i love my extended family...especially when i haven't seen them for a while...
...let me introduce you to my beloved paternal extended family...my dad had a dad...i guess that would be my grandpa...except he died before i was born, so i never got to call him grandpa...i never got to call him anything, come to think of it...anyways...this grandpa had a wife...not my dad's mom...some other woman...they had 3 kids and then this other woman who is not my grandma passed away...the 3 kids were a son (jae c.), a daughter (jae d.) and another daughter whose name i don't know because she ran off with a north korean before the korean war and got erased from our family records to keep our family from being blacklisted a la mccarthyism...so grandpa was a dentist and he met a smart independent lady dentist named ms. chae and married her...that's my grandma...and then my dad was born in 1938...jimmy...except he didn't get that name until 1978...before that his name was jae-in...and then came his younger brothers, jae sung, jae hyun, and jae hoon and then the baby of the family, my aunt jae-o...
my dad and his bros jae jae & jae settled in chicago starting sometime in the latter part of the 1970s...each of these uncles has 2 kids...the youngest uncle had my cuzins yonju and seungi (girl boy respectively), the 2nd youngest uncle had two boys casey & ike, and then my uncle jae-sung had my cuzins kris and inho...we grew up seeing each other for holidays and the occasional summer vacation sleepover...i grew up looking up to my cuzin kris as the older sister i never had, and she taught me the most important skill i would ever need in life: how to curl my eyelashes...
so yesterday was my uncle jae-sung's birthday and we all went to seoul garden, a korean restaurant in northbrook, to celebrate...my brother jim demonstrated his improved grasp of the korean language since his recent trip to the motherland, and the cuzins who showed up (yonju, casey, kris, inho and myself) caught up on what's up in our lives...my cuzin inho flew from san diego for the event, and that was cool to see him again...inho knows how to live a life of leisure...4.5 years ago, he visited san diego, came home and packed everything and his dog in his car and moved out there...if you ask him what he's been doing lately, he'll answer, 'as little as possible...' and by that he means that he's been doing as little as possible that's not rock climbing or mountain climbing or something adventuresome like that...and california's a great place to be if that's what you're into...
after dinner, we all headed over to kris's house for some birthday cheesecake and to yak some more...all the adults hung out in the living room upstairs, and as is customary for family gatherings, the kids congregated downstairs in the basement...kris made me some joe and i added bailey's to make a nice irish coffee to go w/ my sliver of cheese cake...inho tried to teach me how to open a beer bottle w/ a bic lighter, but i didn't get the hang of it...all i managed to do was to make it look like a dog had been chewing on the end of my cousin's lighter...
we called it a night pretty early cuz the host family was leaving early in the morning for wisconsin...hopefully we'll all get together again later this week...the cuzins i mean...i told inho to delay going back to san diego so we could go to great america next sunday...it's teddy's first sunday off in a long time, and i've been wanting to go all summer...
anyways, it's always good to spend time w/ the extended fam...since i grew up w/ just an older brother, i always look forward to seeing my cuzins who i think of as my siblings...i just wish my cuzin ike were around more...he & yonju & i share a love for indie music...he's down in austin, tx working for dell...i think the last time we had ALL the cuzins together was when my dad died...it's weird to be growing up and seeing my cuzins grow up and get jobs or avoid getting jobs or moving or what not...and i still remember things like being 4 years old in the motherland climbing the furninture with my (then) baby cuz inho or sleeping over at kris's and staying up late having girl talks or how cute seunggi was when he first came to this country and he could barely walk and now he's a towering giant over us all and of legal drinking age to boot or how casey & ike loved to come over and play w/ jim and how all 3 would torment me in ways that only little boys can torment little girls or finding out that my cuzin yonju & i liked the same kinds of music and oh i'll never forget when ike made that mix cd for me that introduced me to the world of burning cds and to the music of the innocence mission and over the rhine and johnny cash and others...
*sigh*...sometimes when you live alone as an adult, you miss being a kid and being taken care of and having no worries and just having pure innocent fun...and ever since my dad died, i don't even have that ability to at least "pretend" when i go to my folks' house that i'm a kid again...losing a parent, especially if you mutually adored each other, leaves a hole in your heart that echoes through your life every day, an echo that's amplified at family gatherings when you don't hear that familiar voice above all the other voices talking at once (which my dad's side of the family tends to do) upstairs amongst the rest of the adults...
been listening to--
summerteeth--wilco
a thousand leaves--sonic youth
bad moon rising--sonic youth
pussy whipped--bikini kill
Tuesday, September 2, 2003 at 1:36PM 
