"Men are but children of a larger growth."

My favorite picture of Sun Su, even if he looks a wee bit sad.

ECHOES

Lately, I’ve been unable to see Amy or the kids for up to seven days at a time.

Until we sell our house, commuting back and forth every day to work is just too exhausting. So I stay at Amy’s parents’ house which is close to St. Azrael Hospital.

Amy and I can manage. Baby Ooseung hardly notices. But it hurts when I think about Sun Su.

Amy says he sometimes yells out, “AH-PAHHH!” (appah = "daddy" in Corean, very important) at random times. The only answer being an echo and his mother’s reassurance.

“He’s asking for you,” Amy tells me on the phone.

For awhile he used to call everything “appah.” … The LIGER! (our cat), the table, the bannister on the stairway, my brother (!?). But now, he knows. He points to photos of me and yells “Appah!” When Amy draws stick figure portraits of us, he points to the short-haired figure with circle eyeglasses and shouts “Appah appah appah!”

The first time I came home from a twelve-day stretch of work, Sun Su ignored me for a while like he didn’t know I was gone. He was busy organizing plastic cups.

This latest time, Sun Su ran into the room and just sat next to me, seeing what I was doing, pulling me from room to room, being in my presence like I wanted to be in his. He let me carry him for a long time. Perhaps my heartbeat or my arms feel different from his umma’s (mom’s). Different but familiar.

When I am home, he yells “AH-PAHHHH!” periodically as if to check, and I answer him back, often from another room in the house, “SUN SUUUU?” And his question is answered.

“He misses you. He knows he can’t see you everyday,” Amy told me.

“Yeah, that’s what bothers me. He knows when I’m not around now.”

In the days that I am home, we go to the park. I take him to the video store. To a picnic. To church again.

A part of me wonders if it would be better to not make such a big deal of being home with him. So that he doesn’t notice a dramatic difference when I am there and when I am not. But I miss him. “He’s so funny,” is the best way I can explain it. He makes my brain giggle and my heart laugh.

Children peek into your subconscious like this a lot.

Lately, Sun Su has become more clingy with Amy. When he cannot see her, he panics a little and whimpers. A part of me wonders if it is because he has realized that we are not ever-present constants in his day-to-day world.

After we sell the house, I’ll get to see Sun Su every day again. Umma and appah (mom and dad) will be home, and home will be umma and appah. When he yells “AH-PAHHH!!”, he won’t have to settle for his umma soothingly explaining to him that appah isn’t here right now.

Maybe it’s not such a big deal to him in the first place. He’s only two years old. Maybe it’s just me remembering unanswered echoes in a house where the clocks keep ticking but it stays 2 a.m. forever.

Just because you don't get an answer, it doesn't mean your appah doesn't love you.

See you again in seven days, sweet boy. Don’t dream of me when I’m not there, okay?

You don’t have to answer that.

Sun Su and the Bruce Lee shirt my brother got him in The City of Whores and Hashish - I mean Amsterdam.

______________________________________

SARANGHAEYO

AMY (umma): “Say I love you to Sun Su, appah.”

ME (appah): “I love you Sun Su!”

SUN SU: “Ah-lud-oo-doo.”

ME: “…?”

AMY: “That’s how he says ‘I love you too.’”

That's what I thought appah meant.

So the romanization is wrong. What do you expect from a two year old and a mother who can't read Corean.