seven years

Once you become a parent, you start hearing the euphemism “it goes by so quickly” all - the - time. I’ve never really known what to say as a response, other than nod in agreement with a polite smile. I’ve heard it so many times that now I catch myself saying it to others, some weird vague parental colloquialism we’ve adopted as a way to express something we’re all experiencing, that can’t quite be put to words.

When I first became a mom, one of the things that shocked me the most was how much I started thinking about death. There were thoughts of death in my anxious ideation - insane elaborate scenarios my reptilian brain would scheme up about how my blobby beautiful baby might get hurt, injured, or worse now that she was out of my safe warm body and so many things could potentially harm her that I had never concerned myself with before. The sight of a rogue blueberry on the floor of our kitchen could incite panicky thoughts of what could’ve happened if she had been able to snag it off the ground while crawling around our terracotta-tiled kitchen floor and put it in her mouth before she had been introduced to solid food. A plastic eyeball our family dog had victoriously mauled off his favorite chew toy, another extreme choking hazard I’d snatch up off the ground in between heart palpitations and self-directed chastising for not having noticed it sooner.

But the more difficult, physically taxing thoughts around death had nothing to do with anxiety and all the what-ifs life can throw at you. It was more the sinking realization that with death, the unavoidable moment of final separation would come between mother and child and the body of a new mother is acutely aware of the pain of physical separation. The first night home from the hospital, my husband (and new dad) held our babygirl in her nursery, feeding her bottles of formula the hospital instructed us to give her to keep up her weight as I waited for my milk to come in. One wall of separation away, I laid in our bedroom, depleted and hurting in places and in ways I never could’ve imagined, feeling empty in a way that I hadn’t formerly thought possible. My insides felt like they had been carved out, like someone had taken a melon baller to my insides and scooped out the very flesh that had slowly formed my new identity as a mom over the past nine months. Every cell in my hollow womb seemed to want to piece itself back together with the baby that was just there before and the forceful magnetic pull towards a reunification that could never be was utterly heart-breaking. I laid there for god knows how long, holding my empty body, arms wrapped around my stomach, weeping with a sense of true despair that I think one can only equate to the miracle of how profound a mother’s love is for their child. This first act of separation and the emotions that came with it helped me to understand that the truest forms of love are the bravest.

It’s been seven years since that fitful night. My then formula-drinking, wide-eyed baby is now a ninety-eighth percentile in height giant angel of a child. She loves reading as much as I did when I was her age. She can get lost for hours doing large Lego sets while listening to audiobooks of Diary of a Wimpy Kid on her vintage RCA boombox. She’s still at the precious age when she’ll dress up in her Mei costume from My Neighbor Totoro, straw hat and all, just because she’s watching the movie. Charcuterie boards, over-medium fried eggs with buttered toast, and ice cream are her favorite foods. She still says ‘tings’ instead of things and ‘birfday’ instead of birthday. She likes to teach me Katseye dances and still wants me to read her stories when she’s in the bathtub. Recently, she’s started to ask me questions about Shakespeare after reading a graphic novel of Romeo and Juliet she found on her Kindle. She doesn’t understand the tragic ending of Romeo and Juliet, the concept of taking your own life because of a broken heart fundamentally does not compute in her seven-year old mind. The innocence of that somehow fills me with gratitude and grief at the same time. Gratitude because it hasn’t happened yet, grief because I know one day it will. I hope I’m still here to hold her hand through it.

There’s more than one word in the Korean language to describe love. My favorite is the word 정 (jeong). It’s used to describe a bond and connection that grows stronger the more time you spend with someone or something. 정 (jeong) gives respect to the passage of time and all of life’s messy and beautiful moments that lead to the creation of a strong bond. It honors the patina a relationship can take on and explains why the absence of a person, a pet, an object, that you had in your life for years, is so painful to experience.

When your child is born, you hold them in your arms for the first time and you think there’s no way you could ever love someone this much ever again. But through the phenomenon of 정 (jeong), one giggle and tearful tantrum at a time, you realize your love can deepen and grow. Somehow, the time that passes between you and your forever baby, pushes your love past what you felt at first cradling and it evolves into something more tender, more soft, more beautiful. You realize how almost every good parenting decision ready's your child to separate from you further, each independent step they take moves them towards their own life outside of you. And yet, bravely, you sturdy yourself to the inevitability of one day saying your last goodbye and allow the meaningful bond of time to continue.

yamitsuki life, finding adventure in the every day

Flexibility is an important word in our family vocabulary. A hard concept to hold at any age, but one we’ve introduced to babygirl since her early days and has proved to be one of the most invaluable life lessons that we’ve taught her so far. There are so few outcomes we can really control and best laid plans like dominos can topple over at any given moment. “Plans can change,” we’ve told her, “instead of focusing your energy on the momentary disappointment or frustration, be open to what spontaneous surprises might lie ahead.”

And this is just the kind of frustrating not-in-our control situation we found ourselves in this past week. The day had started off with foreign-to-the-PNW thunderous claps and downpour from the sky, maybe foreshadowing my own brooding feelings that would surface later in the evening. It’s so difficult to want to be fully in your feels but know as a mom, your visible and palpable dysregulation is contagious to your little tag-along emotional sponge kiddo. For better or worse, it forces me to take my own advice and try to work on my emotional flexibility muscle and be open to moving with less resistance towards where the wind takes us.

We decided our adventure would start off at one of our favorite spots in Seattle, The Wayland Mill, for a Japanese-inspired dinner for three. Most people think of Wayland as a weekend brunch spot (and the hour-long lines serve as proof), but I love the quiet, easy to walk-in atmosphere of the restaurant on weekday nights.

We started off the dinner with two sakura martinis, which came ice-cold in perfectly chilled and frosty coupes, adorned with two tiny, very kawaii (!!), lemon peels cut in the shape of flowers. Followed by string bean “yamitsuki” (Japanese for addictive), which was my favorite dish of the night - crunchy yellow wax beans that are in-season right now that they coated in a light sesame dressing, spicy togarashi, scallions, a soft-boiled egg, and freshly shaved katsuoboshi (bonito). The shaved katsuoboshi was an unexpected but incredibly flavor-enhancing indulgent addition, both from its ability to add a salty umami note but also the textural delight it adds when a big shaving melts in your mouth like salty French-cultured butter. I never say no to adding french fries as a side to our meal and the ones at Wayland are a must order for any potato lover (that would be me). The fries are very (very!) crispy and served with a garlicky curry ketchup. We also ordered a shaved cabbage caesar salad, a pan-roasted gindara (black cod) that they served with a pad of miso butter over thinly cut gai lan (chinese broccoli) with a chili savory oyster sauce. Last but not least, hambagu meatloaf for the little one, who was very stoked it was served with not one but four adorable triangle pieces of gently-toasted and buttered shokupan from their sister restaurant Saint Bread. She was so stoked in fact that one triangle was quickly snatched and gobbled up before I was able to grab a pic.

After dinner, full and happy, we headed home planning for bath time for the little one and hopefully calling it an early night for a good night’s rest. We came home to the still magical bright light of Seattle summer evenings, a slight chill in the air leftover from the day’s earlier thunderstorms, and the piercing strong sound of a singer’s voice and his guitar, coming from Chophouse Row’s Summer Sounds stage. Little needed to be communicated and the three of us made a quick pit stop at home, scooped up the pup to come along with us to head over to 2차 (second round) to listen to live music and ice cream for dessert from Sweet Alchemy.

And there in the open courtyard with kid scoops of strawberry ice cream, listening to Radiohead covers and holding the pudgy, still squishy hands of my six-year-old daughter for one of the last times that she’d still be six, I felt the pangs and warmth of what it is to want to hold a moment in time still because you know when it passes, you’ll miss it forever. Flexibility is required to start an adventure but gratitude, the noticing of good things all around us, is essential to get us to where we need to go.