The difference

This post was originally shared in 2008. I am waiting for the hot soccer player with the pretty hair, and I have not thought all the right things through. I haven't explained to him how to get to my dorm room, and I haven't offered to meet him at a more central location. It is a first date and all I have been able to focus on up until this point is what I am to wear and what music will I be listening to when he knocks on my door. I am starting to get that nervous adrenaline that makes my voice rise an octave and my feet twitch.

I live in the women's hall that always smells like Bath & Body Works, on the floor with the lavender walls. I sit on my bed with the yellow gingham bedspread, the one I picked out two years ago when I thought yellow gingham said "cheerfulness" and not "little girl tea party."

I finally settle on a compilation tape of the Beatles that my friend made me. Neutral.

I start to wonder if he is coming. I grab a highlighter because I should look busy instead of like I have had nothing to do all day besides prepare for this moment. My floor is immaculate, every drawer and closet door closed; there are no clothes helter skelter. I am the RA on the lavender floor and my room looks more like a kindergarten room ready for the new school year to begin.

I need to do something and quick before my date comes to my door and discovers he is taking a girl from an Edward Hopper painting out for pizza. I throw a hoodie over the Issues chair. I knock over the stack of floppies. I kick my shoes across the room.

I am so uncomfortable now. My room is trying to be messy and trying not to be contrived about it. I am overthinking the floppy disks toppling over. That's normal, right? For people to just let them topple and not pick them up?

***

Loverpants and I are picking up the living room before he runs the Roomba. Saturday night ritual in our first year of parenting. I am coming up the spiral staircase and as I step into the living room, I see my foot kicking something across the room. There is always detritus on our floor these days because Baby Girl is apparently preparing for hibernation, as she squirrels away finger foods between her thigh rolls. We are not perturbed by wads of food all over the floor; we sweep several times throughout the day. Or sometimes we don't, because, why? So I look down and am just a flash away from picking up a bite of the Cocoa Rolo cookies I made earlier in the week. But then I ask self why would I have given Baby Girl a Cocoa Rolo cookie? That is not on the approved list of finger foods?

I ask Loverpants, Is this a cookie or...?

He leans over. I nudge it with my foot. It's hard all the way through.

He picks it up with a scrap of paper. Smells it.

"It's definitely poop."

We will not even begin to explore how it got there.

The Two Reactions: I'm sad about my kid going to school

Feeling all the feels about our little man heading to full-time pre-K. So I'm just going to say it, fully aware that reactions will inevitably fall into two buckets: In Bucket #1, we have the righteous looks askance, wondering why I will not be homeschooling, breastfeeding, and co-sleeping with him until the night of his rehearsal dinner. Don't you know what HAPPENS to children who break that attachment to parents before the age of 34?!? How can you just release him to those cruel agents of institutionalization? Why are you so lazy and selfish that you are relinquishing his education to a STRANGER for 5 days in a row? Every week! Until the history of ever is over....

In Bucket #2, we have the flagging looks of disgust, wondering why I haven't had more of a life until now, such that sending my son to school --which parents have done for thousands of years--is this big earth-shattering milestone that I can't quite seem to cogitate. They are trying to muster an ounce of pity for me all the while thinking, Get a grip, woman. This is not Colonial Williamsburg. Your child will not be rubbing his hands by a fire in the one-room schoolhouse to keep warm, said hands will not be cracked with a teacher's ruler if he misbehaves, you will not be the fresh-off-the-boat parent unable to read the scribble of teacher's scrawl in this English language when notes are sent home. Really. Here's some waterproof mascara for the first day of school.

I understand the sentiments that have filled each bucket full over time. I very much understand that I am not the first mother in history to be without her youngest babe for the duration of a full schoolday, and that I'm going to survive by placing one foot in front of another and taking one intentional breathe just for my own two lungs because I can't take them for him.

But this is where I am: exceedingly grateful that we've been able to keep our boy at home with us for four years. Four years! I know there are many parents around the world who would kill for four months of full-time at-home care of their child. Unlike with Baby Girl whose second month of life saw me starting my grad internship and her father working three jobs,  my mister and I have been blessed with this opportunity to bond quite equitably with our boy before he had to begin formal school. And he still doesn't have to go; preK is not inevitable like death and taxes and drama on "The View." We just feel the hour is ripe for some structure and singing of awesome songs on a colorful rug, sitting criss-cross applesauce, and having snack from a Dixie cup. We're excited and trepidatious and just totally thrilled with our options here in this home that feels on lease to us, just like these years are to us in which we're all just trying to do our doggonest for these sweet, impressionable hearts in our hands.

Confessions of a non-Korean mama

I have so many dear friends expecting babies this year. Come October, I'm expecting a veritable traffic jam of storks in the sky. It's reminding me of the joy of bringing our own little dumplings home. Our first experience in doing so is forever illuminated for me...

January 2008

As we are leaving the hospital with our dumpling, our pastor and his wife from the Korean church call Loverpants. They say they are on their way over to our house. There is no asking and there is no refusing. I mean, my belly has just been on the butcher block and I am having volcanic eruptions of hot hormone lava and we have a new family member that we just met, but no bigs!

Going home from the hospital

Our pastor and his wife meet us at home. They march through the apartment toward the kitchen where they dutifully stock our refrigerator with noodle dishes and potatoes and bread and seaweed soup P.S. GOOD FOR BREASTMILK. And then pastor offers a prayer in Korean and his wife looks askance at me trying to breastfeed.

The following week, the pastor and his wife are back for a second go-round. This time, with friends! And more seaweed soup. Ahjoomah General’s warning: Contents may make breasts explode with ample milk supply. After several hymns and prayers in Korean, all of which may have been pleas to the Almighty to make our next child an heir, the church elders begin to leave. But not before several of the ahjoomahs (Korean elder women) compress my abdomen, exclaiming “Aygoh!” I believed at one time that Aygoh! meant “Hot dog! She’s still a postnatal fatty!” in Korean.

But after reading a thing or two about samchilil, I know why they are squeezing me. Samchilil, which means 21 days, is the Korean practice of letting a woman who has just given birth to rest. Doesn't that sound amazing? If mama rests then she will regain strength and be able to take care of those around her. But my impression is that it is a fear-based rest. The postnatal mama is resting to avoid her bones going soft and all of her teeth falling out. True fear. The mother is to stay indoors, drink miyuk-kuk (seaweed soup), avoid cold (even drinking an iced beverage), and sometimes she even wears a girdle. Not kidding, players, an honest-to-goodness girdle. Hence why the ahjoomahs are squeezing the place where a baby used to be. Aygoh!

Exit: Team Ahjoomah, stage left.

Irritated and exhausted, I walk to the kitchen to see the spoils of the meals on wheels. I open the refrigerator and there it is: the familiar pots and pans, the kimchee and the burnt rice. The potluck ministry had come to love on me today.

I’m told no matter the denomination, it’s the same scene at any Korean-American church. The potluck is the thing. I’ll never be able to consume the topographic mounds of rice that my church sisters manage to wolf down, but I always enjoy it. Is there really no such thing as a free lunch? Have I paid for my meal ticket through every awkward encounter at K-church? Perhaps. But I’ve never been asked to contribute to the potluck. For the most part, I’ve been a taker. For me, this is God’s grace come to life in a silver pot. We’ve done nothing to deserve it and done everything wrong to be denied it, but He lavishes it on us like a smiling Korean ahjoomah whose delight derives entirely on its acceptance.

Our first time at church as a famiLee

The Korean church loved me through my twenties. The ahjoomahs loved me in a way that I found peculiar, in ways that I never would have chosen to be loved. But there’s no menu at a buffet. Only a bounty of the interesting and colorful, the flavorful, sweet, sour, and spicy.