Plain glazed in a bowl on top of trail mix (Photo courtesy Ayoung Kim)

Stories for Smily are stories I have written about my mother, for my mother. The saying that real life is crazier than fiction holds true: You cannot make this stuff up!

I checked the GPS for the route to Oxnard.

It would take approximately one hour and fifteen minutes. I got behind the wheel while uh-muh-ni packed herself, a bag of oranges and a thermos of coffee into the passenger seat. Our destination was the post office, where I would submit fingerprints for a background check. As soon as I turned the ignition, Christian pop-rock blared out of the speakers. Tunes that sound identical to the current Top 40 pop songs but replaced with Christian lyrics. Example: where Justin Timberlake croons, “Let me feel your body,” the Christian verse implores, “Let me feel Thy Grace”. 

“Jesus!” I jump.

“What?” uh-muh-ni asks.

“Why loud?” I ask while slamming the volume knob, nearly twisting it off with irritated aggression. I hate that I asked that question because I know “Why loud” – because uh-muh-ni is nearly deaf. Yet I can’t stop myself from asking questions to which I already know the answer when I’m shocked or angry, which only fuels my foul temper. More infuriating, why when I’m shocked or angry, do I adopt broken English and sound like uh-muh-ni? Why do I imitate a way of speaking that isn’t mine and never was mine, and omit verbs and articles like an English-as-a-second-language immigrant?

Pull it together. Be a grown-up please, I plead with myself.

“I can’t listen my music,” uh-muh-ni complains.

I raise the dial midway: too loud for me, not loud enough for uh-muh-ni, leaving all parties dissatisfied. What cruel irony: it used to be me complaining that I couldn’t hear my music and uh-muh-ni refusing to turn it up.

Sighing, I back out of the driveway. We both have agendas. I have to go to the post office. Uh-muh-ni wants to go to a Korean grocery store which she said was in the neighborhood. Also, I have to calm down and be the adult. Please.

The drive is pleasant; we pass the uncrowded beaches in Ventura, uh-muh-ni peels an orange and stuffs the peels in the side-door panel, along with used tissue. The Christian channel spews  platitudes: “God sent His son for you! God 100% wants you to represent Him!”

The GPS guides us to the post office where I complete the background check requirements. Agenda #1 crossed off.

I ask uh-muh-ni for the name of the Korean store

and plug it into my phone. It registers it as a ten minute drive away. “We’ll be there in no time,” I say. I follow the GPS to the red marker on the map at which point it says, “You have arrived.”

Uh-muh-ni shakes her head with a bewildered expression. “This isn’t it.” I continue further down the street when uh-muh-ni instructs me to turn left at the next street because she swears it was on the corner. Wrong. 

“Ok,” she bargains, “the next corner.” We approach the next corner; still wrong.

I cease following uh-muh-ni and go back to following the GPS at which point it declares, “You have arrived.” We see a diner, a liquor store, a fabric shop.

“No,” uh-muh-ni says. “Keep driving.” I make several more passes up and down Oxnard Boulevard when I make her call the Korean market to confirm they are still in business at the same address. The store reports that they are—at which point the GPS exclaims, “You have arrived”—and at which point I spot the Korean market!

“It’s right here! It was right here all along! We drove past it three times and you didn’t notice it!” I accuse her. 

Uh-muh-ni’s disorientation manifests with her surveying the surroundings as if she’s never seen stores or streets or sign posts. “Oh my gosh,” she says, “it looks totally different when I’m driving than when I’m a passenger. I didn’t see it at all.”

“Mm hmm, you no see huh?” Uh-oh. In my anger, spontaneous English-as-a-second-language pidgin spouted out.

Huffing, I sulk into the small Korean market. Uh-muh-ni addresses the cashier in Korean, “We drove by your store so many times but didn’t see it!” As if it were the store’s fault that uh-muh-ni—riding in the passenger seat and thus having a vastly different perspective of the world—failed to recognize it. 

The clerk shrugs and says, “Nye,” which means, “Ok.”

I mope in the rice aisle while uh-muh-ni purchases wontons skins and a jug of kimchi. 

Agenda #2 crossed off. But uh-muh-ni adds another agenda item: Krispy Kreme, which she pronounces as KremeKrisp.

“I know where it is, it’s right off the freeway.”

She makes a big show of confidence ever since I started speaking pidgin to her. Not trusting her, I order her to drive so that her vision of the world will return. For added security, I input the address into the GPS.

We head out of the parking lot when I read the first set of directions.

“Oh, it’s 101 south? I thought it was 101 north,” uh-muh-ni mumbles as we merge southward.

Thanggod for GPS, I say to myself. 

I read the address and street name. 

“Oh, I thought it was Vineyard. I thought KremeKrisp was on Vineyard…” she trails off as her confidence melts away. Apparently, being in the driver’s seat did not return her memory.

We turn into the parking lot and walk into the shop. The smell of freshly baked donuts smacks us in the face.

“Ooh! Strong donut!” 

Uh-muh-ni shoots me a concerned glance. “Maybe you need coffee.” 

Internally, I agree. I need to get a grip.

We join the queue, and once uh-muh-ni reaches the front, she orders a dozen. Upon returning home, uh-muh-ni individually wraps eleven to put in the freezer. The twelfth donut—a plain glazed—she sets aside to enjoy with a cup of hot green tea. 

Seated in her favorite recliner, uh-muh-ni recounts how she went to great lengths to hand-carry KremeKrisp donuts from America to Korea. When she presented them to her sister, her sister blurted, “But we have them here, in our country.”

Uh-muh-ni devours the donut as if she hasn’t eaten all day. She hasn’t, aside from oranges and coffee. She reaches for another donut from the freezer.

“It’s not stone!” she says with a smile on her face.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Not stone,” she repeats.

“You mean, it hasn’t frozen yet?”

Uh-muh-ni sighs. “You have problems understanding.” She bites into her chocolate sprinkle donut.

Refer to Agenda #3: Calm down and be the adult. Please!

“Fine, enjoy your not stone KremeKrisp,” I say and bolt down another coffee.

“Smily” is a nickname my mother gave herself. These are a collection of stories and poems written for her.