Pt. 3: Free 7 Jeans!

Sarah has a pair of jeans that make her bum look amazing (and I'm not just saying that because she's going to be reading this post...). When I asked her where she bought them, I got an answer that I didn't want to hear - Neiman Marcus. Why?! And how?

Sarah's secret weapon: Daddy's plastic. Whenever her dad visits her, which is not very often, he takes her shopping and to dinner in an attempt to get to know her better. She is far from being an opportunist by any means, but she takes advantage of the situation whenever her dad takes her out. Since her parents got divorced when she was three years-old, she truly only has memories of her dad from the times they spent together after the divorce. Perhaps it's because of the early divorce that she doesn't have too much resentment towards her father.

After the interview, I found out that she does sometimes think about her dad and what he did that caused her to grow up in a single-parent family. However, all the care she and her mom received from both sides of the family helped her to grow up without many bitter feelings. Sarah respects her dad's side of the family, mainly because they apologize every time they meet with her mom. Of course, much of the complacency that she now feels has to do with her naturally cheerful disposition and her chronic forgetfulness.

It seems to me that Sarah sees her dad as an "uncle" (ajusshi in Korean), which in Asian culture represents an older male friend who is unrelated by blood. Her dad's main responsibility is to provide for her financially, like paying for her college tuition. The closeness that she would have with a father-figure is incorporated into her relationship with her mom, so she doesn't have an urgent need to get to know her dad very well. Will her dad forever remain an ajusshi forever?

Pt. 2: "Your life is just like the show Gilmore Girls!"

Friday at Starbuck's
Me: Have you seen the show Gilmore Girls?
Sarah: Only one or two episodes.
Me: You know how the mother and daughter characters are so close... Do you and your mom have a bff (best friends forever) relationship like they have on the show?
Sarah: Uh... no. We're pretty boring people. To me, my mom is still just my mom.
Me: ...

Picture this: Two women face each on a plush couch while one has her foot propped up on the other's knee. The other woman crouches over the foot and carefully brushes nail polish over the big toe as owner of the aforementioned toe channel surfs through late night television. The two people look too similar to be just friends, but perhaps sisters? This was what I imagined as the perfect single mother-daughter relationship (maybe I overdid it on the Gilmore Girls episodes?), where the only difference between the two people is that one has slightly more wrinkles than the other.

I can't believe she burst my bubble just like that! To think that they don't actually gossip about cute boys while giving each other pedicures. Only recently Sarah and her mom started talking about boys. Though her mom welcomes this kind of girl talk, Sarah still feels a little awkward and slightly hot in the face on the subject. This type of situation is weirdly similar to the ones even I've been having lately. For me, it's extremely embarrassing sharing this information with my mother, but I always thought a single mom and her daughter talked about this kind of thing all the time? Could I be wrong? It definitely wouldn't be the first time.

After re-listening to that part of our conversation, I noticed something interesting she mentioned. "My mom is kind of like my mom and my dad." This simple statement says so much. Like other single parents, her mom has to play a dual role in order to raise her properly. No matter what is going on in their lives, her mom tries to communicate with her as much as possible, making her feel comfortable enough to share any kind of information. Parents of nuclear families strive for this as well, whether they achieve that bond with their kids is uncertain.

One thing that remains constant in Sarah's house is eating dinner together, which is most important to mother and daughter. Even if they're both extremely busy and it's only for 15 minutes or so, they will pull out their miniature Korean-style dinner table, place it with Korean side dishes and sit cross-legged facing each other. These 15-minute dinners really put a crunch on their conversations, so to make up for lost time, they will spend several nights each month at various restaurants just to eat and talk without interruption. At first when I heard this, all I could picture was Sarah's mom asking her a series of questions about school and relationships in the manner of a detective "grilling" a suspect in the manner of NYPD Blue. However, Sarah revealed that she actually enjoyed these dinners because it gave them time to really talk and have fun, something that nuclear families may not even be privileged to.

Now that she's much older, her mom is more open to talking about topics that used to be off-limits, such as boys and relationships (seems true with my mom too). Whether Sarah wants to divulge any of this information is her own prerogative of course (exactly how I feel). It certainly shows a closeness in their relationship when her mom is interested in this aspect of her life, but asking her to pull out her yearbook so she can have a gander at "cute band boy" or "euro history hunk" makes her a little uncomfortable. Looks like there are just certain things a daughter wants to keep mum, from her mom.

There's something about Sarah... Pt. 1: The Interview

I situate myself across from her at a wooden table on the patio at the Starbuck’s on 24th. I try to get comfortable inside the metal chairs as I pull my stack of papers and recorder out of my backpack. The Austin wind continues to blow with gusto and forces my friend’s kiwi Danish to transform itself into a paper weight for all my notes. Just as I attempt to feign some seriousness for the start of the “interview”, a burst of laughter erupts from both halves of the round table. Who do I think I am? Barbara Walters? Diane Sawyer? Sitting across from Sarah Ryu with my hard-hitting questions and a digital recorder pointed in her direction feels completely ridiculous. I push the glazed Danish towards her strawberry frappachino and shove my interview questionnaire back into my bag. She tears off a piece of pastry as I sip my second cup of coffee of the day, and our conversation begins. Man, it’s really loud out here, but I want to ask you about living in a single-parent family…

The legs that make up for her 5 ft. 8 frame dangle casually off one metal arm rest of the chair and swing back and forth as she answers my first question about how long her parents have been divorced. Her gestures are very animated and slightly awkward because her arms are unusually long for an Asian female. I’m surprised that she’s giving me such a vivid response since I am treading on a touchy subject, even though we’ve known each other for about five years now. She states that her parents have been divorced ever since she was three years old and at the time, she obviously couldn’t wrap her little head around the concept of divorce. However, she began asking her mom where her dad was a few years after the divorce because she was missing out on all the father-daughter activities at her church. All of this is said at an ease that raises a green flag for me to delve deeper into her relationship with her dad and the details of the divorce. She answers my questions (ones asked and even ones unasked) with childhood stories and a sporadic sprinkling of corny jokes, just like our countless other conversations.

We don't stay on the subject of her parents or of being a part of a single-parent family for long as she recounted all the basics of the divorce and several private aspects of her life. For the rest of the time spent on that noisy Starbuck's patio, we talk about food (we both love Korean food), different aspects of Korean culture (I'm such a wannabe Korean), and recent Korean dramas that are worth watching (dramas with the hottest guys).

The interview was a success even though I didn't exactly follow a roadmap or get the opportunity to ask all my "tough" questions. The 10 minutes that we spent on Sarah's family and growing up with her mom confirmed my previous impressions of the kind of person she is, someone who is honest, upfront and an eternal optimist. There's definitely something about Sarah...