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A Korean’s First American Christmas
A Christmas tree decorated from top to bottom with white lights and ornaments collected over the years, old stockings hung over the fireplace, gifts wrapped carefully in beautiful paper with Christmas patterns and topped with perfect red and green bows, lights hung from the eaves and boxes and boxes of other decorations scattered throughout the house and lining the shelves. This was the scene when I grew up when the “thanks” of Thanksgiving would end and the Christmas season would go into full affect in our house. It had been at least five years since I had last been home to celebrate this holiday with my family and this year…
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An American Family and a Korean Husband
The first trip home with Jae-oo was a lot of introductions. Not only was he meeting friends he’d heard stories of but just as, or maybe more, importantly he was meeting my family. He’d met my mother on her visit to Korea but was now meeting my sisters and then aunts and uncles and grandparents. That may sound like the whole family, but that is just the beginning. My family is large and large in the sense that my mother’s generation has remained very close to their cousins which made the “aunts” and the “uncles” of my generation nearly triple and which meant we grew up with just as many…