt heroic to sacrifice my time, my slow and easy.

But I was nervous. My peers might see how blood-lust sacrifice, an absolute neglect of their person could manifest real potential. Into individual passion and ability they’ll use to pass me up, wasting no time for safety nets or maybe’s. That they’ll find I’m not a smart girl (brother got those genes), but a poor competitor. That I got as far as I did because I lost a sense of self. That no burden outweighs that on my back.

Now, I was thrown a keyboard like a lotto ticket. It seems the world of lotto tickets makes passion and ability fruitless. I could only let my knees buckle and hold. Waiting for something

Revisiting Old Wounds

angelaejkoh — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:18:00 +0000

In the Seoul morning, when I look out the balcony, I see the clouds getting caught in the dense mountainside. If you blink, it almost looks like smoke escaping the treetops. Like the whole city’s on fire. About two years ago, I fell asleep in my parents’living room in Korea, on the hard floor with a pink quilt over my face. I had been visiting my distanced parents over the winter. When I awoke, the quilt looked so much like the one in my apartment. For agonizing minutes, I thought I was alone on my spring-less, flat bed in California. To the lone child still selfishly waiting, it felt worse than sitting backstage, watching parents hand their kids plastic roses and head home to real dinners. Worse than when I told a brown coffin why I couldn’t take my grandma to Ueno anymore. I felt the things I’d carefully buried.

I was so accustomed to this ‘alone’that I became good at it. When I’m surrounded by nothing but four plaster walls, everything’s the way it’s supposed to be and my life is continuing in a way I’d imagined. This was comfortable and all I knew how to handle. So when I wake to an Apple-Vinegar-Onion sandwich (the way I like) with mom’s real hand laying down a cup of warm milk next to me, I can’t breathe. Would I wake up in a meager room back in California. Could I then crawl into the garage as I did when I was too young, thinking about letters that should have read, “Eunji, we’re coming back to get you.” I don’t want to blink. I owe it to myself to try and enjoy being by my family’s side for the summer, however uncomfortable and nerve-wracking it makes me (however instinctively, I want to drive them away from me). Would I survive if I were to see my clouds turn into fire one more time.

She Doesn’t Need to Know

angelaejkoh — Sat, 30 May 2009 04:12:00 +0000

May 2009

It’s strange that distance can make such a difference. When I miss my mom, I kind of close myself off. If I had to say, it feels like heavy leeches hanging off the back of my neck. They hinder the blood flow, making my cognizance go blank—a trickle here and there to strictly allow body movement. I guess it’s a great way to shut off for a little bit without actually slowing down. I like to think that even if she lived in the same country as me, I would still see her as infrequently as I do now.

It’s wrong. I know because she has a life, not here. I could physically nudge and poke the space of separation, it’s felt and endured (as I’m sure it is for any long-distance relationship). The stretch of distance carries islands, the ocean, the zones that keep us apart, and mostly the lost time we can’t make up for. It almost feels like she’s in another dimension. She’s living, but I have no proof except for my memories–of the way she picks out linens and takes her coffee. When I sit down to eat my dinner, she’s not somewhere else doing the same. She’s too far to feel that it’s night and too far to know that she should be hungry now. She’s not where she’s supposed to be, and I’ve been no less selfish thinking this way since I was fifteen. If she was at least in the same state, I wouldn’t have to think of when to call her for Mother’s Day, imagine the cake that I would’ve made for her, the color flowers she might have smelled, and the embrace I know she deserves.