After college, I lived in Korea, working as a highly-coveted teacher of English. This is fascinating: of all the people living there, they all stem from about six families. And every one of my friends there could tell me the story of the very first member and the egg from which they hatched. Most of these early stories involve war and warriors and tragedy, but the names, throughout the past three thousand years or more, have not changed. There are the Changs, Moons, and Lees; the Yoons, Hwangs, and Chois (pronounced “Chey,” not “Choy”).
My friend Bill (real name Moon Hyonu) could give me the name of his father and the father before him, back to the original Moon, in one breath. It takes me the same breath to get ready to begin to start, almost nearly getting ready to think about the name of my great-grandfather. I know my father, Lloyd. His father was Claude. Then the breath runs out, and the mystery begins.
My parents and I make up one of those decentralized families: traitors to the tribe who moved from the heartland of Oklahoma to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains when I was six or seven. Back then, it was OK: new places and people, schools and such. I got a bedroom with my very own bathroom where I took exceedingly long showers until my fingers pruned and my chest shined read (spoils of the only child, I know. Don’t worry, I’m taking steps to ensure ours doesn’t have it so lucky if only to avoid the “Oh, you’re an only child” stares).
Over the years, my family has been shrinking. This is a strange phenomenon. Years ago, back in the day of my as-yet-unnamed great-great-great-grandfather, a trip from Colorado to Oklahoma would have taken just shy of forever on horses and s and carriages. Today, planes and trains and cars have shrunk the country a hundred-fold, and yet, it’s been years since I’ve seen my grandmother, my uncle, my cousins. The faster things move, the more it seems I have to do. And Oklahoma is another world away. What’s left for familial contact is my immediate family: Mom and Dad. And like a glorious game of telephone tag, we send news to them; they send news to our constituency in Tulsa, which sends news to family in Dallas, and so on, and so on, and so on. The family has taken on a corporate hierarchy, complete with silos and factions and all the nonsense that comes with it.
As a father-to-be, this is coming all too clear to me now. I’m missing the local touch of the grandparents, and I know that while it won’t hit them immediately, my son or daughter will miss them too. Peer pressure is heavy in Oregon; this state is about as homogeneous as they come, giving rise to whole clans of families to pitch in to raise new little ones. For us, it’s just me and Kira, sometimes it feels like we’re starting all over from scratch.
As an addendum, even today, most adult Koreans have never set foot on an airplane.
The Car Saga: This has been much less strenuous than I had predicted. From the moment we started looking, it took us about two days to come to a decision and begin the whole “buy process,” at which point Kira stepped out of the loop altogether, thus lowering both of our stress levels to make things more manageable.
I admit it. I love buying cars. I love the process. I love signing my name. I love sitting in all the other showroom models while I wait for the paperwork to come through on mine. I love shaking hands and taking the keys. And most of all, I love moon roofs. I love them like nothing else in the car. And now, Kira has one, and I don’t.
We ended up with a 2002 Volvo V40 wagon decked out with leather, premium sound, moon roof, and turbo. It’s choice. It’s cherry. It’s all things you’d say about a car if you were a contract player in Hollywood circa 1938. And it’s safe for kids, which is the point, after all.
Kira was a champ. For some reason, she let me drive the process all the way down to the color. I was frustrated for about the first week of ownership because I didn’t really think she got it. She sat in the thing and touched it all over and pressed all the buttons, but I wasn’t convinced that her typically frugal spirit truly grasped the magnitude of this automotive upgrade. Her old car didn’t even have a lighter socket, for Pete’s sake, just a hole with a plastic snap cover where it should have been. No Lighter.
All my ranting aside, we’re supremely lucky to have this car to drive as we bring the little rugrat into the world. I’m sure we’ll be driving the thing forever. Now I just have to start saving for my very own one day.
Kira’s showing quite obviously now, and she has yet to tell her boss that she’s pregnant. Granted, things are tough in the refugee resettlement business these days, what with the moratorium on incoming refugees since September 11, and her organization has since proven they are far from immune to the plague of layoffs that’s swept the nation. We’re all praying for them. Still, something tells me he’ll handle one of his key lieutenants heading off to three months of maternity leave a lot better if she tells him outright rather than having him just… notice.
She’s to the point that she can’t hold her gut in anymore. She tries, with those ridiculously strong stomach muscles she’s got, but she just can’t do it. She’s even wearing maternity pants. I’ve always thought Kira was stunningly attractive. Now she’s downright cute. It’s funny how definitions change during this process.
According to the doctors, the fetus is forming right along. Not unlike a pre-teen halibut, its eyes are moving together, and the ears are almost to their final position on the tot’s mammoth head. Apparently, the liver is making bile now, gearing up for that first rewarding experience with gastric reflux. The Strands are still ahead in the development process, in spite of all of our efforts to get a leg up. We were playing cards with them when Meg felt the first kick. She was terribly nonchalant about the whole thing: just kicked back and anted up another hand.