Thoughts on Family
So mother’s day.
It’s come and gone again.
And certainly not the least of my thanks and thoughts these days trips along the lines of family and the bonds that begin with genetics but supercede biology to transcend towards unconditional love.
First off, I need to say a tremendous thank you to everyone for their kind thoughts, emails, comments, phone calls, hugs, prayers, and good vibes. My family and I do appreciate them.
First up on “The Daddy” status:
He’s doing pretty decent considering his stroke and was discharged from the hospital. Without going into too many details regarding his status, I will say that no surgery is planned in the near future, he’s able to feel everything and has minimal loss in motor skills (just a little slow) and no paralysis. He’s able to speak a little, smile with a little effort, and tonight, shocked me to dickens by singing.
His greatest challenge and avenue for therapy in the future will be with speech in both Korean & English. Between Bible Study, golf magazines, and singing Karaoke, I think he’ll be in good hands though we all know that it’ll be a bit of a challenge for him in the next few months.
Karaoke is my hero. Who knew? It actually forces him to concentrate & read the words, keep in tune, and vocalize his expressions in long streams which is a minor challenge to him right now. My father, a talented barritone, enjoys singing so this is an excellent excercise. It warms me to no end to know this is accessible to him from the comfort of the livingroom.
I’ve been doing my best to be a good daughter, sitting with him, holding his hand, challenging him to speak, and being encouraging. In abject filiality I wash and massage his feet. He’s got ugly feet. I have inherited this. I look at his feet with a bit of mixed horror and resignation that my feet will someday look so gruesome. Still, with tenderness I clean them off, rub them down with some lotion, and give him a bit of massage there. He has no complaints and flips the channel from the PGA tour to the Pistons game or some such. I am oblivous to his sports affinities as he is to my technology avarice.
Still, I’m able to shout at him with a grin “SA RANG HEH YO!” (I love you) and he shouts it back at me.
My stepmother has been wonderful.
She has an incredible sense of intuition, unbelievable patience, and a generosity in spirit that overwhelms me. I love her very much and feel very blessed to have her in my life. In no uncertain terms is she a replacement to my mother. I feel no conflicts of guilt with regards to my affection towards her. I love her for who she is and how she has been a light in my life and in the for my family. She’s good to my dad and is worthy of much grace, blessing and love to be showered on her on this day and every day.
My mother has now been gone just shy of 11 years now. Time slips by so fast. And I still mourn her. I do. And especially when I’m home and surrounded with the objects that her hands had touched a thousand times over. Things look much different now in the bedroom, living room, kitchen.
The nearest thing I have to her is something that encircles my flesh every day. Her wedding ring. She gave it to me just days before dying and I wear it always as reminder of how strong and lovely she was and how I need to work harder each day to live a life that honors her and my dad.
It’s an obligation that isn’t so rigid as to say that I must do everything that they wish in the most myopic of terms (ie be married to a nice Korean Catholic boy and popping out grandkids for them) but moreso that I do the things that would make them both happy for me and allow them the confidence of knowing that they had raised my brother and I with the firm knowledge of right, wrong, and the will to do good. That, and college degrees, healthy careers and no obvious neurosis or chemical habits.
How funny it is to recognize how fortunate I am, when for years I thought my family was a pack of freaks. The fact that we have the carcasses of tennis balls beneath all the dining room chair legs so they don’t scratch the floors, and saranwrap enveloping all the remote controls in the house doesn’t mean that we *aren’t* freaks (just practical and the house has been decorated not for aesthetics or functionality or feng shui, but for easy hosing down) but we’re a beloved group of freaks.
I’m feeling blessed. And I love my family. With comfort, and irrepressible joy, I have the confidence of knowing that they love me back.
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