My name is Heidi Kim. I also go by Dohee (도희) sometimes (namely when my friends tease me), which is my Korean name. It means something in Hanja characters – I forgot exactly what – but ‘Do’ means “road” and ‘Hee’ means “light”, so my grandpa said it meant something like “Illuminate wherever you go” or “Let there be light in every path you take”. Either way, it’s a lot more meaningful than plain old Heidi. Sixteen years old as of 2014, I am a single child who lives with my immature parents diagnosed with wanderlust in Los Angeles, California. I was born in a hospital I now volunteer for in Los Angeles, California. And I kind of hate Los Angeles California, but we’ll get to that another time.

I don’t remember this because I was so young when it happened, but my parents (and grandparents, and my favorite uncle, WonGu samchon, because he is so proud of himself for this) tell me all the time that when I was one years old, I stayed in my grandparents’ apartment in Korea while my parents vacationed in Japan. Apparently I was extremely attached to my uncle because he took care of me so well. And apparently I loved him so much that when he took me to the airport to welcome my parents back to Uijeongbu, I bawled my lungs out because I thought my uncle was sending me off to a pair of strangers.

I couldn’t recognize my parents' faces. They were gone for that long.

I guess it’s kind of funny that each of my family members tells this story to me differently, because either way, I don’t remember it. WonGu samchon, my mother’s younger brother, brings it up whenever he feels that my love for him is deficient.

“I’m the person who changed your diapers and cleaned your poop!” he says. “I took care of you so well that you didn’t even want to go back to your parents. I can’t believe you forgot!”

(Well, uncle – if you recall, I was just one. Human beings rarely have memories past the verbal age, which is around three. My poor memory has been justified.)

My parents, my mother especially, mention it whenever they think I miss my grandparents and want them to live with us again. Something to do with “You cried at first but after a while, you didn’t even ask for your samchon. People change like that; they forget”. Also something about how blood is “thicker than water”, but uh, mom, uncle is blood-related, too.

Anyway, I cracked up when they told me this story. I don’t know why; I just thought it was hilarious. To this day, I don’t understand what my parents were doing in Japan if they had an infant, but they’re strange people in the first place so I guess I’ll always have to understand. My father has an abnormal infatuation for Japan after all; it’s to a point where my mom says he’s secretly Japanese. Sixteen years, and I still can’t read my father’s quirky bouts of the language whenever he is feeling quirkily Japanese because 1. I don’t speak it, (I’d like to, though. But mostly so that I can tell my dad to shut up when he starts to blast up the volume to his Japanese variety shows.) and 2. I thought ancient Koreans (my dad is ancient enough, the movie theaters consider him a senior citizen) didn’t like Japan because of the whole war issue and the dark colonization period and the Dokdo Island controversy. That’s what my Korean language teacher at school assumes anyway.

I don’t have anything against it, I should mention. I respect my dad for being so open-minded about cultures other than his own. He loves Mexican food and Mediterraean food and loves to travel to different countries. From what he’s told me, I think he’s been to China, Japan, Thailand, Mexico, and the U.S. I say the U.S. because even though he’s earned his citizenship, he doesn’t consider himself an American citizen. He’s on permanent vacation here. He’s mentally five years old like that; once, he told me he dreamed of taking two expensive cars to the countryside in Korea and farming as a living. Am I supposed to help him accomplish that or something? I don’t know. What do you even need two expensive cars in the countryside for?

Anyway, that’s my dad. Big dreams, small fortune. I feel for the man.

I’d like to talk about my mom though, because she’s an interesting person. She’s a bookworm, heavily cynical, loves to bother my dad by shoving peanut shells up his nose, can’t pronounce “squirrel”, and rules with an iron fist. One time, when I was in elementary school, we had an epic showdown in which I ended up crying for two hours. Here’s what went down:

It was Halloween, so people were passing out candies. By the grace of God, I was given not one, but two flavors of Tootsie Roll Pops I had never seen before. All I was thinking as I looked at them was “Oh my God.”

Really, oh my God. It was the best moment of my childhood up to then.

So I had this theory when I was little that I should always save the best for last because that way I’d be able to enjoy it more. If I had two Hi-Chews; one apple and the other, grape; I ate the apple one first because I liked grape better. It was a theory I strongly believed in, so naturally, I applied it to my Tootsie Roll Pops. I ate all my other candy and left just the watermelon and blueberry flavored lollipops to eat later.

Clearly, it was a big mistake.

When I came home from school one day, expecting both those lollipops to be in the plastic container I left them in, I found that my mother had eaten not one, but two of the treasured lollipops I had so painstakingly resisted the temptation to devour. If you’re thinking this wasn’t a big deal, you’re wrong. It was the biggest deal of my life at that moment. I had been cheated of my good deeds.

In my anger, I yelled and threw up Hell at my mom. I asked her why in the world she would eat my candy and why she didn’t ask me first. I was so angry that I pulled out all the things in my backpack and threw them at her, all the toys in the cabinet next to me, all the plastic ice cream cones I used to play pretend with. I was an angry child; I wanted my candy back. I threw harder.

One thing I’ll never figure out about my mom is where she got her bizarre personality. Because let me tell you what she did when I started throwing the buckets the toys were in.

She threw them right back at me.

It was the scariest moment of my life, I’m telling you. She just picked up the ice cream cones and the buckets and the folder and pencils and my pride and threw them right back at me.

I was so shocked I started to wail.

Now that I think about it, I have quite a few bad memories associated with Tootsie Rolls. There was one time my mom kicked me out of the house without shoes because I secretly ate a Tootsie Roll after I brushed my teeth.

She’s that kind of woman, my mother. Very charismatic, very “I don’t care what people say about me”, very… bold. You’d expect a mom to scold her child for lashing out on her, not pummel her back or kick her out of the house at night. As it is, everyone who’s met her will tell you that she’s one of a kind.

And because he is equally weird, my father loves her that way.

(Until she starts shoveling peanut shells up his nose as he’s trying to watch Korean dramas, because she loves to tame him like that.)

For the record, I’m not lying about the peanuts thing; she’s done it more than a few times.

And, well, that is my lovely family.

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