Happy Birthday Mom 생일 축하 해요 어머니

Well it’s that time of the year again. The eve of my moms’ birthday. How old are you now Mom? Don’t worry You don’t have to answer. Besides it’s way beyond what you’d blush about anyhow. Well now that We’re BOTH getting up there in years I must admit that I have been a “mommas’ boy” most of my life. I guess most sons are mommas boys and well shoot, if they all had a mom like you, they’d be one as well for sure.

I have fond reasons as to why and though you said alot of encouraging things throughout my formative years it was the “doing” part that so sticks with me.

Here are a few “vignettes” if you will that I play back in my mind’s VCR from time to time…

The first one was as vivid as night, only cuz you carried me on your back at that hour, literally . I had been having stomach pains and had a fever for most of the day. Think i was like 5 years old. I figured you were so desperate you hoisted me on your back in the middle of the night by yourself and walked to the bus station and got on the bus. You then hoisted me up again and walked all the way to the danged hospital with me as your lil’ backpack. No wonder I act inexplicably crazy sometimes. I get it from YOU! The next thing i remember was getting a shot on my behind as the medicine helped me feel much better.

There was another time when I was just a wee lil’ boy in korea playing outside with my friends everyday. As the days progressed i would see you at the sewing machine sewing away. Back then you had a sewing machine that you would power manually by feet. Your small little frame would be hunched over that machine day and night. Though I was very young in age I would notice your spending alot of time on it and would wonder to myself – what is she sewing that is taking so much of her time and energy? Well as time progressed even more, I noticed snow slowly fall to the ground as my friends and I celebrated the first snowfall of winter. In the midst of celebrating and playing in the snow you finally revealed the fruit of your labor. You had sewn me a new winter coat with a hood to keep me warm! I still am dumbfounded by that and think of that coat til this very day. I would love to write a childrens’ book on this someday and give it to you as a gift, but for now this letter will have to do.

What about the times when you worked on Saturdays so that we could wear OP’s & Nikes. Name brand clothing in the 80′s so that other kids wouldn’t laugh at us and we would “fit in”?

Puberty was cruel but getting bussed all the way to Sherman Oaks from k-town was almost in-humane. I don’t know which was worse. Getting up that early to get on the bus or getting off the bus to them mean lil’ 6th graders that had to point out everyday of their lives that we were nuthin, had nuthin, and were affecting their paradigm. Looking back, they were just kids. Lame ones at that. Still grateful that you helped deal with that dilemma the only way you knew how. Especially cuz we were such great incessant little whiners.

Though there are thousands of more stories of your sacrifice as a Mom, your daily morning prayers for Kee and I is the thing I will cherish the most. Some days when I wasn’t sleeping in like most teen-agers did, I could hear your whispered prayers for us through the crack of your bedroom door before you and dad would head out early into dawn. Those are the moments I will take with me til the day I leave this existence. Whenever I am having a crappy day or whenever I am in a euphoric state of worshipping behind those drums praising Jesus, I will always think of you. And though not a day goes by when I wish I was closer to you in vicinity, I always know you’re there thinking of me back in yur lil’ apartment in L.A. Watching yur k-drama, of course.

I love you Mom with all my heart.

Happy Birthday…

Kee Chan

my generation also..

As i’m in my 40′s now i’ve been noticing something. something i’m sure has been happening to other people with similar life experience.

You see, i was not born here in America. I was born in a small port city in the southern part of south korea. I remember how hard it was for my folks back then. most of Korea was having it hard. though it was the 70′,s south korea was still feeling the effects of the post korean war.

My dad would be gone weeks at a time since he’d have to go find work in a nearby city. I remembered when we finally got our visas approved to move to America. Alls i remember were folks telling me things like ..”don’t forget to eat alot of bananas, hershey chocolate bars and go to Disneyland!” as a 6 year old i was like “??!!” (turns out bananas and chocolate bars were a delicacy at that time and D-land was like mecca to my relatives. go figure.)

As we settled into the american life i remember having it sooooo hard. i remember my folks having to work decades in the sweatshops of downtown Los Angeles. no a/c and no health benefits. “piece work” meant whatever piece of the garment they sewed, they would get something like 10 cents for it. they would tell me as a young boy how they couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom because that meant they couldn’t meet their quota for the day. looking back now, i thought to myself that perhaps they were saying that to teach me that not all things come so easy or that i should understand the meaning of a dollar.  i’m sure it hurt their feelings alot when i would spout off about how other kids got so many things and how me and my brother never did.

For my folks, having a young family really prevented them from learning a new vocation or getting an education. it was put food on the table and work. there’s was no time for anything else. it was a crazy treadmill they couldn’t get off til my brother and I could fend for ourselves or –  until they start falling apart. of course the latter happend. as they got older my mom had been diagnosed w/ breast cancer (thank God she’s been going strong for over a decade since then). my father had several minor heart attacks and strokes. my father still til this day cannot walk straight. he walks as though he just got off a carnival ride. thank god he can still drive like a maniac. well perhaps good for him but not for others.

i remember times when my dad would need medical attention at the County USC medical center in east los angeles. waiting for what seemed like days to be seen. or driving my mom to downdown in my dad’s stead at 5am in the morning through 7th and los angeles street. the roads would be strewn with the homeless and the addicted. there would be times when i’d see dead human bodies on the streets. either by murder or overdosing.

though we didn’t have much, what we did have were parents that truly loved us and they let us know that outwardly, everyday. my mom would apologize sometime that we were so unfortunate to have met such pitiful parents such as they. that they were so proud of us for being able to earn our own spending money, buy our own clothes or pay for our hyundai and daihatsu’s. What my brother and I realised was that all other kids that weren’t korean and didn’t go to my church, were doing the same thing! All american kids worked a part time job. whether they’re wealthy or not, most of my friends in the burbs who were not 1.5 generation koreans worked. needless to say in one sense we were glad they thought of us that way but at the same time we thought they were a lil’ nuts. 0_o

that was around the time when all my friends at church were given brand new sports cars. My folks were sad that my brother and I would have to work part time jobs all through high school and college and not have a chance to hang out w/ our friends after church.  little did they know that that was one of the greatest educations that money could not buy.

Aaaah church. Don’t get me started about church. Alls I can say is that a first generation korean church was not the typical american church that you grew up in. it was an amalgum of so many different things. some things straight outta da bible and some things that were just straight out of a korean custom / traditions manual. Blend that with some pentecostal doctrine and we got ourselves a nice lil’ powder keg ready to ‘splode!

My folks instilled in my brother and I that we should never forsake getting an education so that we can live that “American Dream” but also to never forget God’s providence for our family. that by faith we were able to have hope through all this hardship. whether that be losing our house that we’d lived in for over 20 years or when my folks were diagnosed with their respective ailments, it was all going to be ok. A life in Christ gave us hope.

Have faith in Christ, get a great education, go to church, get a great job, pay yur taxes and live the American Dream. Those were pretty straight and simple hopes of all korean/american parents of our generation. shoot i guess for most Americans! With that said, I feel like so far I’ve accomplished alot of the things my parents had hoped for both my brother and I. We both have our careers. We have beautiful families and a warm home. Loving wives and we’re still alive and kicking, living through our faith in Christ. Of course there are crappy days. of course there are times I question God but with all that, the American Dream is alive and well. . .

so why am I writing this blog? hell I haven’t written a blog in what seems like eternity (well a year at least)! welp, I am noticing alot of “cross road” scenarios in a few of my friends and it just got me to thinking.

i guess i could’ve just thought to myself.. “well that’s nice and all. It’s so great that God has called you to that..” I see some friends at a cross roads where they really feel God calling them to some things that may seem “outside” of the American dream. Some young families are selling all their belongings and answering the call to be missionaries. Others – full time ministry, to others it may mean working at a non-prof.  Most may NEVER make the money or have the security that their folks would wish upon them.

What they are doing is something that is sooooo against the grain of the sacrifices of our parents’ hope and dream for us. Yet – I admire that. Would I do that? Honestly, I really don’t know. Part of it is knowing what my parents sacrificed. Hence that loooong stinkin’ setup.

Another part of it is my love of comfort. Heck I paid my dues. Lemme enjoy the fruits of my labor.. shooot….I thithe, I pay my exhorbitant taxes, I give to non-profs, I write a check every month to that lil’ african kid in the congo! leave me the hell alone!

But if and when I do sense His calling to something more greater than the “American Dream” – (insert loooong pause) Especially now. Now that I have these beautiful kids and a loving wife whom I’ve waited so long for…. you see, I am trying to understand myself. What is it that makes me feel this way? Am I jaded? perhaps.. does my faith lose it’s intensity and is less tactile as i get older exponentially? I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t want theirs’ and my sacrifices to go in vain.. but then perhaps… it’s one and the same.

Perhaps this happens to every generation. .. and with that, and not exlcluding -  my generation also…