À Corée avec Tristesse

Aaron and I had a talk, two years into college, during winter break. Cassie was conked out on a nearby couch, as the evening hour had morphed to morning with vertical clock hands, but we were still awake. He asked me if I planned to go anywhere, in some unknown, small number of years. The hour let me ponder usefully that question, which made a gentle demand of my pretty latent dreaming ability (it was the middle of my Computer Science year).

I don't know if I thought it then, or months later, but from that conversation, I swam through possibilities and determined there were three places I wanted to go. I want to visit France, for the sake of not letting my years sous Sousbois rot away in the annals of my lingual center. I want to visit Japan, hopefully while Katie's there, because I can use some near-epilectic excitement walking down the high-lit streets of that Electronic Nexus Katie she told me about. I also want to visit (South) Korea, to see what it's like when you're –really– outside of the 'States.

I refuse, however, to go to anywhere without a guide translator. While it would be fun to walk around like a child and take in the sights, eventually I'm going to want to have some more interesting conversation than directions to the nearest 'loo.

Katie would be a fine translator for Japan, since she doubles as a good buddy and knows a few of the sights I'd want to see. I don't know who I'd ask to be alongside me in France, but that country isn't a priority at the moment. As for Korea, my hope was to take my mom, give her her first vacation that lasted more than a day since...1996, I think. I say that in all seriousness; she doesn't relax for more than an hour at a time. It's a studious habit she picked up from being the eldest child in a Korean family, having the responsibility of siblings and the title of Oldest. I'd like to know she's still capable of relaxing.

That was the plan. From that chat with Aaron last year, I was letting things swim into place, ambling in my head into the formation of a plan. Too slow.

My mom got a phone call last night, from her eldest little brother, who is, like the rest of her side of my family, still in Korea. My grandmother is in intensive care. She has days to live, and desperately desires to see my mother.

Nobody in our family has a valid passport right now. My aunt told us there may be a place in Seattle that would create a passport with but a day's wait; but it wasn't a sure shot. The quickest any of us can get out of the country for sure is about sixteen days.

Mom talked with one of her siblings again tonight. Hal-moe-nee (what I've always called her) is on life support now, and has improved since last night, but probably won't get off of the machines. Besides fear of her mother's coming death, my mom's also afraid that she could run out of money to pay for the health care. (South Korea's health care runs like the US's, where the government only pays for economically challenged people.)

Can you think of any greater insult, than to not be able to afford a few more days of life? To have to borrow money with all the negotiating handicap of your deathbed? The only just health care is social. Running hospitals like businesses presents the most gruesome of situations.

Well. At the least, we're comforted that Hal-moe-nee is hanging on. She direly wants to see her oldest daughter again. But she can't talk; whatever her condition is, bodily functions are being stricken down by it. The best my mom can do is talk to her on the phone, listening to Hal-moe-nee sputter back.

"Alex, I tried to call you today," Nuvo once said to me (approximately), probably on the way to a dance a few years ago. "But, you were out, and your mom picked up instead. She told me you were out, and said a few more things to me. After we hung up I immediately proceeded to spend ten minutes explaining to Eisel how adorable your mother is."

But I don't know if Nuvo has ever heard her laugh. I mean, really laugh. I've only heard it twice in my life. The first time was watching "The Best Bits of Mr. Bean," in a scene in a church. In the scene, Mr. Bean was trying to sneakily eat a candy, and I think also deal with a gas-passing situation. She had sat down to rest her feet, and saw Atkinson's sidelong, sweeping glance as he unwrapped a krinkly-plastic-encased ball. Her chortle was ...pristine. It made Mr. Bean even funnier, by amplifying the laughter inherent in the scene.

The second time I heard her wholly laugh outside polite conversation (indeed outside) was discussing a conversation she had had with a woman (I shan't say where). The woman had a 'uge booger. It was a dangler. It took my mom's stoic Korean upbringing to keep her face and voice straight. After minutes of this suppressive torture, the boogie dropped down the centimeter necessary for detection. Inwardly mortified, the woman excused herself to the bathroom; when the door closed, my mom doubled over, nearly pained from seeing that.

The woman emerged a few minutes later, and proceeded to finish the conversation they were having. There was talk, gesture, nodding; but soon, my mom's poker face had to be summoned again. The lady was apparently too dainty to pluck the nose goblin from its one- or two-hair perch; so, instead of extracting the attention grabber, she put it back in. But all the nodding jarred it loose, and bloop! sunshine it did receive, basking undetected by lip hairs.

I forget how my mom got through that. If, that is. But she told my family (dad, me, Damian, uncle and aunt) this story, and laughed hard enough to be in pain again. She laughed hard enough that it became a chortle by lung constraint. I don't care who you are, if you're over 10, that story's funny. Her laughter had such a genuine tone to it, though, everyone was in tears, our cheeks encouraged by her into being the tensest muscles in our bodies.

Her emotion can be so clearly displayed, conveyed, and assumed. Normal conversation with her, in her bubbly, broken English, is comforting, fun politeness that you can't ignore. Her crassness with disappointing things Damian and I did in our youth was pretty stilling, as was the way she punished a friend and I once for playing in the clothes dryer, by making us hold our arms out straight for five minutes. (That was goddamn hard, I tell you what.)

When she was called last night, she started crying. Lost a lot of sleep. I didn't know anything about what was going on with Hal-moe-nee until today, when Tom & Chris (uncle & aunt) came over and she mentioned she couldn't sleep because she was crying all night. Up 'til that point, her voice was normal, even, polite. But then it changed completely for the worse.

She cried, and spoke her impending loss before she spoke her English.