No daughter or son really knows their Korean father. The father nourishes his child by working and providing for the family. This is how it was with me and my appa until one conversation about donuts changed everything I knew about this man who was so stoic and distant.
My dad used gesturing hand motions and overly expressive facial cues to communicate without words. He said English just didn’t want to come out of his mouth no matter how hard he tried. I know my parents worked hard to make a living for me and my sister. But what I never thought about in those years was how lonely they must have felt. There was a reason for his distance from his own family: He had to find a way to be distant with himself. How do you get close to someone when you aren’t even comfortable in your own skin?
My appa worked in a factory in Michigan starting in 1988, after we immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea when he was 37 years old. The factory was a kind of windowless prison, closed to the outside world. There, his body became trained to perform monotonous tasks, with each movement further and further removed from being human. Within those dark, cold walls came forced laughter and chitchat to get through each long day.
It wasn’t until recently that Appa would speak of those times in snapshots, often out of nowhere. One of these occasions was Thanksgiving dinner in 2021, when Appa told a story that changed me.
“I know my parents worked hard to make a living for me and my sister. But what I never thought about in those years was how lonely they must have felt.”
Appa had been working at the factory for about seven years, and over time he and some co-workers became friends. One day a friend brought in a box of donuts — an American staple. The donuts, a mixture of frosted, glazed and sprinkled, were placed on a steel table in the middle of a common workspace. Without hesitation, Appa grabbed one and offered it to the co-worker next to him, and then grabbed one for himself….
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