Baby Banana
These days when I come home for a weekend, my parents are suspiciously nice to me. Perhaps they’ve become aware of the fact that I will be graduating in just a couple of months (that thought alone induces indigestion) and will hopefully be making some kind of steady income, so they’re set to place me in the role of their Social Security.
Despite the fact that I’m taking in all of their TLC and homecooked meals with a dash of wariness, it feels nice…but it still doesn’t feel like home.
Home feels like the bookstore where I first learned about menstruation at the age of 7 from a manga, right next to the cafe where a group of high-school girls would feed me free fries while playing with my hair and cooing over me as if I were a baby doll. If a strange middle-aged lady hadn’t tried to kidnap me and somehow tracked down my phone number after I ran away from her, I’d probably always feel drawn to 포항.
Home feels like my aunt’s house in Yanji where she always has a spare bedroom kept just for us when we visit. It’s where I can eat as much 羊肉串 and 냉면 as I want for dirt cheap and burn up all of those calories by walking up the 7 flights of stairs to her place. It’s where all of my relatives dote on me but keep me on a tight leash because they are convinced that if I get into a cab alone or walk on the streets after 5 I’ll be whisked away into the life of a sex slave.
Home feels like our old apartment in Detroit where a group of other kids from immigrant families and I would race around on our bikes, play roller hockey, and participate in a little amateur improv (read: play make-believe) mostly pertaining to Greek mythology and Sailor Moon.
I’d never found an affinity of the same level here in California. I’ve had a great deal more of bad memories than good. It’s definitely not the place, since our house in California is like a castle compared to the ghettos I used to live in before. It’s the whole growing-up process that has been ugly and unfortunate. I have therefore reverted to the lifestyle of a baby—sleeping, eating, crying occasionally, but basically remaining a mute.
I am starting to recover the feeling of simple pleasures and security.
Now home feels like Tony’s bed where a simple gesture of my arms will invariably grant me the warmest hug where I can fit my head nicely into the little nook between his neck and shoulder.
He is the biggest piece of my oneiric home, a fulfillment of certain needs that I’ll never find elsewhere.
