Burgers, Tears, and D-Day

My mother is always complaining, criticizing, and lamenting. She went along on my beauty consultation experiment(yes, the damn wedding stuff) with me and my sister today.

We started out early, 8:45am (and yes, for the Park girls, this is most definitely an early hour - especially on a Saturday!). I picked them up at Wany's house and headed to the beauty salon.

After two and a half hours at the salon, I booked appointments for hair and make up and realized I was hungry. We decided to chow down at Portillo's, always one of my favorites.

A cheeseburger, hot dog, pasta and one chicken salad later (shared between the three of us), my mother bust out in tears...in public! I'd never seen her do that.

She explained that it had hit her, hit her hard, at the beauty salon when I was getting my make up applied and getting yelled at by the make up artist for exfoliating daily. She confided in us that she felt a wall of emotion come over her. She was happy for me and my upcoming marriage, but she realized the last of her 'kids' was flying the coop so to speak. My mother actually put it this way...

"You'll understand when you have children of your own and they get married off...you're leaving to start a life of your own...I'm happy for you (sniff, sniff) but it feels like D-Day is approaching..."

At first, as is my usual reaction to her comments, I felt angry. I was angry that she related my wedding day, what is going to be the happiest day of my life to D-Day! What the heck was she thinking? I looked over at my sister to gain agreement to my reaction...but instead (and fortunately) I was reminded to be understanding and kind.
I was reminded to read between the lines.

Here was this woman, my mother, who had raised me, cared for me, and comforted me through thick and thin, who paid for piano lessons and Girl Scout camp trips, uniforms, and supported any interest I pursued even when she and my father barely had two pennies to rub together, who was now breaking down in public in silent tears, and my first reaction was anger. I was ashamed.

You see, my mother's generation (and to some extent, most of Korean culture) looks upon marriage as a separation rather than the joining of families, especially for daughters. What was once family, meaning my father, my mother, my sister and myself became me and my mother when Wany got married (our father passed away in 1997), and on April 29th, 2005, that family would only be my mom.

It wouldn't matter that she would continue to lecture me as I would still be her daughter, her family, because in her mind, I was marrying into Alex's family.

Maybe she thought I would forget that before I was Wany's sister, or someone's friend, or a project manager or someone's fiancee, that I was her daughter first (sniff, sniff).