Dear Phoebe,

No, I couldn’t ask her whether she remembers the game or not. It’s getting harder and harder to talk to her. Sometimes I do call her on the phone but, feeling stuck in our conversations, we hang up angry.

My mother wants me to be more supportive of my father; I love him but at some point I stopped supporting him to try to support myself. One day, it just came to mind: I cannot gatekeep his world that is falling apart; I just can’t do it.

On my end, I want her to be supportive of herself, before him, that is, to take good care of herself above anything else. Apparently, we do not listen well to each other.

Hence, Unnie, my trouble in talking to my mother about what’s going to happen. Instead, I can tell you a story about what happened to my mother (not to me though).

Before we began to write to each other, I went home and scanned every photo of my childhood. I collected my photos with my mother in a folder, too. Then it came to me that all of my mother’s photos were taken after she became a ‘mother.’ It in turn made me wonder about, say, my mother who was not yet my mother. About that we certainly had a talk.

My mother, Anna, was born the youngest daughter of a rural family in Gyeongsang-do. Anna had a sister, Lucia, who was one-year older than her and, according to her, the prettiest and smartest. But she got meningitis around seven.

Since then, every family matter revolved around Lucia. My mother, blessed with stamina in her body, would carry her on her back and walk around. They would buy cosmetics, pierce their ears–my mother would buy a pair of glittering earrings and run to her. That was how she grew up, putting them into Lucia’s hands.

But her father died, her eldest brother got married, and at one point it became impossible for my mother to live with Aunt Lucia anymore. Her mother was fiercely striving to outlive Aunt Lucia even for one more day, but she was not well. Lucia ended up in a facility owned by my great aunt. She lived there, and died. “I promised her I would visit often…,” my mother stopped here, turned around, and put the kettle on. I kept looking at her back, wishing that nothing would fall apart.

I was told this story long after Aunt Lucia died. She passed away when I was in high-school, and I heard this at 28. Thus I came to know that I had an aunt only ten years after she died.

Unnie, sometimes I think I do want to have kids.

I was writing a very long sentence, then erased it all, and came up with this sentence. For now I don’t want to get married, nor can I have a kid and raise it on my own. Just as you said, living is already hard and there is no room for more people. But then why do I want it? Still, in the house of my dream are younglings; there are scribblings on the wall.

Cursed with thoughts,

July

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