I first learned about the name of Greta Lee from the show Russian Doll.
The stunning facial features of hers strikes me possibly as the most beautiful Korean American face in my own database.
“I dug her; her look and disposition is so my cup of tea,” so I told him.
The concept of “crossings” that Nayong mentioned to her Jewish American husband was the first thing that pull the string to my heart.
The first crossing to Nayong was from Korea to Canada; the second crossing from Canada to U.S.
For me, the first crossing was by all means involuntary, from Taiwan to States, for the sake of someone’s American dream, under the influence of certain family glory from relatives. Words of mouth, illegal crossing that eventually became legitimate and a family saga. I always have a hard time understanding why such law-breaking story can be glorified and passed on as a heroic struggle in the mundane world. Oh well.
I survived only one year for the first crossing. Then I succumbed to reality and the pressure of something, I couldn’t name it. Perhaps it was the familial responsibility that I was bestowed on me. They didn’t say, but I know it. Because I am the elder sister; because I was the benevolent and possibly manipulatable young lady that’d do things simply that’s kind.
“It is important to be a kind person. A good hearted person. That’s a virtue.” They said.
After the failure of the first crossing, the family conflict was intensified. The failure itself is the elephant in the room for the family. Everybody knows about it; nobody talks about it. But you saw those resentment in the eyes, you heard the complaint, explicitly or sullenly. I always felt like a person living just right at the foot of a volcano, waiting for the sleeping volcano to be awaken by another earthquake.
Maybe deep down, I had been waiting to be devoured by the lava, the heat that I had stored all these years in me. I can’t tell whether they are accumulative sum of frustration or disappointment, from my family or from myself.
Four years after the fail of first crossing, I deliberately applied for the the farthest college to attend. I found every excuse to stay away from home.
Another decade past, the second crossing took place when I was at the diverged roads in the woods. I took the less travelled and went on the journey. From the southeast to the midwest, and now to the west. When the second crossing was completed, I felt like a brand new person. There were times I didn’t quite recognize myself in the mirror. I did not know who I was anymore. I got lost in tenses, in those intense cultural shocks.
And now, the counter cultural shock.