Some years ago, I started thinking about what this thing called “creativity” was. Creativity seemed to belong to someone special, usually someone with an art degree. As I am getting older, I am finding myself doing “creative” things – writing, photography, even sketching etc. This drive to “create” things is a strange phenomena to me. Don’t know where it comes from, I just know I get this urge to create something. I don’t want to call this a creative drive as I am not an artist. As a matter of fact, the minute I try to label this a “creativity”, I am burdened by this label. This often discourages me to be creative.
I am trying to be free – from calling anything I am doing as creative. I really don’t care what this is called. I just have the urge to draw lines and circles in my sketchbook and color. If this feels good, I am good.
I am not creative. I am just being true to myself.
Beginnings are exciting in most circumstances. We all have many beginnings. We as a family had a significant new beginning in 1975.
I was fifteen and was just about to finish up my first semester in 10th grade in Seoul. We packed up our bags and left South Korea. I still remember having tearful good-byes at the airport. I was sad for a brief time in the terminal. When we boarded, my excitement overcame the sadness as it was my first time in an airplane. The fact that I had my reserved seat felt so “luxurious”, not to mention the beverages and meal services. Layover in Tokyo was like being in a fancy department store with so many things to marvel at.
The official entry in US was through the Honolulu airport. I remember it was very early morning when the plane touched down. The palm trees, just like the ones I had seen only in movies, were all over the airport and gently swaying in a bright sun rise. There were no jetways connected to the terminals back then. After the landing, we came down the steps and into what looked like an open-air mini trolley. Once we finished the formal entry process into the country, we waited for another plane to take us to Los Angeles where my uncle was waiting for us. My brother and I walked around and found the most awesome vending machine that dispensed ice cream. We convinced our parents and bought ice cream. This was truly a paradise.
As my siblings and I were having these magical experiences, I cannot begin to wonder what was going through my parents’ minds. We had lived comfortably in Korea, or so we thought. We had our own house and a family car, which was a rarity back in early 1970’s in Korea. We came to know later that my father’s company had been in trouble, which forced my parents to make a decision of a life time to immigrate. Not knowing what waited for them on the other side of the globe, my parents took the plunge.
All we had brought with us were five large suit cases and $1,000 – which was the limit ($200 per person) at the time. I try to imagine how my parents felt during the journey and the beginning years as immigrants in a strange country, not knowing the language and the culture. Their willingness to take the risk and courage are beyond me. Having been through the Korean war and consequent turmoils may have prepared them somewhat for yet another hardship they would endure after they arrive in this foreign land.
I have a problem of letting myself go. I find it very difficult to let myself go for all things that come my way, whether it be work or at home. I feel like singing and I hold myself back even when there is no one around. I want to dance at times. Again, it’s difficult to move my limbs as I they want to. What’s holding me back? Me.
Someday, I will let myself go and truly be myself.
It just happens. It just happens one day. You’re busy doing things all day. You slow down and watch TV. You need to go. You go to the bathroom. You wash your hands afterwards. You look in the mirror. Then, it happens. You don’t recognize the person in the mirror. “What happened?” I mean really… what happened? It seems like it was just yesterday when I was playing in the dirt with my cousins. 60 years is a long time, but gone at the snap of a finger it seems.
You don’t know what I’m talking about? Trust me it will happen. Just you wait
My mother’s family comes from a devout Buddhist tradition. My grandma was a devout buddhist who took me to temples many times. My father’s side were not really religious in any way. As a matter of fact, my father once told me that he was an atheist. (I do hope and pray that this had changed at some point, although I will never know).
With a strong Buddhist background of my maternal grandmother, a bit of Christianity was “allowed” in the family. My mother went to the methodist church near her house in Incheon, and even taught in Sunday school for a brief time I was told. My grandmother was open to this (Christianity), and became close with the pastor’s wife. She contributed to the church in different ways as well – e.g., hosted Christmas caroling group from church with food etc. And the pastors wife, who was also a midwife, helped bring me to this world.
As fate would have it, Grace had been born four years after on the other side of Gyeyang mountain that overlooks the village I was born in. And as the fate would have it, my late father-in-law came to preach from time to time to the very church. Twenty years later, Grace and I would meet half way around the world, and eventually marry each other.
fate /fāt/ noun 1.the development of events beyond a person’s control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power.
There were my paternal grandpa, step-grandma, my parents, my younger brother, my sister and a live-in maid. The house sat not too far from the Dongdae Mun (East Gate). My father had a fabric wholesale business in the Dongdae Mun market. I don’t remember too many things from this house as I was very young. Some of the memories seem clear, but I sometimes think these memories might be from the stories I was told by my mother rather than my actual memories.
This house brought many wonderful memories. Both of my siblings were born in this house, I mean literally, in my parents’ bedroom. I went to a kindergarten on a street car. My father brought home a “magical picture box, aka. TV” and my neighbors came to see what this wonderful gadget was, although the broadcast was only in English from AFKN (Armed Forces Korean Network). When I visualize my old memories, it plays in my mind just like an old movie reel. My earliest memories from this house are almost all happy ones. However, I know the reality was probably very different for my parents and grandparents. The Korean War ended in 1953. We moved into the house in 1960, barely 7 years since the war ended. My grandparents and my parents lived through the war and they were getting things back to normal when they moved to this house, I imagine.
1st birthday – doors to my grandparents room behind me.
The fabric wholesale business was going well. One of the stories I repeatedly heard; on my first birthday (돌), my father wanted to hurry back home to join the celebration with the guests he had invited. That day, he was doing so much business he could not come home when he wanted to. He normally sat on top of piles of fabric at his store. As the materials are sold, the height of the pile gets lower and lower. This day, the sale was so frantic he could hardly keep up with the sales, and he was sitting at the street level at the end of the day, and couldn’t be sure that his ledger recorded all the sales.
Posing with my neighbor’s daughter
My family became very close with a neighbor next door. So close that we put a door off our living room wall to go back and forth. What a crazy idea it now seems. The friendship lasted for many years. The next door neighbor had a daughter who was a couple of years older than I. Her mother “forced” me to call her 장모님 (mother-in-law) as a joke at first. Then it stuck. I was so young and didn’t know what mother-in-law meant. All got a kick out of it.
계산동 (Gyesan-dong) is my birthplace. It is now part of Incheon, the port city on the west coast of South Korea. This place is more than my birth place; this place has given me such wonderful childhood memories. If I could go back and re-live a part of my life, I would choose those days I spent here without hesitation.
Lately, my mother has been telling me old stories going back to Korea days. She told me many a times about her favorite memories. Many times, she would repeat the same stories. This is how I learned about the town and the house I was born in.
The house was a large traditional Korean house with a inner court yard and nine bedrooms. My mother got married and moved to my father’s house in Incheon city center. She came back to this house to give birth, in order to be cared for by her mother (my grandmother) as was the custom in those days. The extended family and two live-in helpers (a married couple) lived in the house. My grandfather owned and leased land to the village farmers. He died when I was very little and I don’t have any real memories of interacting with him. I was told that he was a gentle soul who liked fishing and had various farms and businesses. He once owned a winery in town that he bought from the retreating Japanese family at the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea. Unlike many people in a rural country after the war, my mother’s family lived with little worries. This grand old house, unfortunately, was sold and my grandmother and one of my uncles (the youngest son among the five siblings of my mother) moved into a humble two bedroom house not too far away. The story behind the ‘decline” of the household is a bit sketchy. The fact that it was my youngest uncle who took my grandma hints at some discord amongst siblings. In the extended family setting, it usually is the oldest son who cares for the parents, especially in those days.
It is in this small humble house that I spent my glorious days that probably shaped me in some profound ways – or I’d like to believe as such. I had been telling my family about my carefree days spent here and they are probably tired of me telling the stories by now. It is hard to describe in words how wonderful my memories of this place really are. From the time I was able to walk till my preteen years, I practically lived in this house during every school recess, summer and winter. It is hard to say what was the attraction for me at such a young age. I would think it was the rural country setting and the nature that brought me back time after time, which was very different than my Seoul city life. A half century later, I still remember the distinct smell, the smell of “natural fertilizer” that they used to spread in the fields on narrow dirt roads leading to the house.
I look up this village on google maps from time to time, trying to find exactly where the houses stood. All I could make out are the mountain in the back of the house and a few landmarks like the elementary school I used to visit with my cousins. Everything in and around this village has been built up and the place is now a sprawling city with many high rise apartment buildings.
I am sure that not all memories about this place are happy ones, but my mind has a way of filtering only happy memories. And I am ok with that.
I owe it to myself. I need to start and continue. This time, with renewed conviction, I start again. I am 60 years old and I am thinking about my last years more and more. No sadness, just a fact.
alter2go 