Sunday, May 12, 2002.
Movies seen this weekend: Jason X and Unfaithful. (Guess who picked
which.)
Currently listening
to: Rollercoaster
(K-rock band) and Beno's
BenoMix CD (it's so cool).
Amy's due Date: May 14. Any day now... yep ... an-n-y day now....
MOMS' DAY
"Happy Mother's Day! Thank you mom for always understanding and listening … to the paranoid and delusional voices in your own head."
"Happy Mother's Day mom! You've made me the person I am today. I couldn't have had this hypertensive stroke without you!"
"Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I probably wouldn't be blacklisted from the remaining few relatives I have,
If it wasn't for you."
I had the hardest time finding just the right card for my mom for Mother's Day. If one didn't say "I love you so much" then it said something about "thanks for always understanding." Neither of which I could give her with an honest conscience these days.Sure, I wasn't exactly expecting cards with the captions above, but is it asking too much to make a blank Mother's Day card?
A lot of my current discordance with my mom has been related to my Korean-Brazilian cousins recently. I haven't seen much of them since they moved out of my mom's house over a month ago, but fortunately they decided to stay in Michigan afterall. They had been planning on going to California and even back to Brazil for awhile there. But in the end, the Korean church here helped them out in a big way and they are staying in Michigan for now.
Despite the fact that my mom hadn't even heard from them for a month (and never will again, most likely), she still thinks they are secretly planning on suing her and convinced her own mother and relatives in Korea of this along with many other paranoid theories over the past few months.
Is my mom really crazy? Well, maybe not really crazy, I guess. It's kind of like that question about a tree falling in the forest and no one being around to hear it. Does it still make a sound? As long as no one is around my mom long enough for her to pin her conspiratorial delusions upon, then no, she isn't crazy either.
The last time my mom was visiting, she brought up my cousins again. Much pointless yelling ensued from both sides. My mom put up her usual forcefield of irrationality/deafness and I reverted to a screaming teenager trying to convince her of the absolute ludicrosity of her ideas. I want Baby Boy to hear no part of it, so I banned my mom from my home. Again. Only with more expletives.
Amy hugged me after she left, because she knows how this affects me. I've defended my mom towards Amy and my cousins multiple times. Saying she feels threatened or scared or whatever. I even wanted her to move in with us once the baby came. Not just to help out but so she wouldn't stew in her own isolated neurosis. So we could help her.
But I no longer feel it's a good idea for my child.
"You know how Korean moms get on you about one thing and won't stop ... well, your mom is a hundred times that," Amy told me recently. She said she realized there was something wrong with my mom years ago when she had accused Amy of trying to "make her take a long trip and never come back." Amy had given her a scarf.
Amy won't tell me the other things my mom used to accuse her of back then.
I didn't realize that buying a simple card could be so traumatic, but it was. No matter what I'd get, it would be wrong in some way. Either the card would have too many lies in it, or not enough.
I just picked the card with the fewest possible words in it. And two little bags of chocolate-covered peanuts … my mom has a sweet-tooth too. I've been avoiding chocolate myself ever since I learned my cholesterol was too high.
When I got back in the car, I felt drained. I was seriously dreading Mother's Day.
If I were a smoker, I'm sure I would have smoked a few right there. If I were a drinker, I might have stopped off at a bar.
Instead, I wolfed down both packs of chocolate-covered peanuts and wanted more.
TIAMAT'S ROSE
Like a meeting between two halves of a divided country, we agreed to meet somewhere in between on Mother's Day -- a nearby Korean restaurant.Ever since the little family-owned K-restaurant with the "defiant little biker chick on her tricycle" closed down, this one has been our favorite.
We come so often, the idiosyncratic restaurant staff practically feels like family now.
There's the towering waitress, Ms. Caryatid, with the deep voice, whom Amy suspects was another transgender convert like Korean star, Ha Ri Su. I'm pretty sure she is not a transgender, but you know she must have gotten horribly teased and rejected while growing up in homogenous Korea.
There's the Schoolgirl waitress. Not the kind you see on internet porn sites, but the shy nerdy thick-glasses awkward kind who doesn't have enough self-esteem to look you in the eye but will smile when she thinks no one is looking.
And then there's my favorite waitress, the enigmatic Ms. Tiamat. She's obviously older than we are, quite short, and I honestly don't know if she'd be pretty by Korean or American standards -- but I find her striking nonetheless. There's something magnetic about her quiet confident manner and sharp if weather-worn features. When I asked Amy if she thought she was attractive, she just answered, "I don't know. She's an ajumma (older married woman with kids)."
The lunch went quite well actually.
The restaurant was packed for the first time in a long time. There were even a couple tiny grannies in traditional dresses (hanboks) hobbling in and out.
Our waitress, Ms. Tiamat gave a long-stemmed rose to my mom. And then my mom said that Amy was a mother as well, pointing to the child in her belly. Our waitress graciously smiled and got another rose for Amy.
My mom was pleasant, even overly so toward Amy. I suspected it might be one of her passive-aggressive alliance-forming maneuvers. She did this a lot with our cousins too, siding with one while being angry at the other, which they were plainly aware of. I kept my poker face on (I don't gamble either, by the way).
I asked if she talked to my brother lately, as I always ask.
I told my mom I have been taking Korean classes on Sundays for the past month (I'll write an entry about this later as well). She was surprisingly supportive, and said, "Oh, I can teach better than they can" only once this time. I got a couple of grammar tips from her too.
Then my mom told Amy that she has to make sure she gets help when the baby comes. To never be alone. Amy said her own mom would be coming over to take care of her which my mom thought was a good idea.
My mom went on about how my dad's mother had helped her out a little when I was born. But when my younger brother was born, she did it all by herself. It was hard.
My mom really seemed genuinely excited and sympathetic for Amy and our incoming Baby Boy for once.
It was kind of odd realizing that at one time I was in my mother's womb, with my father at her side, perhaps at a restaurant like this one at one time. And maybe they had felt the same way Amy and I felt today. How sad that things can change so much over time ... but maybe not as much as one would think.
I guess it's like peeling the petals off of a rose and realizing each inner one isn't that much different from the one before. And they all bud from the same core.
I may need to remind myself what that core is sometimes.
I reminded Amy to take her rose home.
(I got Amy a Mother's Day card too, by the way.)
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I hope Paul is doing better with his Korean mother.
