A Tour of My Memories

The words “I remember” trigger a whole host of memories, but most are from early childhood, meaning preschool and elementary school. There’s a magical quality to those memories that can’t be tainted. I think my mind gravitates towards those because it wants to hold onto when things seemed simpler.

One of my earliest “I remembers” is eating off of colorful plates with fish designs in daycare. 요리 시간, cooking time, is what it was called in Korean. If you know me, it’s very appropriate that one of my earliest memories is tied to food. I'm the type of person who lives to eat, not eats to live. My parents say that as a baby I always held two fistfuls of food. One hand was my eating hand and the other was saving food for later.

Another early “I remember” is doing splits against the wall in ballet, my teacher nudging my bum slightly until I was 180°. This one reveals another important part of myself: dance! Though I stopped ballet a long time ago, I rediscovered a new style of dance in 7th grade: hip hop! Ever since then, my love for dance has grown. My parents joke that I’m always “wiggling around the house” dancing. Another “I remember” that shows my artistic side is the memory of myself singing the entire Matilda soundtrack to my grandma at my dining table.

Other “I remembers” are tied to family, also a big part of my life: baking nights when my aunt babysat me and my brothers and wanting to name my baby brother “Balloony” because my mom’s pregnant belly looked like a balloon.

There’s also moments of victory: getting a cookie for the most improved player of the week at soccer camp and winning a limbo competition at my 할머니 (grandma) and 할아버지’s (grandpa) church retreat. Plus, a significant milestone: texting my friends from my first phone—a flip phone!

There’s the rough moments too: crying with my brothers when we got our flu shots, our mom trying to calm all 3 of us down, and crying at 하권 (tutor) because I didn’t know how to solve the math problems.

Then, there’s the miscellaneous ones. I wonder why I stored those, ones without a particular happiness or sadness tied to them. Things like: swimming lessons at the JCC in my bright pink swim cap and drum lessons at Korean school when the boys got yelled at for joking around. I remember thinking the teacher’s lounge had a hot tub too.

I thought of fewer “I remembers” when it came to middle school. Maybe those ones are still processing—even though it was a long time ago—since a few big events happened then: COVID and the flood that shut down my school for a year. In fact, those were two of my “I remembers.”

1. I remember Zoom after Zoom after Zoom—and sometimes a Google Meet.

2. I remember the day before the first day of school since the pandemic, my school flooded; everyone else had normal school, but it wasn’t until the next year that our school went back to normal.

Otherwise, there were similar trends in my middle school “I remembers.” A lot of dramatic moments: throwing up while watching the sunrise in Jejudo after I ran up the mountain too fast, throwing up after I went banana boating, fainting at my tutor, and fainting when I got my first COVID vaccination.

Don’t worry! I have a happy one too: scoring my first goal on a penalty kick! I can’t forget the dance one too: my first hip hop class, when the teacher made us freestyle and I didn’t know what to do.

My high school “I remembers” seem to cover a lot of firsts. I guess that just goes to show that you can still experience a lot of new things as you grow older. From high school, I remember my first time crying during a movie, first concert, first cookbook recipe, and first time catching a ride with my friend after she got her license. 

In case you’re curious, the movie was Avatar: The Way of Water. I hadn’t even watched the first movie when I watched the second one. My first concert was a KPOP boy group called P1Harmony. I actually didn’t know much about them before going but just wanted to go to a concert. My first recipe was 짜장면, black bean noodles. And for our first outing, my friend drove us to Panera.

I have two miscellaneous “I remembers” from high school: my teacher bribing the airport staff so that my group wouldn’t miss our flight in South Africa and reuniting with my kindergarten classmate for the first time in 10 years.

And of course a dance one too: my parents surprising me with mirrors in the basement for my 16th birthday! (Mirrors are super helpful for dancers)!

Often, we’re so focused on the present or the future that we forget to look back. Once in a while, it’s important to ask ourselves the simple question of “What do I remember?”. You’ll be surprised what your mind picks out when you allow yourself to remember without any objective, just a stream of consciousness. In asking this simple question, you can start to discover who you are and how you came to be.