200903863 HWANGKYUJIN Chap.5 Oral history First Draft

My Mother

It is hard to get in touch with my mother. She is young, wild, and free unlike most parents of her age. Her age is confidential but for the sake of my grades, I am not afraid to reveal it. She is the same age as Johnny Depp. I like to talk about my mother because she becomes in-fact, a good subject to talk about. She is a model, a real-estate agent, an investor in cosmetics, a golf shop owner and runs an 8 story building in Samsung-dong. My mother say that time is becoming more precious than money. That is why she scolds me and my brothers all the time saying that we spend too much time sleeping. Sometimes I do talk back "Mom, when you go broke, all you get is time. Please relax." Whatever I say, it does not affect her love for the work. So, her being so busy, we never had any serious conversations before and maybe this is the right time. While thinking about when to ambush her, I thought of some questions which might just answer many long lost answers. I waited at her office on the day we are supposed to be headed to eat with her boyfriend and his son and daughter so she would not take the questions so seriously, and hopefully forget. There she came, grouching and yelling on the phone. I did see her grouching with paradoxical view. She might growl like a tiger but she is somehow happy and in charge.  

 

I asked her when she was divorced with my father. Because of the randomness, she gave me a confused look and told me that she doesn't know for sure but it must have been when I was about 7 years old. Then it hit me, my mother and father had never told me that they were divorced yet. I did not have the will or courage to ask her why because it will sound like I am blaming her. The urge of blaming her though, was very temping. Being in a high-context culture family, I figured it out eventually when I was about 15 years old. I asked my second question. "Ok, fine, do you think, we are a dysfunctional? As a family?" She gave it a thought. Probably wondering what has gotten in to me but she answered. She said, "Well, you take hunger as a sign? Or pain? You take it as a sign, a good sign. It means you are hungry so you can eat some good food with the card I gave you. There are people in North Korea and they take it differently. Dying is what they do for living. So quit your whining. What is wrong with you?" This interview was going south and much unintended. I loved it. She is so witty and mean that the uniqueness is very much lovable. I figured it all out then. I asked her two wrong questions and I could not ask her any more. She is not the type where I can sit and have a normal conversation with. What is normal then? I had some blaming to do.

 

When we think of a "functional" family, we think of a dad, a mom, a cute sister, and a dog. It would be hard to attain today. "The normal family" has become the goal which majority fails to achieve. Is my family dysfunctional then? No, I am spoiled. I am a 30 year old punk. Rather than asking the function of it all, we should be asking the tradition. We should embrace single parents, divorced, gay family and they deserve to be traditional. Because of course, gay parents would probably do a better job raising a child than me and anybody can be important. It is not how you were born but how you live it. Even more types of families, categories of families are being made right this moment. In-fact, they are not that different at all. No matter how many types of families we categorize to distinguish, raw family values such as "love" will never change. With a smile, I got in to the car and drove her to meet my "Soon to be Possible to be my Brother, Sister, and Father Family."