Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the balm.

My dear Playing W. Dirt,

Columbia has stolen my love for stillness. During school breaks, I used to relish swooning into my bed for a winding afternoon of blissful nothing. Now I feel an anxious itch in my chest whenever I stare at my schedule on Google calendar and see a gap. Time has taken on a toxic sanctity. Each moment, I feel a compulsion to begin tracing the outline of some future glory, whether by stressing over internships or pining after extracurricular activities. Little did I know, such was also the muggy atmosphere of America’s affluent suburbs.

Whereas I grew up as a Korean American in small town China, my uncle and his family live in a well-off pocket of upstate New York. A couple weeks ago, I visited them for Fall Break. Stumbling into their guest bedroom, I was exhausted, anxious, and clinging to my wit’s end. Although I had thoroughly enjoyed the past two months of scintillating bustle, the constant pressure and yearning had wrung me dry of peace. My aunt, who is a keen observer of the human condition, looked into my face and instinctively understood what I needed. While my cousins attended school and my uncle was in the city for work, she drove me to a Korean tofu restaurant, where I let myself order exactly what I wanted to eat. In strictly immigrant families, including my nuclear family, such self-indulgence is strictly prohibited, yet I knew my aunt could afford a couple dollars of my selfishness.

Spicy Korean rice cakes seared contentment back into my tastebuds, a slow-burn of nostalgia and pure carb-love. Over steaming tofu stew and grilled ribs, our conversation dipped into her life in the suburbs. According to my aunt, parents are crazy about their kids playing sports with professional fervor, training their little legs to kick balls ceaselessly. I confessed to her that after a life of torpor in southwest China, Columbia had instilled in me a similar restlessness, corrupting my ability to treasure the soft breath between strivings. My hope is that my cousins do not succumb to that same stress, at least not early in life. To this end, I want to do my best to play with them and remind us all that we are still kids, to continue romping around with them in their backyard: breaking tree branches, using plastic dump trucks to pave away pine needles from our chosen land, building a town made of sticks that we can abide in like a home away from home.

At the end of my time with my uncle and his family, I felt restored, my heart once more tender to the allure of sweet nothing. Not any one thing we did together renewed such a love—not my uncle’s half-hearted attempts to use golf as a family bonding activity, not even my aunt whisking me off to a sanctum of red hot Korean flavors. Instead, I found rejuvenation in coming home to the rhythms of adults and kids living in disharmony, bantering with love or else in absolute fury. It was the opportunity to be fed well and cared for, to know that I also could love on people dear to me.

Columbia claims to welcome me into a “family” of brilliant innovators and renown scholars, yet no family worth their salt would embrace a child only on the condition of their painstakingly piled accomplishments. Even though my cousins grew up in a manicured world entirely divorced from my own, when we dig our fingers into the foamy black earth together, we honor a love bound to the red in our veins. As long as the sticks are laid up with care, they form the house that truly matters.

Yours,

Emma Chung

Kids via Annie Spratt on Pixabay