Crying in My Tesla (2025)

 

Crying in My Tesla

I was listening to the book Crying in H Mart

On my commute to work 

When I cried

 

I was reminded of how just the week before

On my trip to Canada to visit my parents

Mom and Dad showed me 

How much they loved me

In their eyes I am still a little girl

 

Dad refused to let me carry my suitcase

He scorned the dog for barking at me

진아, 누가 언니한테 짖어!

Jinna, how dare you bark at your older sister!

 

A few years ago, I stayed with Mom in Seoul

Mom, her friend and I went out to an art show when her friend fell and seriously injured herself in a department store

Mom was about to accompany her in an ambulance

She pleaded to the store employee to help me get home

이 꼬마가 외국에서 와서… 택시좀 잡아 주세요

My little baby is from abroad… Can you please get her a taxi?

She had completely forgotten that I was 42 and spoke fluent Korean

That I can take care of myself

 

Days before this trip home

Mom had prepared 육계장 beef stew, 돼지고기 볶음 marinated spicy pork and several 반찬 side dishes in anticipation for my visit

Dad wanted to take us out to restaurants

Mom complained of how she prepared 집밥 home cooked dishes and we were running out of meals to eat them 

 

Mom's love is food

Lettuce and perilla leaves from her garden that we wrapped the pan-fried pork in 

Light salads with dressing she made using Russian garlic from her garden

Raspberry jam she prepared from berries in our backyard

A farm-to-table experience at every meal but umma style

And on the day of my departure, the food she woke up extra early to make, for me to enjoy on my flight back

 

Dad's love is outings he planned and the expert driving

Even on hot days and long drives when sometimes I fell asleep in the passenger seat 

He never complained

Road trip to the Okanagan Valley

Wonderful dinner at the Mission Hill winery where every dish was perfectly paired with wine and we got to watch a family of deer grazing on the vine leaves

The heartache he expressed every time we passed hills burned by wild fires 

The surplus of berries that he harvested from the backyard that he would deliver as gifts to friends and the local post office staff

The clothes he insisted on buying me from his favourite boutique, but only from the sales section (lol)

 

Finally on this visit

I felt like I could be of help to them in the tiniest of ways

As translator on a call to customer service

As handy woman re-caulking the bathroom tub

As tech support to back up pictures from Mom's phone

(but in the process lost a year of her photos - sorry Mom! She was surprisingly cool about it)

They heeded my advice and appreciated my help

Maybe I have grown a few years older in their eyes

 

Still, I feel clumsy in expressing my love for them

But I know

My parents’ love

Lives in my heart, blood and in every cell of my body

And there is a lifetime of examples I've learned by

I'm so grateful 

I cried in my Tesla

Popular posts from this blog

Miracle Baby (2026)

Image
Miracle Baby My friend said, “A miracle baby could happen. You never know!” I was 44. I had gotten off birth control pills and I was having hot flashes. Multiple times a day, an internal furnace turned on and I felt sweaty and uncomfortable. I was emotional, crying while listening to remotely sentimental audiobooks. I never used to cry. After some tests, my gynecologist informed me that I was not producing enough estrogen and that I was likely in menopause. Since the age of 39, I had skipped periods about once a year while still on birth control. Each time my period didn’t come, I took a pregnancy test that came back negative. I wrote in my calendar, ‘Pregnancy Scare of 2019’, ‘Pregnancy Scare of 2020’ and so on, until in 2024, I had missed four periods. In what I now realize were my peri-menopause years, my life had changed. At 42, I quit academia and became a data scientist for the LA county government. On my first day, I stood by the window on the 4th floor where my cubicle ...
Read more

Ocean (2025)

Image
Ocean Every time I come to the ocean And watch the powerful waves break I think what a waste of tidal energy We could be harnessing  But ocean never fails To make me feel small And my problems smaller My mind Is like the waves Churning and breaking Destructive and fearful thoughts Fill my mind and then subside My thoughts shout out words I'm ashamed of And shame and desperation make me want to cry There is a source of anger and fear That I come to the ocean to free myself from  But the words that came from the mouth of another Were mean and hurtful Can an apology so quickly erase them from my memory The words burn in my mind Like amber ready to set fire I try to contain them within the 2 seconds of time in my memory But they ring in my mind over and over And then the words I said afterwards by myself Ring in my mind after them The fighting words continue to echo after each other And grow even more violent I know he didn't mean to hurt But at the moment he did With ...
Read more

Dear Recruiter (2023)

Image
Dear Recruiter I was mad yesterday Added up all the years I've been analyzing data Twenty-two, started undergraduate research Twenty-three, published my first paper Thirty-two, got my PhD Forty, finished three postdocs Forty-one, got my first job as a data scientist Twenty years! Half of my life was spent collecting, analyzing and presenting data At forty, I changed career From a neuroscientist working in a laboratory To a data scientist working from home For me, science was all-consuming work done in isolation with little reward I didn't take care of myself I felt like I was never enough Faculty job rejections cut deeper A committee member once asked if I considered myself a tinkerer Questions aimed to reveal if I possessed the magic touch   That would bring in  grant dollars for the next thirty years And if I will have the energy to entertain the students At forty-two, I'm on the job market again Odds are low but you hear from industry quickly Now I'm stro...
Read more