Meet My Dad
Illustrations by Amy Luo
“Almost heaven, West Virginia...”
My father channels his inner John Denver while cruising down US-40. We try to spice up the drive by our cookie cutter suburban landscape on my way to school by playing music we both enjoy. This usually limited our selections largely to The Beatles, Billy Joel, and Johnny Cash, but we still have a great time. At the moment I start humming along to the chorus, he turns down the volume and stops singing.
“Yoori-ya, did you know that I was the best English speaker and singer in my high school class?” he says with pride.
I look at him and nod, smiling because I’ve heard this story multiple times before.
“Nobody else listened to Gayo (what Koreans call pop music in the English language)other than me and because of that I knew entire sentences before my friends had even learned the alphabet! You know, you get your smarts from me, right?”
His rough yet endearing Daegu dialect that was especially prevalent when talking about his past had always intrigued me as I speak Korean with the conventional Seoul dialect. Soon after talking about his high school glory days, he segues to looking back on his time at Daegu University, the best university in the province of Gyeongsangbuk-do, a title which unfortunately doesn’t mean much in the States.
“I studied design at Daegu and used to make the coolest furniture. Yoori-ya, did you know I crafted the chairs in our dining room using only the finest imported Italian leather?”
I think about the chairs we had shipped over from Korea when we first arrived in the US. The leather is now dull and peeling off of the corners, but we could never part with them. Those chairs are my father’s good luck charms.
He sat in them when he studied for his electrician certification exams that were completely in English, received an offer to work for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), and bought a little slot in the food court of the Patapsco Flea Market to sell pizza on the weekends for my violin lessons or my brothers’ tuitions. Many large milestones had occurred on those chairs.
But like the chairs, I know my father is worn out.
I can tell when I catch him at 1 am drinking rice wine out of a bowl alone, letting out deep sighs every few sips. I always try to unravel the thoughts behind his expressions while drinking that create knots in his forehead, but I can never decode his closely guarded emotions. As the self-appointed pillar of our family, my father seems to believe if he crumbles, the entire household will go down with him. To prevent this, he works tirelessly; WMATA, the pizzeria, and little odd jobs he does such as painting houses or mowing lawns, yet he unfailingly comes back home everyday with a smile, insisting that it was a slow day at work before hopping in the shower. Sometimes I’ll try to hug him before he washes off the grime and old sweat, but he puts his hands up imploring me to stay back and wait so that I don’t get dirty as well.
Every once in a while, my father will talk about what he wants to do when he retires. He blissfully daydreams about buying a camping car and driving around all of Korea, rediscovering the home that he left behind.
“You really have to see it, Yoori-ya. The mountains stretch forever and you just can’t replace the feeling and salty scent of the coastal winds. I’ll take you someday.”
As we pull into the drop-off lane, I see the sun just slightly peeking out from a corner of the building and I yawn while gathering my things. John Denver’s yearning voice still plays softly from the car as it drives away and I watch my father look back at me one last time as he sings along to the last phrase of the song.
“Take me home, down country roads…”
