in his voice, “When I was twenty-one, I came to United States with no family or friend. Not much money. And I still have time to write letter and call my home in Korea.”
Ouch. They threw down the Korean-Immigrant-American-Dream card. I had no doubt in my mind that they’d had a harder life than I did.
Apology time again. “I’m sorry, Dad. Can you put Mom back on the line?”
“Mom? I thought she go to grocery store. Call us this weekend.”
Click.
What had just happened? They had nothing urgent going on in their lives and probably decided to call me out of sheer boredom. Well, at least this time our conversation didn’t escalate into yelling, or silent treatments, or hurtful commentary about how I had no future because I wasn’t married. You know, our run-of-the-mill Korean parent-daughter exchanges.
My phone buzzed.
Mom: DID DAD HE TELL YOU WE GO TO ITALY? I WENT TO STORE TO BUY hiM CARNATION instant breakfast for our trip.
They were going to Italy? What? I had wanted to go to Italy since I was ten years old and found out that Chef Boyardee was Italian. I had never been, but now my parents were traveling there. Without me.
I texted back. When are you going?
Tomorrow. We gone for a month.
Well thanks for inviting me.
No immediate reply. I texted again. Do you want me to do anything for you when you are gone?
She wrote back. Find boyfriend.
Did she think her haranguing about dating would help conjure up a guy who’d bend down on one knee and tell me he would love me till death do us part? None of my past boyfriends—okay, there were only three—passed the parent test. Mom and Dad had Mensa and Navy SEAL–level criteria. Gareth Hinman wasn’t ambitious enough (back in eighth grade, mind you). Patrick Garcia in high school was too chubby (“that mean he too lazy”). Jimmy Han from college was premed and Korean but turned out to be gay. My parents knew this, yet still asked every once in a while if he was available. Basically, aside from Jimmy, no one would be good enough for my mom and dad.
Mom called me just as I polished off my glass of wine. “You sure you don’t want to meet Philip Kwon? He graduate Yale and is tax lawyer in Seattle.”
Her voice sounded distant even though she was shouting.
I asked, “Uh, Mom, am I on speakerphone?”
I heard shuffling, and a bunch of beeping, and then the airy background sound disappeared. My mom continued. “Philip Kwon need a wife. He very nice, serious man. He lost lot of hair on head but he have very nice, expensive house. He is also very quiet, but maybe he like your too-loud voice.”
All the Korean guys she picked out for blind dates had excelled academically and reaped financial rewards as a result, but her curated selection of men were usually incompatible with my personality. Every single time I carried the entire conversation and eventually we’d disagree about something major, like he didn’t own a TV, or he hated cup-of-noodle ramen. Every. Single. Time. I had a long, heated argument with an accountant about Rolos. I loved them. He couldn’t stand soft caramel. WTF.
Financially speaking, I didn’t need a rich guy. I had made a decent salary as a copywriter and had nearly finished paying off my student loan debt. I gave myself an A in frugality and budget management, too. If I had listened to my parents and become a miserable corporate tax lawyer, I would have worked eighty-hour weeks and never seen daylight. My vitamin D deficiency would be even worse than it already was.
My mom said, “If you marry Philip Kwon, you have big house for big family. You can marry and have many boy children.”
“You mean sons?”
“Yes. Sons. Something I never have.” Here it was. A typical moment when my mom would remind me that she could never bear any more children because of me. When I came into this world, according to my mom’s folklore, I pulled her uterus out with me. “A childbirth placenta tear,” the doctor told her, but the way she told the story you’d think I had been born with my two little baby fists holding on to the inside of the uterine walls with all my might, clenching tightly, refusing to come out without bringing my placenta and lots of my mom’s other innards along with me.
I changed the subject. “So why are you going to Italy? I begged you guys