Ths is where Bing Crosby’s buried,’ says my mom from the front seat of my middle aunt’s car. Mother is feeling triumphant because she’s conned me into a twofer. I’d been guilt-tripped into attending Catholic mass and now we were on our way to visit her parents’ gravesites. I should have brought my own car — a Corolla rental — but I’d felt so pleased with myself, so pious and doting to accompany my 65-year-old mother to church, that I never imagined she’d pull a stunt like this.
My youngest aunt is in the back with me, clutching three cellophane-bundled bouquets of flowers in her tiny, star-shaped paws. All four of us are wearing enormous, aggressively Asian sun hats. Mom and I got ours from the Korean dollar-store the day before. They are identical. I picked mine first — an angular, stylised, straw Regency bonnet that looks cool if you dress sort of goth and deconstructed — and she got hers to match. I thought about switching but relented. From the back there is no mistaking that we are together. We don’t look cool.We’re 15 minutes late like we always are. On the verdant lawn of Holy Cross Cemetery, in Culver City, California, about three hills in from the main gate, I see my mother’s oldest brother, his wife (also in a massive sun hat) and their Yorkshire Terrier, Cherry. The outlook is grim. They’ve staked their claim with two picnic blankets side by side. The blankets mean business. They are flanked by five heaving bags of food, which means we’re in for the long haul.
This is one of two cemeteries I’ve ever been to ever, and I had no idea dining al fresco among tombstones was a thing. I wonder if it’s an Asian thing — which it so would be — and do a 360-degree turn to confirm that, while not exclusive to yellows, most of the families with an elaborate buffet set-up and another blanket to indicate ‘post-lunch napping zone’ are 100 per cent not white.
I text the cousins: no dice. It seems I’m the only kid dumb enough to get roped. Everyone else submitted iron-clad excuses ages ago — work, kids of their own, vague previous engagements (that I suspect to be golf), distance — and no one gave me the heads-up. Rookie move: it’s the weekend before the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. That means it’s almost Korean Thanksgiving, an occasion for reflection and time-suck ancestral memorial rites.
Lately, I’m off my game with this stuff. I’d forgotten it was Sunday too, since I live in New York and work as a freelancer: days of the week are insignificant unless it comes to deadlines. Either way, I’ll be lucky to get out of here in less than two hours. My uncle’s wife squeals when she sees my mother. They haven’t seen each other in more than a year, and have stockpiled gossip to workshop. I should have brought a book.
by Mary H.K. Choi, Morning News | Read more:
Image: Michel Setboun
