Uniformly grey skies and slightly warmer. It feels like Spring as it can only feel in Korea, methinks. The sky looks like an overcast sky in Seattle, but the air feels different; it is a bit warmer, a little breezy, and the humidity is beginning to rise, telling me that the monsoon season is just around the corner. It’s the thickness of it that gives it away, I think. Haze hanging low and dense like a thin fog, only it’s not pristine and white like something I’d associate with wilderness, but brown with large particles that adhere to my face and which I can literally see if I look closely in a mirror. Just a hint of the summer to come and no more. I’m sure there are many more chilly clear days between now and June.

There is someone learning tea with me. A young woman also named Helen who was educated in the States for six years before returning home to Seoul. Both of her parents are well-to-do and well-known; her mother, I learned, was the first Korean woman to complete dental school in Germany - something like that. Seems Helen’s (it’s weird to write my own name) stint let her slip into the comfortable freedom of casualness afforded to American women. Now that she’s home she’s too carefree and difficult to marry off to a young man who is also well-to-do. Her mother, the dentist, is therefore sending her to Mrs. Chung to learn etiquette. Helen is not the least bit interested in learning this stuff, but at least she goes along with it on the surface. She’s really cute and slightly annoying. Her cell phone rings perpetually, always interrupting whatever we’re doing.

I think it might be interesting to talk to her away from Mrs. Chung, to see what it is really like for her having to submit to all this social pressure. Today Mrs. Chung said that Helen’s boyfriend was not good for her because he is the same age she is. Apparently, since Helen was born in the year of the Dragon, she should marry a Chicken and one of those is going to be 10 years older. At any rate, I guess same-age marriages are bad and Mrs. Chung was encouraging Helen to break-up with her boyfriend. Helen was smiling and laughing, but later muttered under her breath, "I don’t believe in this anyway." I was like, "Yeah, just pick whatever belief system fits what you want." That’s what I do. Hahaha!

Dave’s mom and sisters have decided to arrive a day earlier than originally planned. Seems the flight is totally booked up on the day they were planning to leave (4/2) and it would be unlikely they would get seats as they are flying standby. This is good. It means more time for them to see things. Dave’s dad will come the next day, as originally scheduled.

I’ve been slowly reading a book that had failed to grab me for the longest time. I guess I just had to work my way into the middle before I could feel attached. It’s called, The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton. Dave’s mom gave it to me, like many other books she’s read. She’s a hazard that way, always pawning off books (and other items she doesn’t want) on people. The first thing I appreciated about the writing was the chatty style; and the child-like frankness and method of observation the narrator uses. Sometimes I’m just laughing because the narrator is thinking like I do, drawing comparisons between everything and seeing it all in similes. I can relate to that; I appreciate it. I guess it makes me empathize with her (the narrator).

I was just going along reading this book, liking it but not really that involved until I reached the part in the story where the narrator grows up. (She is telling her life beginning to end.) She grows up and she falls in love. And the part that grabbed me, that woke me up out of just reading and into thinking, was when she says that because she is in love she can defend herself. Throughout her entire life, she could not defend herself until she had someone else to love who else professed to love her. Does this sound familiar to you? A bell went off in me. A big bell. The one that keeps reverberating in my head: What happens to little girls that keeps them weak until someone loves them? I know this. I am this. (Although, I can tell that I’m changing as I get older.) It’s like a void, you know? Girls aren’t whole until they have this love to embrace and once it’s there it’s like being transformed into some kind of superhero capable of all kinds of mass protection. Is it a lack of love in development? Something that fails to build self-esteem that love later validates? I know I wasn't loved the way I needed to be after I was 10, but that was only me. What about others? Men have the void too, I think. But it seems to me that love in their lives gives them license to show weakness and to be more childish - needy like a child is what I mean. I guess when put that way, love kind of balances people out.

I’ve got this thing nagging at me not to leave out gay love. Because I do believe in all kinds of love and talk of it only between women and men is such tunnel vision. I think people choose people to love who will balance them in some way, regardless of sex or any other variable.

Doesn’t what I said a few clicks above make me sound old-fashioned? That scares me. What if that age thing is happening and my mind is starting to close just a bit. I hope not; that can’t happen to me. But I can’t ignore patterns. I swear that I have felt the most powerful when I know that I am loved by a man (or boy). Likewise, every boy or man I’ve loved has shown considerably more weakness in the midst of my love than in any other arena. It’s like they have to have this fake armor around them in order to belong in society and then those of us who love them have to pick up all the pieces when their armor crumbles. I get tired of being the saver, you know? Not that I mind vulnerability; In fact I hate caustic, unfeeling people or people who act too strong. What I don't like is having to be the Mommy - the emotional backbone.

Maybe this doesn’t happen to other people, just me. Maybe I always choose that kind of person to compliment me, whatever I may be. I guess I’m someone who needs love to feel powerful, just like the narrator of that book.

But wait: I know I’m not the only one. So often I’m reading in books or hearing from women who otherwise seem very progressive in feminist theory, or in their own work, talking about how when it comes to their own daughters they discourage sex and relationships while pouring on how women are the responsible party in sex and how girls shouldn’t get serious too soon, blah, blah. I mean, they say they do this because they know that when they were young they were led around by their noses by men. I usually get mad at this because I hate the contradiction of women fighting for sexual freedom on one hand while maintaining the old sexist status quo when it comes to their daughters on the other just because they’re afraid. I think it’s interesting that they’ll say they’re afraid that their daughters will end up like them but then they employ the same shit their own mothers did, which obviously did little to empower them. Cycles. They never end.