Here is a picture of my mother’s heart. Her heart is small. Its borders reach out much farther than the tiny nation of her body. If you picture Monaco, try to fit all of North America, the whole of Canada including Quebec, into that miniscule, opulent kingdom then you have it about right.
My husband drove my brother and I to see her yesterday. She is up on her feet, quickly, albeit slightly less so than before, padding around her huge, slightly spare home, filled with photographs and massage machines of every caliber – kind of like an elderly version of “TOYS IN BABELAND” and odd lumbar pillows, the hopefully, twistful and physically fortifying detritus of the aged.
My parents adore my husband, for it gives them a deep feeling of relief, an interior solidity and gratitude that they have not completely failed me in my upbringing. Since they cannot attribute any of my financial and artistic achievements to themselves – wrongfully so, for I would not be this insane had it not been for the chaotic universe that once was my childhood, they look to him as a gentle savior, which he is, but not in the ways they believe him to be. I don’t care, they love him, and that is what matters. When my father will tell a man who is white, who is not Korean, who is not a lawyer or a doctor or plays golf, that he loves him, that he has been blessed with another son, that he must be addressed as “Daddy”- or else temper tantrums will erupt unexpectedly, it’s worth it, at least to me. It is my parent’s failure that has brought me the artistic grace and humility that would make my own impossible, so I guess I have to thank them.
I found a scribbled note, stuffed in my mother’s purse, no doubt when she dashed, by herself, to the hospital. She was writing to my father, in frightened and almost unintelligible script, a treasure map to all the jewelry in the house, to give to me, and only me. She doesn’t keep it in some pretty box, hiding it instead as if there’sstill a war on, which ironically, there is.
The jewelry is hidden in the oddest of places, which I will not disclose, but I also have picked up this odd habit, except I used to hide drugs. My hidden places now will be filled with her precious jewels. They are the most important things in the world, to her, and to me, for they are not valuable – not really, the money spent on them is not the point of why they are so protected. My aunt’s ring and necklace, made of emeralds and diamonds, broken off the crown of a deposed princess, made just for my Mommy, the true Queen, a gift of thanks – unbelievable gratitude to my mother, when she was the only one in the family who could take care of my aunt’s father as he lay dying. The rest of the family were consumed with grief, too paralyzed to carry their paralyzed father to his bed, too teary eyed to drive to the hospital day after day, too shattered to secure burial plots and comfort him through the terribly painful eclipse, as the soul slowly starts to pass through and leave the body, as even though my mother was not his biological daughter, she was his son’s wife, but was the only one to step up to also be the midwife in his death.
These are mine now. I am fucking wearing them and don’t think for one second I am not gonna – all at the same time – that’s right beeee- eaaaacccchhh!!! I am wearing my aunt’s pearl necklace, my Kun Immo, who died far above the world, halfway between the hospital and her home, on a plane above Seattle. Before she died, she promised my mother this pearl, and during the process of dividing all her beautiful things, as my aunt was not only a beautiful creature herself, she surrounded herself with beauty, big ass beauty, it was somehow lost. But the pearl, my mother knew, was the most important, and it was hers. She would not leave without it. She upturned every couch pillow, picked through every pocket, emptied every purse, turned the motherfucker of that house inside out – everything – until she found it – hidden in a tiny zippered pouch in an old handbag.
This necklace is mine too. It falls directly over my heart, and this heart is now a fortress of jewels, over a century of the history of the women of my family, their love expressed through their rings and necklaces, pendants and earrings. Things they were not able to buy themselves, but were given by their husbands, and therefore, were all they had to give, but it meant everything. Because of this, they are powerful, yes, a bracelet can move a mountain. I will show you sometime.
My mother gave me all of it, huge bags and bags, because she doesn’t want to keep it anymore, hidden away, like our history, our stories left untold, for these jewels and these stories are my inheritance. They cannot be appraised. If I brought them to “Antiques Roadshow,” they would throw them back in my face. Some of it is plastic, fakes, some shit from QVC, and then souvenirs from seaside honeymoons at the turn of the century, happy eras, terrible ones, now, then. But its value surpasses all the money in the world. It isn’t bling. It is love, this long, long love that these sisters had for each other, with hands that would reach across the sea, even though they were separated by continents and hardship, war, immigration and isolation, war, racism and hatred in the new land, war, loneliness and death, war, madness and suicide, war, cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer’s, war, a little peace, and then the bad marriages of the 70s. And now another war.
I am now the keeper of the ring. And the brooch, and the bangles. Don’t fuck with me.