Mostly because things started getting a little too real—we remember the casting call where we learn that he has a deep need to be loved, of fights both real and simulated, of not knowing how to talk to anyone who doesn’t resemble northeast Ohio, of wanting to talk with strangers on the rooftop.
Read MoreOur father, in a rare gesture toward sport, nailed a basketball hoop to the huge cottonwood tree in the back south acre of our yard. It was 1957; I was six. Soon grass was trampled, the earth flattened, hardened, by the high school basketball team my brother was a member of. The boys balanced and then nailed a board on a fallen tree trunk near the court, used it to throw their shirts and towels on, used it for the giant jug of water my mother would carry out to them, and for the glasses to drink from—I carried those, wrapped in dish towels in a sack. Usually I wore a green shirt and a pleated white skirt in honor of their school colors. Ten years younger, I imagined myself their beloved mascot, saw my role as essential.
Read MoreI. Fly
In my earliest memory, I am running full-speed down someone’s concrete driveway, maybe my grandmother’s. I am clutching a croquet mallet, might be chasing a runaway ball. Small craters filled with gravel rush up at me. Cut to the bright lights above the dentist chair. Not my dentist. Maybe my grandmother’s. They sit me up and hand me a small orange eraser in the shape of a bear, like a gummy but opaque. You were brave they say. What a brave girl. And maybe, Slow down.
Read MoreThe first time I questioned my decision to move from Hawaii to Korea was, not surprisingly, winter. Back home, cold doesn’t happen without consent. Not so in Korea. If my first winter in Seoul taught me anything about existential threats from the north, it’s that Siberian winds make daily life a lot more unlivable than any nuclear artillery. I took fatalistic comfort in knowing that if North Korea ever attacked, at least we’d all die together. I felt just as helplessly unprepared for the winter, but I had to face the cold on my own.
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