Story 4: Mother and Magnolias Flower

We moved house many times when we were small. But it was all within the same vicinity of our town. Whenever the landlords wanted to increase the rent, my stingy mother simply found another house nearby and moved. We didn’t have many belongings, so it was easy to pack and unpack. One day, mother found her dream house when I was teen but she couldn’t afford it yet to buy. The owner was keen in selling the house to my mother. So she made a deal with her to buy it over after two years of renting. She figured she could have enough savings by then. It was a new two-story-brick house with small garden, modern layout with a big kitchen which was considered premium in mid 70’. In that small garden, there was a magnolias tree that bore creamy color flowers every early spring. Mother loved the tree and somehow the flowers and mother were look alike.

My mother was not formally educated but carried a proud and dignified disposition that no one could guess her low academic qualification. She was beautiful, intelligent and ambitious. She self-learned herself, especially was good at math. With the little income my father earned, hardly enough for the family of six, she multiplied it many hundred times to play a personal bank for the neighbors and small shop owners in the market. It was our regular errands to go to the shops and collect their dues on behalf of mother because she herself didn’t like doing that. She would give us a pocket money in return. She was also very disciplined and frugal. She wouldn’t waste even a drop of water or rice in the drain. Though people knew her as a money bag, we never got to enjoy her wealth due to her tight fists while father had no idea how she can keep come out with money whenever there were extra expenses. She accumulated quite a sum to contemplate buying the house that was way beyond father’s comprehension.

Her excitement didn’t last that long after we moved into the new house. The house got broke in many times to give her heart attack. The complications from her diabetes got worse to be constantly in and out of hospital. People cheated her of money also, even her closest friends. She became poorer and sicker by day. She concluded the house brought her bad luck and again we had to move for the one last time. She settled to buy a smaller and old house that which we lived before as tenant but this time as the owner. In a way, mother was happy to finally own a house, but she was not content. Despite father’s warning, she continued her investment activity behind father’s back which brought further losses. The country was going through political and economical upheavals by the assignation of the President Park whose military regime lasted for 18 years. That affected my mother’s money lending business, her health and our family life.

As her pocket got smaller, her desire for life also got diminished and our family life started to get shattered. After loosing the eyesight from a failed razor surgery, she confined herself on the bed most of the time. Father was constantly depressed and angry over her illness and financial mishap. My siblings left home one by one for marriages and work. I buried myself in work, study and mountain climbing, coming back home late at night and leaving very early each morning to avoid seeing her lying like corpse and sad father. Few winters and spring had passed. Her favorite magnolias flower had also bloomed and fallen few times. Whenever I passed the would-have-been-our-house that was nearby, I felt ache in my heart for mother. One morning in early spring, when the flower bud was yet to bloom, she left her body, finally free from her tortured spirit and ailing body. I also left the country to further study in oversea. As amazing as her ability to be prolific with money was, yet she managed to leave me some, the only unmarried daughter at that time, so that I could use it for my future dowry. Her money became a great assistance to finance my oversea studies instead of wedding. I met my then-future-husband oceans away from home, without needing to bring any jewelry, dowry or expensive gifts to the in-laws that which is the wedding custom in Korea till today. I didn’t have to bring any dowry when I married my husband because he happened to be a non-Korean. So in a different way than how she had expected, after all, it was she who helped me to find him I suppose. But the wound she left in us was long lasting. We don’t have much good or warm memories of mother except her sickness, struggle, pain and loneliness. We four siblings are scattered in three different countries, seldom coming back home to meet each other.

I hated my mother for exchanging her life for money. She was wealthy and yet she could never enjoy it. She was a slave to the money ghost that which was never enough. She enjoyed seeing it grow and multiply, but didn’t know how to let it loose until money itself started to disintegrate in its own. It coasted her life and our family life. I had vowed myself never to become like her, never hold onto anything especially money. I became indifferent toward material wealth and sought to completely opposite direction, spiritual wealth. I became un-worldly, aloof and disinterested in living. I searched for something that was unreal, dreamlike purity and idealism in people, in the world like a naiveté, only to get battered by numerous disappointments and deceits. That is how I turned to become a yoga meditation teacher that which showed me the way to live within and yet outside of the material world that was too much for me to handle.

Then one day when I watched the movie “Joy luck club,” I felt something was hitting me from inside. It is the story of five Chinese immigrant mothers and their five America-born daughters. Each mother struggles to give the best to their daughters, the best of what they couldn’t have. But unable to be free from the ghosts of their own past that, they were, in fact, affecting the daughters’ present as well as future lives, thereby mounting tensions in their relationships. The tensions only got resolved when each pairs acknowledge the pains of the past and decided to move on, accepting each other as same fellow women rather than as mother and daughter to continue one way relationship to control or victimize. Then they could become the best friend of all to each other.

I watched the movie again and again... I thought I was different than my mother. But much of my being—attitude, tendency, even the look—was just like my mother. My tendency to exert physically whenever the heart is in trouble, feeling uneasy to stay in one place for too long that I frequently uproot, to self-sacrifice the present for what I think is the better future, to bear all the burden on my shoulders without knowing how to loose my grips, to cut off or run away if anyone is coming too close because my heart was familiar with loneliness but not with opening…

I loved my mother dearly as much as I hatred. Whatever she did, better or worse, it was from her best intention to provide us good life rather than relying it all onto my father. He was a good man who would never cheat a single cent from others but didn’t have much vision to improve life beyond what was available at the moment. She was a visionary and brave soul who would not settle for any less. Now it was time for me to let her go so that she can rest in peace after knowing that I am in good place. I received the best of her gifts, her efforts and fearless spirit which she showed me even in the face of her own death. I value her relentless spirit in me to ever improve, to never sit in idle way, while I also learned not to be like her to blindly pursue what I desire especially in the expenses of my well-being.

If I, as a family and career woman, were unhappy, ill, insecure and stressed out, no matter how much sacrifice I make or contribute financially, I will never able to give true happiness to the ones I love; because we women stand in the center of family, society, and universe to nurture and nourish those around us. If we don’t know how to stop and rest, to recharge and take care of ourselves, no can do it for us; because we women are the givers by nature, not men. That is why it is called Mother Nature, not Father Nature. Men cannot know what women want, children cannot know of what mothers need unless we tell them. Money can buy us doctor’s service and medications but can’t buy us well-being and happiness. There can be no love, harmony, joy and comfort of home in where the woman in the center is constantly depressed or underappreciated. Thereby reminding ourselves to take care, not only once out of blue moon but all the time, will be the important lesson I want other women to remember in the Mother’s day that is just around the corner.

I miss my mother very much even after almost twenty years since she is gone. Those, whose mothers are still with you, cherish each moments with them, celebrate them with your full heart and love. Those who are not, like me, let’s ponder over her good memory and honor them with our close ones. If you are a mother herself, then, let your children know what make you happy, so that they don’t have to scratch their heads in efforts to please you. Happy Mother’s Day!

Story 3. The Durian Story

“Wait, wait!! Is that a durian stall?”
“Yes..?”
“Can you stop the car? I want to eat durians.”
“Really?”
“Why not?”
“You are a very unusual Korean I know of!”
“You didn’t know I am already a local, leh?”

Our friend C, a well-positioned, single businessman likes to hang out with us whenever we can. He particularly likes my company for I am a non-threatening married woman of his good friend. Afraid to go out with woman for being a shy man as he is, he enjoys socializing. He is good at marketing with an Oxford law degree under his round tummy. He lives with his younger brother who is newly married and is the business partner as well, and with his wanna-be-a-nun sister who is notorious for spooky cleanliness inner and outer. They don’t like durian and hawker foods. C is a durian lover and a gourmet. The siblings are worried over his bulging tummy, so they control his food, especially durian, because it stink the whole car and their new bungalow house. Poor C, there is no fun eating durian alone and therefore he seldom gets to eat.

One evening, my yoga center was black out and I had to cancel the classes. He happened to call my husband to go out for dinner and I joined them together. No, we didn’t go to a Korean restaurant but a famous street restaurant in Old Klang Road and ordered the very exquisite Malaysian foods with curry fish head, which is my favorite. After 11 years of living in Malaysia with the husband who is a food lover with an exotic taste bud, I also came to like all kinds of local food including durian. C was surprised to see me eating durian like a local. After dinner, we went to our house together with a bag full of durians. Perfect dinner, perfect desert with perfect companies, as he was saying… He wants to do this as often as possible. Sorry, we are not so free especially in the evening, unless my yoga center gets black out again.

My first encounter with durian was when we were still in the US. One day my husband discovered a frozen durian from the Asian grocery store in the town. He was excited because he hasn’t had it for over ten years during his US stay. Me? Of course, it was the first time. He said the taste of durian is like eating an ice cream in a toilet. When he opened the cover, really, really, its smell was something like that! He laughed with my sour face. The first year when we were back in Malaysia, I found myself surrounded with durian smell all over. It was the hottest durian season in June. With the choking humidity and dryness of air coupled with durian smell, I wondered how I am going to adopt this weather, strange smell and the foreign country.

And yet, when another durian season arrived next year, the smell wasn’t that repulsive. By the third year, as my body became more adjusted to the tropical weather, then, I became a durian eater. My neighbor friends warned me, I will get headache if I eat too much of that. But I never got that because my stomach got full first before it goes up to the head.

It really became a “durian life.” As I get used to the weather, diverse culture, and people of Malaysia, the more I came to appreciate its exotic flavor of durian. Soft, sweet, rich but hard seed in the middle with the unique smell…Life in Malaysia was like that; simple and yet rich, with its people from different races, languages, cultures and religions, but simply embracing it all in harmony with easy smile and conversation even among the strangers (although sometimes too “kepoh” to ask me “where are you from?” “what do your husband do?” instead of selling veggie to me in the morning market.) It symbolized everything that is different or that I didn’t have in my home country.

Growing up in the small country with full of hills and mountains, still divided into two military rulings, I used to carry rather an uptight and tense disposition with me like many other Korean people. I was not aware of my rigidity until after few years of living in Malaysia. The weather that is summer all year around, clothes that you don’t need to change every season, so much insects and creepy lizards that won’t go away no matter how much I spray the insecticides… As I slowly give up tracing after the ants’ trail, and don’t care about the lizards’ choir behind the furniture, I start to become more like a Malaysian not only inside but outside as well. Easy going, fun loving and more tolerant of differences and diversities, though the core value inside me is still remain much of a Korean. I still can’t appear late in my appointment time, I still like to speak up when somebody cuts in the line from the supermarket. I still can’t enjoy eating supper late at night. The rest pretty much ok, I think, including my suffix of “loh, eh, ma, ya-kah?, etc” at the end of the sentence. I found my home, life’s direction and meanings, friends, love, happiness and peace, from a foreign land that which I never knew existed before I met my husband. Life is really, “you never know”.