To Lily, The Lotus

I named you Lily. You’re older than me and you’re my sister. There must have been a dark sky on the day you were born, gray ominous clouds covering the sun. And your mother, with eyes squinted, clenching the sheets under her, as she pushed you into this world, felt the pain that beauty requires. I don’t imagine her taking a nurse’s hand, I don’t imagine her own mother there. For an unknown reason, I imagine her alone. All I know is that my father wasn’t there—your father wasn’t there.

One night, some years ago, our father was sitting in his recliner, sipping his Jose Cuervo. He drinks it over ice, and his vision pierces into the liquid crystals of a large television. He talks to me when the commercials are on, when the television is on mute. He tells me brief stories about his two years in Korea. He was in the Air Force at the time, and while he was there, he learned to speak Korean. He tells me your mother’s name, and while I can’t remember it, I believe it would begin with ᄇ. He doesn’t say much about her. It’s his way. He doesn’t say much about anything that he loves deeply.

In my whole life, he only mentioned you once, he only mentioned you that night. He told me, after he was back in the United States, he received a letter from your mother. In the letter, she told him that you had died. He might have mentioned during childbirth, but he also said he didn’t know if he believed her, and that she may have simply told a lie to relieve him from any obligation, being that he was now separated by an ocean and a continent. If you survived, I don’t know what your mother would have told you about our father. I sometimes wonder, even as I do now, while writing to you. Did she tell you he was a good man? Did she even live long enough to tell you anything at all?

A little girl needs to know her father adores her. A little girl, as she spins about the room in her first dress, needs to know she is lovely. And I wonder if you had a father figure to let you know that. Did you grow up feeling loved? Because if I had a way to tell you anything at all, it would be that you are loved, even from across an ocean and a continent, even from across the years that have passed.

You are my older sister. So many times, I wish you’d been there when I was growing up. Before I ever knew you existed, I wished I had an older sister. I was raised an only child and I know your advice could have guided me through a lot that I had to learn the hard way. I could have asked you about women, how to talk to the ones I liked, how to ask out the first girl I liked in high school—her name was Dana. But more importantly I could have asked you how to not  screw things up after she said yes.

I am your younger brother. I’m ashamed to say, I knew nothing of value growing up that I could have imparted on you. You probably would have teased me for the many stupid things I said and did. But you would have been present, and so would I. And this world, which can be frightening when we’re on the precipice of a new journey, would have felt a little less scary.

Is it cliché to say we share the same blood? Probably, but we share more than what runs through our bodies. We share a common origin, a bright star in the spirit, authored by the same hand. In our father’s secret thoughts, he must think of you. I know I would, were I a father. And I wonder if he would name you, as I have named you.

He might name you heart, song, and wine. Or he might name you the flower that stays hidden in a field that one cannot remember the way back to. In his mind, on those nights when the tequila bottle has drained just a little too much, he may call you those things without words, and he may remember the air of your home country, gliding into his lungs, cleansing him richly as smoke in deep green prayer houses. I picture him walking the streets of Seoul, the alien language encompassing his younger eyes, and the beauty before him so vast that it led to you.

My sister, do you know you are loved?

I named you Lily for simplicity. But your name may be 수영. Or your mother may have given you a western name. Perhaps you are Esther or Jenny. Our father may have thought up similar names in his mind. But I believe in his heart, you are named something else entirely: Amethyst and Emerald and the glow therein, Lilac, and Hyacinth, and Rose. To him, you’re the smell of a lotus, alone in a field. And in those visions, where love is painted in large swirls of deep color, you are named all things beautiful.

Our father was adventurous in his youth. He has hundreds of skydiving jumps (I just have one) and he used to do large air formations with other skydivers. He rode motorcycles and wrecked one badly many years ago, which put him in the hospital. He also broke a bone in a hard landing on one of his skydiving jumps. I can’t recall which accident was responsible, but one of his legs in now slightly shorter than the other, so he has to wear a lift in his shoe. And for a time he lived in Guam, where he became a proficient scuba diver. His eyes have seen much more than my own. So I can only weakly imagine what he sees in those silent moments when he sees you. He must have named you—something that remains hidden in him, that only he knows.   

When I was younger, I had friends of all sorts because there was never one group with which I fully fit. Among my friends were Sung and his sister, Young. She chose the western name Karyn later in her life. When their parents invited me for dinner, I felt I was entering part of a special world. They taught me about Korean foods, taught me to use chopsticks, and Young got me listening to Korean music. Do you know 신승훈? I use to listen to his 4^th album, and I learned many of the words, even though I understood nothing. I told myself I would learn Korean, but being your lazy younger brother, I only got as far as the alphabet and a handful of words.

I often hung out with Sung and his sister after high school let out. Sometimes we would drive down to a Korean comic book and video store just outside of Atlanta. Sung could browse for hours, but I would get bored, just staring at all of the symbols that I wished I understood. There was a Korean-owned Chinese restaurant below the store, and we’d go down there to eat. Since I was white, they always gave me a fork. I was the only one at the table who got a fork. I would say, while holding the fork, “I swear…this is a racial thing,” and Sung and his sister would laugh. You would have liked hanging out with us.

I wanted to ask our father about you again, but I haven’t. And I know I never will. Because relationships between men and their fathers are complicated, like relationships between women and their mothers are complicated, like relationships of any kind are…complicated.

In truth, even if you are alive, I don’t know that you’d be in Korea. You could have left a long time ago. I did an internet search a while back and tried to find you, given the limited clues I had. I found one possible match living in the United States and I wrote her an email. I never got a reply. I suppose I never really had much to go on. But in the absence of knowing your well-being, I let a simple prayer be enough.

My sister, wherever you are, I pray that you know you’re loved.

I know you were once real. You breathed the oxygen of your homelands and exhaled the carbon dioxide that must have found its way to the grass, to trees, to still life. And in turn, I wonder if in this endless process, that same air found its way over the seas. Did it pass through the place where I grew up? And did it pass into my own lungs, many years later? I breathe as you once breathed, may still breathe, and whether the same air or not, the spirit of a sister I have never known feels so close to me now.

You should know that your younger brother is a dreamer. I bounce from dream to dream, passing emerald city after emerald city, praying that the unknown dirt path and boundless horizon will eventually lead me where I belong. I know why I am the way I am, and perhaps why many dreamers are the way they are. I believe, what we fear most, is a world without magic. Such a world is governed only by the random, by chance, and by a few mathematical rules. In that world, younger brothers don’t find their older sisters. In that world, little girls don’t know their fathers and never get the chance. They never find out how much they’re loved.

If what your mother told our father was true, you left this world a long time ago. What happens after death is anyone’s guess. I like to believe we go on to create our own worlds. I like to imagine we have celestial bodies that move beyond the speed of light, put in motion by love. And finger tips of the divine, which spin out a galaxy like they were stirring little specks of burning metal, enter into us so that newness in all things is transcendent. And you, my older sister, will have been creating worlds for a while now. You’ll have to teach me how it is done.

My sister, do you know you are loved? If I can’t tell you in this life, I’ll tell you in the next.

I used to work for an airline, and I went solo to Honolulu one weekend without a plan. I got the idea on a Friday night and I was on a plane Saturday morning. I didn’t book a room. I just went, hoping I’d find a bed at a beach hostel. I did find one, but if I hadn’t, I would have slept on the beach. I remember lying in my hostel bed, which smelled of thousands of previous sleepers. And I stared out the small dirt-crusted window, up into the night sky. I could hear some of the people below me, down in the common area, laughing and making conversation. But up on my weak and thin mattress, with their voices distant to me, I was alone. If you’re alive, I hope you’re not like me. I hope you don’t feel alone in a crowd.

I like to imagine that you found happiness, perhaps working downtown in the heart of Seoul or Buson. And there you put on a business suit each day, your desk adorned with pictures of your own family, and your eyes always lit with confidence. Or perhaps you live in New York City and you walk the streets with an espresso drink. And there, you’re finally single and happy. Whatever your state in life, I imagine you strong and I imagine you pursuing the happiness that a wise man once said we should have the right to pursue. But hey, if I’m wrong and you’ve got twelve kids from five different guys and you work in a shirt factory putting pins in sleeves, you’re still my sister. And if we meet, we can just have coffee and talk about how we’re both incredible fuck-ups. We’ll smile, no matter what.   

I once read about the lotus lantern in Korean culture. I read that it’s suppose to symbolize the desire to awaken spiritually, to become a light to the world that shines to all those people that desperately need hope. And the lotus itself, in Buddhism, represents purity and our true nature. I am not a Buddhist, but I like these symbols. And should you still be alive, I hope that you sometimes think about the promise of a family you’ve never met. I hope you believe they wish that they could know you. But most of all, I hope you know that you’re loved.

Your younger brother,

롭 (Rob)

(Originally published in the Auburn Circle, Spring 2013. Minor revisions made.)