Wandering Lights

Making new friends is hard. The level of uncertainty is uncomfortable. I feel exposed and vulnerable. We suss each other out asking endless questions. Do I like how they approach important things in life such as work, play, politics, or relationships? Do they prioritize what I prioritize? Do they like what I like? More importantly, do they hate what I hate? Even if everything else lines up, are we in similar enough places in life to schedule our joint time often? Compatibility doesn’t come easily.

For me, the important question is ‘can we nod our heads knowingly at each others’ stories?’ It tells me how much of ‘explaining myself’ I’d have to do with this person. Yesterday, my new friends (M & S) told us a story of what they went through at the airport security on their way home. My friend’s father packs vacuum-sealed blocks of pâté and homemade Polish sausages in her suitcase. The TSA folks are not impressed with the cargo, and they pull her aside.

“What are these?”

“That’s homemade pâté.”

“Umm…what is that?”

My friend describes what pâté is. The agent is not sure. He needs to speak to his supervisor. Another round of explanation. Then another person even higher-up, is called in. My friend painstakingly repeats her Polish food culture lesson for the officers. In the meantime, she’s thinking, if you bastards are going to confiscate it, at least take it home and eat it. After a moment of uncomfortable pause, the highest ranking officer announces the first agent should decide what to do and leaves. With his supervisors gone, the agent says, “Oh well, Merry Christmas!” and lets her go.

As I hear this story, it takes me only four words — father, homemade, pâté, and TSA — to find myself exactly where she was. Her pâté and sausages is my kimchi and garetteok. I did my share of explaining at the customs. My mom always stuffs my check-in luggage with homemade Korean food until it reaches exactly 50-pounds. She vacuum-seals it, Saran-wraps it, and double, triple bags it in zipped pouches. I say yes to one too many bag of spicy squid banchan, because I see my mother literally deflate when I say no. When the customs’ officer carelessly pokes and prods at her perfectly sealed food bags with English labels in her round, polite handwriting (clearly meant for situations like this), I feel the urge to stop those violating hands. My mom packed that bag until 3am on the day of my departure. She poured her love, grief, worry all into that bag and carefully sealed it shut, hoping the smell of her food wafting into my kitchen in Seattle would close the ocean-wide gap and bring her daughter back to her table in Pusan. If that bag doesn’t cross the border with me, I won’t have the heart to tell her that it didn’t. And yes, I would be thinking exactly the same thought. If you are going to take that away from me, at least take it home and eat it, you bastards. These are the experiences that turn two strangers to inseparable friends. Our shared sense of unease at these borders only we immigrants are acutely aware of. It’s different from getting some jamón I bought in Spain confiscated at the customs. That bag of banchan or pâté represents the love that made us who we are. Explaining that bag of food is defending your mom, dad, heritage, culture, and your home. It is proving once again that your food, your smell, your presence deserves to cross this border and exist in this country.

We had a wonderful night, drinking one bottle of Merlot from Washington, where three of us had lived at some point, and one bottle of Pinot Grigio from New Zealand, where one of us had immigrated from. Four hours of conversations sweeping through so many topics; travel, hiking, AI bleats, tech industry gripes, politics, religion, parents, and their plentiful refrigerators, wine, film photography, and our furry friends.

I’m glad I ventured out of my little bubble to attend the writers’ conference and exchanged emails with at least this one person. I did not feel I belonged there at all, but I still might have made a friend.

*disclaimer: I like em dashes. I do not let LLMs do my thinking nor writing.