The last few days have been so ordinary, but with moments that feel symbolic and mystical. I’m investing the moments with meaning. But the meaning is there. Remembering Mom was born the year of the Ox. A picture I bought of a little boy in blue on an Ox is peeling off the wall. Three days ago I consciously realize WHY I bought that print.
I take it down, fix the backing, hang it back up. It falls and cracks the glass, the same way that the Japanese picture of Korea fell off my wall months ago. The place in Korea that Mom told me about, that I wanted her to see again before she died. Maybe ghosts are real and she’s knocking the pictures down. But that feels like I’m blaming her for broken glass, and that’s not fair. The pictures fell because I did a bad job with putting paper backs on them, and I hung them up with sticky tape not wire and nails. But still.
I put the picture back up Sunday. I finish writing a new split chapter in my memoir. But something is wrong with the chapter and I don’t know what. I come home, the picture of the boy on the Ox has fallen off the wall and the glass shattered. I realize I left a huge fight my Mom and Dad had out of the book. That Dad was a cattle hand, a fellow tiger, but where I’m a vivacious wood tiger he was a withdrawn earth tiger, and I realize I left out a moment I’m deeply ashamed of. I realize I have the memory, but no writing about any of this. So today I write it in the coffee shop before improv class and I burst into tears. Then I go to class and no one knows I’ve just been bawling for ten minutes.
I think about why I had such empathy as a kid and why I’m still like this now. My sister had reminded me last year of the word, the one describing Korean people’s emotions and how a lot of us empathize. I can’t remember it. Then that moment, like five minutes ago, I come across a post on Instagram, the exact moment I want to remember the word, and the post is about NUNCHI. Everyone has told me I have strong Nunchi. I had nunchi lessons as a child.
Inexplicable. All just coincidences.
But I choose to let them be meaningful.