by Diane Farr
She’s joking. Dave’s family has loved Lisa from the start, but who could resist teasing at the idea of her darker-skinned child cuddling up to his father’s family while her white child is being standoffish, making his grandparents work for his affection? Everyone does work for it, though, because Justin and Nathan were a long time coming. Besides hurdling societal and familial ideas of what husband and wife must “look like,” it also took Lisa and Dave a long time to conceive. During these years, they learned to discuss things. Which still didn’t set them up for all the feelings their boys would bring.
“I remember trying to warn Dave that mixed-race kids get darker as they get older. That he shouldn’t freak out if they look white,” says Lisa. But from their first moments of life, everyone thought each boy looked mixed.
I’m tripping over my own words because I can’t ask Lisa fast enough whether she gets different reactions from strangers when she takes her sons out individually. Specifically, is a white mother of a white child treated differently than a white mother of a black or mixed child?
“We haven’t had any comments.” What? Nothing? “Nothing.”
Do I have to put on my soft voice again, Lisa? Lisa jumps right in with, “People are so obsessed with the twin thing, that’s all they talk about. Are they twins? Are they fraternal? That’s the main question.” Lisa says she has never fielded any queries about adoption, either—which I find amazing and wonderful while I am simultaneously wondering, how could this be so much more refreshing than her dating experience?
Are mothers no longer judged for their sons but only for their lovers, to quote D. H. Lawrence? Have we indeed made enough social progress that all children can be accepted for who they are—and it’s only when we pick a partner for love that damnation can be set? And if this is the case, can we eradicate it if our generation teaches our children that all people are truly equal, in all things, including love?
Well, Lisa?
“We don’t have any issues having mixed-race kids. Our issues were about us as a couple. But we did think about where we would live with them. We both acknowledge we could never move down south. We always have to live in D.C. or farther north.”
Although Lisa has not had to answer intrusive or uncomfortable questions about her offspring, as a family they have felt the wondrous stares of the masses. “We get looks. My husband always teases me that I’m oblivious to it. He, conversely, is always the first to notice. Now we’re in the D.C. area, and it’s better here but not as easy as when we lived in New Jersey. We were much less self-conscious there. Here, still, they look.”
Both Lisa and Dave work for a technology corporation, and their boys attend preschool nearby. “Discussions about race are just now starting with basics like, ‘How come my hair doesn’t feel like Daddy’s?’” As the queries come up, Lisa follows her instincts. She has not read any literature on raising biracial kids. She feels the homework she needed to do was about her and Dave as a couple. “Dave has felt a lot of prejudice—much worse than my family’s. So I read a lot on mixed relationships. It helped me understand his feelings.” As an afterthought Lisa adds, “Even though I don’t think I will ever really understand.”
For all of Lisa’s coaching prebirth that her children would get darker with age, their mixed coloring brings her husband solace. “Dave has said very many times, he wants to teach the boys to work hard. He feels he had to work harder because he is black. He is so glad they won’t have to do more to be treated equally.” So as it turns out, Dave is happy with their color. “He feels they’re not going to have it as hard as he did. And although it’s weird that they don’t look like him, he is happy about it.”
“That’s heartbreaking,” I blurt out.
On this, my third and last long-distance, hour-plus conversation with Lisa over the phone, my heart breaks for her husband. I have never met Dave or their sons, or Lisa in person for that matter, but this comment flies out of my mouth like Lisa and I are old friends. Lisa takes a moment and says, “I know,” and a heavy pause lies between us.
If that sentiment—a feeling of happiness that children don’t look black just to make their life “easier”—is ruminating in the mind of a black father, I know what my final question to this white mother will be. No longer employing a soft voice—because I am sure of Lisa’s wherewithal now and beginning to find my own confidence in her example—I ask Lisa if she worries her children will have a harder time because they are mixed.
“No,” is Lisa’s immediate answer, “because Justin does not look mixed and Nathan can pass for anything, which I think is really cool. Now it’s really cool. And they’re twins and two different races—what could be cooler than that?”
CHAPTER 3.
A CRASH COURSE IN KOREAN CULTURE
“How can all these parents move to this gigantic country and then rope off one square mile—forbidding their children to date outside that corral?”
—YOURS TRULY
I’M INSPIRED TO move forward with my Giant Korean. I’m actually so inspired as I hang up this call with Lisa that I want to fix all the ignorant fears, of the whole world, before dinner. But Lisa has just shown me that changing views on race requires time and prudence. Her living the life she knew was right for her, day after day and eventually year after year, says so much more than any perfectly coined speech about her beliefs. Especially among family members, where most of us fail to edit ourselves as much as we probably should. So I can see I’m going to have to chill out. Which feels about as possible as giving myself a lobotomy, because I’m in love! I want to do everything and anything with my man, Seung, and not knowing if his parents will cut him out of their lives feels kind of ... pressing. And furthermore, in love or not, neither of Lisa’s attributes of patience or holding my tongue are in my wheelhouse. I’m fast and funny, which seems diametrically the opposite of measured and steadfast.
Maybe I can give myself an active job, rather than the passive, annoying one of waiting silently for Seung’s parents to come around. Perhaps I can do more than interracial relationship research. Maybe I can learn all there is to know about Korea! History, art, cuisine, boy bands. Maybe I can impress Seung’s parents with a keen sense of everything Hanguk!
After the euphoria of Lisa’s success story levels off, I remember I would have to add another language to that homework list since Seung’s parents don’t speak much English. In reality, though, this dialogue barrier may be a gift. In my heart I understand that even my best banter won’t change anything about the Chungs’ opinion of me. I know this because my parents have their own prejudices. Sweeping generalizations aren’t about a person; they are about the idea of a person. So perhaps the language deficit is a gift because I can’t do a verbal tap dance for the Chungs. Therefore, I won’t be bitter when my charm fails to change sixty years of thinking.
So instead I decide to talk to hot Asian women who, like me, have slept around. Because after sleeping with more than five men in your lifetime, you start to see a pattern. Certain men like to be in charge and others want to be told what to do. Still others like a woman who can cook, and a few even want a girl who’s helpless. I figured there must be a general pattern in the K-makeup, because all romantic preferences are generated by some kind of yin and yang we saw in our parents. Understanding the Asian family dynamic might just be the key I need to unlock my future. Or it could be an oversimplified generalization about the only other Asian people I know who are not related to Seung. But since I have no other information to move forward with, I’m gonna go with what I got from my fast friends.
Imagine my chagrin to discover that all it took to decipher things in at least this family was a few brazen hotties. Loose women are wonderful! Here’s everything I found out about going to the next level with a Korean guy from the Asian temptresses I’m proud to call my friends:
Lesson One: Korean people respect their elders—no matter how grown the child is, or how wrong, ignorant, or stupid their elders might be in a given situatio
n. Second to that: Men trump women, at least outwardly, on all decisions. (We will have ample time to be outraged by this later. Let’s just get through the facts for a minute.) Third: Education, marriage, and hard work, followed by earning as much money as possible and having two children, are the golden path that Korean offspring must follow. As a tangent to this, Lesson Four says there are no arranged marriages in Korea today per se. However, moms and dads, as well as aunts and uncles, set up “teas” with acceptable partners for their children. Depending on how controlling your family is, either you should marry someone from these setups or you must. (For the record, I have yet to meet a Korean family I’d call loosey-goosey, so these teas can be rather binding. Literally and figuratively.) Further to this point is Lesson Five: At all ages and all socioeconomic levels, men do not approach women easily and women should not approach men at all. So much so that in Korean-American nightclubs, waiters are paid to make introductions between males and females. And lastly, the deadly sixth rule of K-culture: Straying outside Korean nationals for dates in Korea or anywhere else in the world might be acceptable with some Asians but is totally taboo with Japanese people. And that’s all the variation allowed! Meaning, most important for me, dating non-Asians is totally and completely outside the directive.
This is like the most exciting sociology course I have ever taken, but with a death penalty for love. How can all these parents move to this gigantic country and then rope off one square mile and earnestly believe their children will date only in that corral? I get that Seung’s family doesn’t dislike other races. I see that they don’t want their culture to die off if their son picks someone who doesn’t subscribe to the K-commandments. And I see the value in, like, two of those rules. I can also fake more than half, biannually, when I see his parents. So truthfully, I’m not as incensed as you might imagine because, as I first said to Seung, I personally have very little at stake here. I mostly want to support my man because I know he is picking me. If his pitch to convince his parents that I am “good enough” fails, he is giving them up. Which breaks my heart even more, now that I know this is also failing Lesson One as a good Korean boy. So to prevent any future heartache, I am getting on the campaign trail beside Seung.
OUR LOVE AFFAIR UNFOLDS like a spy novel now. Everything has a double meaning. Seung surprises me on our first Valentine’s Day with plane tickets to Hawaii! It’s a beautiful retreat—aside from the underlying operation of meeting the first representative from his family who will do the “intake” meeting for the Chungs. We will meet with a “Como,” which translates to “older sister of his father.” Keeping Lessons One and Two from the hot hussies in mind, notice the subtle significances of this meeting: Como is older, so she has more power, but as a female, she has no authority. Como can pass on a preliminary opinion to see if a “higher-up” should meet me. You think I’m joking, but it gets worse.
First I meet Como’s daughter for no reason other than she is Seung’s cousin and she is great. (Our generation has few to none of the hang-ups the parents do; they just have a Pavlovian-like instinct to please their moms and dads. Which, for the record, my parents would kill for.) I really enjoy Cousin Pauline’s company, and on the last day in Honolulu I will meet her three sons and her mother—the Como.
I bow when I first see Como and she bows back. After this Asiatic moment she never looks at me again. She certainly does not speak to me. Lunch passes and Pauline’s children pick flowers for me, share food with me, give me hugs, and Pauline has them call me Auntie. But Seung’s Auntie only speaks in Korean and when it is time for goodbye, I bow to her but she doesn’t return the gesture. I guess this means I failed. I must admit I’m a little hurt. And kinda shocked.
Have I mentioned that I’m RICH? And somewhat famous? And attractive! And I live in the country you wanted your kids to live in! What’s up with this family? Seung is telling me I did fine. I don’t believe him, but he is right. Como’s heartless performance was mostly political. Later I will learn that she calls Seung’s mother to tell her I am perfect in all things except genetics. I still can’t imagine it but Seung’s mother will tell me, years from now, that Como said, “The Chungs better accept this woman or they will not only lose Seung Yong, they will miss a wonderful opportunity.” I can also tell you that this Como, who sang my praises to the highest order, will fly around the world to attend my wedding in the future and still will not say one word to me. I will put photos in my wedding album of her doing shots of Crown Royal with all her nephews until the bar closes at my Korean ceremony, and yet, not one word to me. I will continue to assume this is a language barrier, until one day when Como is passing through California and she summons me— via my husband—to take my newborn son to her hotel and introduce them. Como will open her door and give me an unexpected, and kind of frightening, hug. “You are the mother of a son! There is no greater honor. And look! He is beautiful because he looks just like Seung Yong.” Como will then take my baby and show him off to the other relatives as if he was her own.
Como speaks perfect English. I just have no value until I produce. Specifically, until I produce a male. Yeah. Go ahead and read that sentence one more time.
But back to today, pre-Como’s gracing me with her fluency in English, my entire courtship moves forward just like this. Representative after representative meets me, makes some sort of a dig toward me, and then reports to Seung’s parents that I am not so bad. I’m wondering now, like you, how or even why I put up with this.
I think it’s kind of a game. I love Seung, we have our life, and it has nothing to do with any of these people. The more ridiculous their behavior is, the funnier I find it. Well, most of the time.
On a particularly aggressive Chung family day, Seung’s favorite aunt—a woman he really admires as a mother—approaches me after a dinner she threw (for the sole purpose of getting a long look at me). She says nothing to me all night, but while waiting for her car to pull up at the valet, she opens with, “Where do your parents live?” By now I know the tiers of judgment laden upon this query. And I know I’m going to lose this round. My parents got divorced a mere five years before I met Seung, after thirty-five years together. Of course this is a shame to top all shames. It’s not even in the K-playbook because it’s just understood that divorce is not an option for respectable families. My parents live in two different cities now, which makes this a genius/ nefarious way for Kuhn Ama (translates to “wife of older brother of Seung’s father”) to concisely do her recon.
I tell Kuhn Ama where my parents live. As confident as I am, I can’t help but try to qualify their dissolved marriage. Which leads to the second and final thing this woman says to me: “Thirty-five years is not long for a marriage.”
Herein lies my problem. I like politics. I like the exchange of power even more than I like having power, but at a certain point I also like to win. This woman is one of many Korean American “work widows,” as I like to call them, because her role in marriage is first and foremost to have, raise, and take care of her children. Yes, she loves her husband and she is certainly standing by him—while he lives and works thousands of miles away from her most of the year. Her emotional wants and needs seem to come second or third or ... just go away to facilitate taking care of the kids and their education and supporting her husband to make as much money as possible. (See hottie Lesson Three for a refresher if needed.) So many Korean American parents have some version of this, including Seung’s parents.1 Today many Koreans in Korea just have Mom move to the United States with the children while Dad stays in Seoul to make the money—for the entire duration of their marriage. But when Seung was growing up, his parents’ generation had both Mom and Dad move to the States to set up shop and then just Dad went back to Asia for eight to eleven months a year. Which, of course, is noble in many ways, as both parents suffer for the betterment of the family ... on paper. I say “on paper” because I know firsthand how much Seung wanted his father in his life. And furthermore, perhaps I’m wrong, but in
American culture I believe we would call living apart from your husband most of the time “separated.”
And yet this Kuhn Ama is going to pass judgment on my parents? Who actually lived together during their marriage and jointly shared the pressures of parenting and making ends meet—for thirty-five years?
“Thirty-five years is certainly not a long time when your husband lives in another country,” I retort back to Kuhn Ama with a smile.
If I had been a good candidate for a Korean wife, I would have dutifully nodded when Kuhn Ama insulted me. Instead, when she looks at me in shock at this answer, I move in very close to her to say good night, so we are both perfectly clear on how small she is when standing next to me. Perhaps it’s my “Italian heritage” that makes me want to give her a reciprocal jab every time I see her to this day. She’s damn lucky I don’t mail her a horse’s head.
AFTER THIS RUN-IN with Kuhn Ama, I need a breather. In one head-nod, Seung’s aunt insulted my parents while simultaneously banishing me to the un-marry-able side of the tracks. And in truth, she made me doubt my man. Which is the part that is killing me, because that’s her goal! But right at this second—and I’d never say this aloud—I’m not sure I see the point in this. Not because I have doubts about Seung or us as a couple, but because we both really want children. And we live in California. It’s entirely likely that our children would see these unkind aunts more than they see their actual grandparents (my parents or Seung’s) just due to proximity. Do I really want these people around my kids? Calling them family? Looking to them for the kindnesses children usually get to enjoy from people of grandparent age? Wait a minute—calling them Grandma, I’m just finding out?