The Weight of Three Dreams is a novel I've started and hope to finish within the next 12-18 months. That's a lot to take on, especially in light of the cursed writer's block, which seems to occur regularly. It's a work of fiction that incorporates my parents' Korean heritage and Korean history. I will attempt to self-publish. Here's a sampling of two of the chapters.
One / Ha-na
Jong Ha Park emerged from his rickety bed to a bitter cold morning. Unfortunately, the bitterness had too easily made its way into his garage apartment on the edge of town in Billings. And sadly, it was not an apartment above a garage. It was the garage. In fact, every winter morning felt the same way here… positively arctic. The forlorn sunken warship-like, less-than-adult height toilet had frozen weeks ago, so he was forced to use a bucket or trudge his meat-lockered body to the “great outdoors” to relieve himself. Six months ago, when he was on the bus from Chicago, he never would have imagined it could get this cold, but Montana proved him wrong. Even the harsh winters of Pusan, South Korea seemed easily more than tolerable compared to this. At least back home involved the active participation of a wood-burning stove. His only comfort now was the fur seal-like “damyo” or Korean blanket his sister had sent him. As loud as a bevy of caution horses, the orange, white and red dyeing job was clearly an eyesore, but it retained his body heat so well that it was, in fact, a life-saver.
The water he had boiled the night before was still unfrozen in the blue speckled basin he’d left it in. Though the water was not quite the perfect temperature for a morning shave, Jung washed his face with his new favorite soap, Ivory. There was nothing like this in Korea. He appreciated its beautiful simplicity and the near perfect rectangle in which it was formed. He always tried to keep it pristine and make it last as long as he could. He mildly lamented the point when the letters imprinted in the bar would disappear after enough use. The new Gillette safety razor was even more of a fascination for him. The turn of the metal handle made the top open like the door for a plane’s landing gear. It was the only item of substance he owned, with its grooved handle and hefty weight, it felt like it was worth something, even though it only cost him a few dollars. He lathered up and let the suds park on his face for a little while before employing a few gentle strokes. Though he didn’t have a preponderance of whiskers for a man his age, there was still work to do. He strived to present as clean of an image as possible, for he knew that much of how he appeared to people in the states would cover over his lack of understanding for the language and for the customs of his host country. After toweling off and finishing the rest of his morning routine, Jung threw on brown slacks and a white button-up oxford, and though his gray wool overcoat was getting a bit worn, he felt ready for the day ahead of him.
Along with winter’s chill in a tiny garage, he chalked up all his difficulties as sacrifices made to his cultural and deeply ingrained quest for a good education. He was lucky enough to make it to the states as a student, having left his whole family behind in South Korea, to pursue his goal of getting a college education in America. This was no small feat for the fourth of eight children in an impoverished family in small, rural Korean town. Most days back home, he was primarily concerned with getting the next meal or how many holes his shoes could take before he could no longer wear them. It was these kinds of hardships that made him thankful he had his slightly worn and creased brown wingtip oxfords rather than complain about not having any winter boots in frigid Montana. Shoes were just good. There would be bigger challenges today, or at least they seemed so to him. There was no hope of becoming proficient enough in the English language to understand everything he was studying. He would settle for enough to score at least a solid ‘B’ on his exams. Sure, locals and students had been more than helpful to him, as they were purely fascinated by this young, handsome Korean man who’d come to their town for college. How he’d ended up there was another story altogether.
Two / Duul
White nursing uniforms had become commonplace, even here. The Florence Nightingale look had pervaded even the far east, with requisite cap, stockings and white shoes. To Mee-Ae, the uniform made virtually no sense at all, in a profession where blood, dirt and germs were a regular part of the day. But this was what she had chosen for herself. Her sister, Mee-Yung, had lovingly pushed her on more than one occasion, to see this part of her life through. It would, as she said, lead to something. She knew not what. Tall for a Korean woman, Mee-Ae Kim stood 5'4" and though her 105 pound physique occupied very little space, her personality accounted for a rather substantial presence. Never one to back down to a challenge, Mee-Ae frequently stirred up trouble at school, but not the kind you would imagine. To Mee-Ae, some of her instructors were not competent enough, and she would rally her fellow students to walk out in protest for more qualified instructors. In her favor, school had never been difficult for Mee-Ae. In a culture of female subservience, Mee-Ae had not the gentleness of spirit to quietly remain at home, waiting for her supposed husband to return from work. For 1952, she was quite progressive.
But today she would be the proper young lady, coolly present in a group of 215 women, graduating from nursing school. The ceremony would be held outside, each nurse dressed in her pristine uniform, seated on a white wooden folding chair… a veritable sea of whiteness, peppered with the stark blackness of the graduates' hairdos on a green lawn. The brown bobby pins securing her white cap to her hair were pinching, but she was far less bothered by that than she was by the tardiness of her family, not because she wanted them there but because she hated having to make space in her brain worrying about something that should just happen on a day like today. But her family was not so enthusiastic, either. Mee-Ae was a burgeoning soul, trying to emerge from a murky and stultifying morass within her family, one which had grown exponentially over the years. She was largely ignored as her family mourned the death of their eldest son, since gone for twelve years now. The darkness had never left, and Mee-Ae knew it never would.
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