Leaving Los Angeles
SEPTEMBER 8, 2007 Listen to this Story
- Angela and family
- Enlarge This Image
Moving is always hard, but moving to a portion of the country where you have no ties is harder. Last February, Weekend America producer Angela Kim moved away from the land of eternal sunshine and palm trees to the land of 10,000 lakes. Kim shares her story about finding the one thing that helps her cope with her homesickness.
- - -
My apartment has no smell. I've tried burning incense. I've lit candles that smell of lavender and jasmine but in the morning it smells like it did yesterday - nothing.
The home I grew up in had a smell. It was of sesame oil.
As a kid I was always afraid that the smell would seep into my clothing but -- now I long for it.
The smell came from my mother's cooking. Food was this unspoken language in our home. Most Korean dishes use sesame oil, and our house always had an ample supply.
I always knew how to make my mom happy or sad by the way I treated her food. As a kid, if I wanted to defy my parents I would say I wasn't hungry and I used it to hurt them - I remember seeing their face contorting and being offended by my refusal to eat.
And if I wanted to make my mom feel better after a long day of work I would comment on how delicious everything was - she would smile and it's as if I could see the weight of her exhaustion being lifted from her.
Food was the way to my mother's heart and my father and I always knew that.
Maybe that's why our house always had a fragrance of sesame oil lingering in the air. The smell is sweet yet pungent, and inhaling it takes me 1,500 miles away to California, where I grew up.
Six months ago, I moved to Minneapolis because of my job. It was my choice, my choice to follow my job. I moved to a place I had never visited. Raised on the west coast and educated on the east I was living in a portion of America that I had often jumbled together and called "the middle." But I packed up my bags and left my family, friends and my comfort zone to take a chance on what "the middle" might offer me.
I remember stepping off the plane at 6:30 in the morning in February and inhaling the air, it smelled cold. The air was thin and sharp as it went into my lungs.
Week one wasn't so bad because everything was new--new office, new apartment. Yet I couldn't find one Korean restaurant in my neighborhood.
The thing is, my mom cooked often. But me - I ate off the plates she gave me and at the Korean take-out places. My hankering for Korean food began to fester.
By my third week of living here I was craving something more unattainable than my mother's cooking, I was craving home. The only way I knew how to find home was to find that scent of sesame oil. I went to the markets in my neighborhood, and they didn't have the same sesame oil my mom used.
I found a Pan-Asian market, boasting to be THE Asian market in the Midwest. I wrote down the directions and decided to venture outside of my normal routine of driving from my apartment to work.
I walked into the market, and it was a third of the size of any Asian market I'd ever known. Each aisle devoted to a different Asian country: China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea... and so on. And then I found it. The aisle of oils and sauces all neatly and fully stocked.
I looked carefully at the various Asian characters and English lettering. And there it was, the maple colored liquid in the bottle. I searched for the smallest bottle because I really had no intention of cooking with it.
I brought it back to my apartment and opened the plastic cap and closed my eyes and inhaled.
I've gone back to California three times since I moved here. Every time I go back it's like I have a checklist of things to do: see the people that I care about; eat as much Japanese, Mexican, and Korean food as I can; and soak up the Pacific.
Part of the checklist is to have dinner with my parents. When it's time to eat, our routine is still the same; my mother is dominating the space in the kitchen while my father sits in front of the television or the radio. But my last trip home was different. My mom was in the kitchen but my father sat quietly only staring at the bookshelf straight ahead. No television. No radio.
I sat beside him. Silent. Still looking straight ahead, he asked me where exactly Minnesota was.
I used my pinky finger to mark Minnesota and I extended my thumb to mark Southern California on a map. My thumb was on Las Vegas, and I needed to extend it just a little more. My father just stared down at the map and said, "oooh."
"That's just how it is. It really is far," he said in Korean.
I've lived in places that were further than Minnesota. But this time there was no guarentee when or if I'd be back again.
Each time I leave my home - the one in California - it's hard. I see my parents getting older. I see my friends moving on. And I feel longing to be in two places at once.
My apartment still doesn't have a scent. But if you look above my fridge - there it sits. My bottle of home, my sesame oil.
Comments
Comment | Refresh
Post a Comment: Please be civil, brief and relevant.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments are moderated. Weekend America reserves the right to edit any comments on this site and to read them on the air if they are extra-interesting. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting.
You must be 13 or over to submit information to American Public Media. The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party. For more information see Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.