* It’s winter 1984. I am five years old, peaking out into the living room from my room, watching my mother cry on the couch with my sisters at her feet. She had just returned from the shopping mall, with new skirts for my sisters but nothing for me. I am pouting in my room, waiting for someone to come get me. No one comes. Instead, I hear a cry. My mom is on the phone. Later, I’d find out my dad’s sedan had collided with a truck after he had dropped my mother off at the mall. He is dead. Cascading white Korean dresses all around the house. My mother wearing a tiny white ribbon in her hair. A portrait of my father draped in black ribbons. He had returned home on vacation from Tokyo, where he was setting up a bureau for his company. We were supposed to join him in May. It’s February.
* I’m 8 years old. My grandma and I are lying down on the floor of our living room. She starts telling me a story. It’s a story my dad told her about the first time he had met her daughter. My mom, 20 years old, was wearing a blue dress and he said it shimmered in the moonlight. She had delivered documents to the home of my grandfather's colleague. His son is her friend. She asks about him and is told the son is on a hill behind the house hanging out with a friend. She walks to the hill to finds the two boys. My father, the friend, falls in love. He pursues her for the next eight years before marrying her. After listening to grandma’s story, I go over to my mom in the kitchen and ask her – mom were you wearing a blue dress when you met dad for the first time? She turns to me, shocked and asks – how do you know that? I tell her, he thought you were pretty.
* I’m in ninth grade, after school, helping my eighth grade English teacher put things up on her wall. She had placed me in an accelerated English class in seventh grade despite the fact I was an average reader, who had finished ESL only two years ago. As she hands me a piece of construction paper to hang on the wall, she says, “You know, Booyeon, you could be a writer if you wanted to.” Suddenly, being a writer becomes a choice.
* Freshman year at University of Pennsylvania. It’s hell week, the week before finals. My grades are hovering at Cs, a huge blow to an insecure overachiever, but I am in bed with a cough praying. God, if you’re there, if you can just get me through this week, I will know that you are there and that you are good. The next day, I have an allergic reaction to a cough medicine and break out into hives. I wrap my arms and legs like a leper and try to pull all-nighters. High on Benedryl, the first day of exams is a blur. Ten sheets of blank paper on European history. Need a perfect score for an A in the class. Impossible. Second exam, Psych 400. Took the wrong class on accident and near failing. Need a perfect score plus a bonus question to get an A. The first question is about a boy’s dream of hippopotamus swimming in a pool of blood. Analyze the boy’s dream through the theories of Jung, Freud, and other great psychoanalysts. I give up. I scribble something and float back to my dorm room. Back home in Arizona, I call an automated line to get my grades. A. A. A. A. A+. GPA 4.3. I call again. The same message. A clear thought in my head. “I carried you. This is what happens when you let me fight for you. The dreams I have for you exceed your wildest imaginations.”
* I’m 21 and in Tokyo on a study abroad program. I go to a mountainous beach village with a friend. On my way back down from the mountain, I see a burial mound. It’s unmarked. I sit there, in front of the mound… and I’m six years old again. It’s the first time I have seen a Confucius burial sight in 15 years. On my way down the mountain, I buy a tiny vase from a potter. When I get home, I call my mom in Arizona. Mom, I’m going to go see Dad. She says, I’m coming too. We both go to Korea that summer and visit the mountain where my dad and his ancestors are buried. I pick some wildflowers on my way up and leave them in the vase I got in Kanagawa. I leave, knowing the vase won’t stay. The wind and the rain will blow it away.
* I’m 22. Small group in New York City. Opening question: “What would you do with your life if you knew you wouldn’t fail?” The answers are unambiguous. I would write and I would dance. I was a marketing analyst at Time Inc., at a cush job, because I was scared of being a writer. It dawns on me. If Christ is my identity, failures can't ruin me. So I start applying to writing jobs, a scholarship to Japan and take up flamenco dancing. I spend that year learning the four sevillana dances and getting rejection letters after rejection letters. Scholarship to Japan falls through. After long nights and lonely walks, I finally resign myself to God – if Joseph stayed in the dungeon for 13 years before becoming a Prime Minister… I can stay in New Jersey for as long as He wants. Two weeks later, I get a phone call from Tokyo. It’s the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun. I get the offer that day, and a week later, a visa to Japan. I had planned to become a reporter in five years, after grad school in Tokyo. Instead, I would be a journalist in Japan – in a matter of three months. The opportunity feels like a diamond ring from God – an expression of extravagant love. I pack two suitcases and leave. 
* It’s a month before I leave for Japan. I throw a surprise birthday party for a friend. I guy named Aric shows up, in a crisp white shirt and jeans. We start talking about Japan, my plans to leave and my connection to the country through my father. Hemingway comes up because he's another connection to my dad. The author was my dad's favorite writer as he is mine. Aric asks what my favorite book is of Hemingway. I tell him A Moveable Feast. He says, I think I’m in love.
(Later he said he meant it – A Moveable Feast is Aric’s favorite book, so much so that he wrote his college admissions essay on the book.)
