EXT. A BEACH WITH BRITTLE PEBBLES - 12 YEARS AGO, NIGHT.
A MOTHER walks across the beach, careful not to cut her bare feet on stray seashells and rocks. Her husband (FATHER) and her SON sit atop a fence, hands linked to each other, and pretend to give her the privacy she needs. She sinks into the sand as the water crawls between her toes. She is just a silhouette in the shot now, far away and small. She cups her mouth and screams.
MOTHER
(aching for a home she has left in a country that will never be quite home, speaking in Korean)
I MISS YOU.
Some of her screams can be understood, some can’t, and her voice dies out eventually.
Memory isn’t continuous. It starts and stops, fades to black before its technicolor light flashes back into thought. The only memories worth keeping in our heads are the scenes that directors choose to put into movies—the few minutes that carry the weight of all our grievances and triumphs.
I remember the trip to the beach in scenes. The streetlights above us narrowed as we drove off the straight, familiar asphalt of the freeway and onto a dirt trail bordered by conifers whose branches swayed high above our heads. Headlights from American cars greeted us with solemn nods, trembling as they passed by us on the winding road. We parked on an unfenced patch of dirt; the private property of someone who had grown tired of calling a tow truck every night.
We never spoke as we walked onto the beach; we weren’t shuffling our feet or rattling our minds for words to fill in the empty spaces. Instead, the ocean took over. The waves danced with their mighty tide breaking down the cliffside, water resting in the little holes and pits dimpling the beach before washing back into a great whole. The wind whistled and we wrapped our jackets around ourselves tightly—we didn’t want the night to steal our warmth.
From far enough away, my mom could pretend my dad and I weren’t there. The beach was the only place in California where she could scream and be unheard, and we understood how important that was to her. From the fence, we usually found ways to distract ourselves. We drew pictures in the sand, or talked about our days, or made up stories about a nearby seagull. Sometimes, though, we just watched my mom scream.
The ritual of screaming was one that my dad and I didn’t judge. We felt the same failure to belong, but we took it in silence. You’re not a woman, we were told, men don’t cry. So loneliness and rejection were thrown to the back of our minds to rot because winners never cried, or let out screams on the beach. Trying to heal would mean acknowledging that we had been wounded. We hid the fragility of losing our identity as Koreans because we wanted to maintain our identity as men; breadwinners with sharp windsor knots and auburn loafers, with the only water in our eyes being the mist from the ocean. My father and I reflected together about our new lives. Mothers carry a necessary role in the family--they rage against the tragedies fathers and sons aren’t allowed to mourn. We thanked her as we watched the Pacific swallow her screams.
INT. INCHEON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - 13 YEARS AGO, MORNING
The terminal gate flashes with its red lights as it waits for the family to pass by into a foreign life. Those lights have watched thousands, millions of people pass by into a new land to give up the only identity they’ve known.
MOTHER
(unable to keep herself composed)
I love you. I’ll call you when we land. Promise to visit every year?
GRANDMOTHER
(tearing up, but strong, the stoicism of a rural woman)
We’ll visit every year. I promise.
BACK TO:
EXT. A BEACH WHERE A MOTHER SHED TEARS FOR HER FAMILY - 12 YEARS AGO, NIGHT
A MOTHER stares out into the ocean, with her face held in her hands. She is trembling, crying silently, her throat grated by her sandpaper screams.
MOTHER
(hoarsely)
I miss you. I love you. Why would you let me leave?
I called Korea home for a third of my life, but now I can’t recall a single vivid memory of that apartment block that we lived in, 5,800 miles across the Pacific. Any image that bobs up through the recourse of nostalgia is ragged with the holes burned through the film reel by age and time. To my parents, however, their lives in America are a dot to what they had in Korea. Their childhood, their careers, their families; their history and vision exists in that country through memories of neon lamps and pickled foods.
When I ask my mom why we left Korea, why she left behind a successful career and the friends and family that adored her, she responds with a striking calmness and composition that fits a woman as strong as her. It’s simple and needs no further explanation because it’s the barebones truth: Because I wanted to. Her strength intimidates me as much as it inspires me.
Back on that beach, as the waves lapped over her feet and her tears soaked into the sand beneath her, I thought of that simple phrase,
Because I wanted to.
What scenes will be in my movie? What will make up the composition of my life, the filmstock that captures who I am? At the end of my life, how will I justify why I’ve made my life the way it is, and why I’ve chosen the shots that I did?
Because I wanted to.
INT. SFO AIRPORT - 1 YEAR AGO, NIGHT
A BOY’s MOTHER watches her parents enter the terminal. This time, the gate’s red flash is not one of disappointment or grieving. It is a chipper welcome back to where the elderly couple belongs. The light, so familiar to the family now, greets them with a smile. The parents and their child run to the line to say goodbye before their guests leave again.
MOTHER
(crying)
Get home safe, okay?
GRANDMOTHER
(smiling)
I will. I’ll call you when I’m back.
The guests leave again for home. This time, it is different. My family has learned to make their home where they are. Seoul had its rich neon lights and crowded streets filled with love-struck teenagers and men in suits. Rohnert Park has its quiet suburbs, with American barbecues sending up its aromatic flares as kids survey the neighborhood on bikes and scooters. The two are different, but they are home.
We’ve been watching her for almost an hour when she turns around. She strides back towards us with her shoulders straightened, wind whipping through her hair. Her eyes are red. Her feet matted by sand. By the time we move off the dirt road and onto a more familiar one, she is asleep and snoring. She is powerful, and both my dad and I understand this. We are in awe, in love, enraptured by this woman who carries herself with pride. My mother’s snoring in the car as her head bounces along with the road’s imperfections is one of my earliest memories. She’s asleep and vulnerable, but never has she looked stronger to me.
My mother saw something great here, something neither my dad or I could see. She saw her reflection in the Pacific.
