Recollections About My Father's Struggles with English

My father's words stumbled throughout his mouth and past his lips as he struggled to gather the right words to speak. I felt his discomfort itching down my body as our new neighbor's judgment was quick to show. Thirteen years my father spent carefully learning a language that somehow still betrayed him. Thirteen years, and my father was still a stranger to the language.

Up until this moment, this first encounter with our neighbor, my relationship with my father had been a lot like his English: broken yet tolerable. It took me ten years to realize the linguistic persecution that my father had felt for all those years. It took me ten years to realize that my self-identity had to change.

My story is the same as most immigrants: my parents were raised and believed in a completely different culture, and so I was raised multi-culturally. I didn't quite fit in with the kids at school, but I didn’t relate to my parents entirely either. I was stuck in the middle between the world of my parents culture and the world society expected me to live in. Unfortunately, as a child, of course, I chose to live in the world where I wouldn’t feel left out.

I would come home from school asking my parents if they could stop packing me leftover Korean food that had distinct odors for my lunch and just pack me Lunchables and capri sun instead. I wanted clothes from Nike and Under Armour instead of Target and Wal-Mart. I wanted to be able to fit in with the rest of my classmates. My parents' native language was slowly becoming my second.

As I entered high school, my relationship with my parents drifted further apart as my life quickly began to revolve around school, sports, and my social life. One particular Thursday night, my father had just come home from work late at night as he sat down on the couch to do his daily ELA practice for the night. He crashed down onto the couch and sighed heavily as his dark eyes seemed passionless and lost as he could not understand the language. I didn't notice at the time. Still, despite his apparent fatigue, he attempted to make conversation and asked how my day was in our native language. I was fourteen— the age where you start thinking you know better than your parents. Ignoring his generosity and feeling no sympathy, I told him he should speak in English since we were in the U.S.

Later that year, since my dad's engineering practice was expanding, we moved to a different yet better part of the neighborhood. It was beautiful, a huge upgrade. As he was telling us the news, my father, glowing with pride, explained to me in English how we could finally afford to get premium cable and watch those. I laughed weakly, knowing that Netflix and Hulu were cheaper and more popular nowadays.

The first encounter with our new neighbor in our new house changed everything. My father greeted him graciously, despite the fact that he was on our property uninvited with his dog trampling our newly installed grass as we unloaded the enormous U-Haul truck. Upon hearing his accent, his demeanor changed. 'So, how long have you been living in America?' he asked. My father paused, as if he knew where the conversation was headed. It was probably a conversation he had had countless times before. “Thirteen years,' he responded, with his head down and his eyes roaming around the yard trying to act like he was busy in order to avoid the embarrassment.

That's when I realized how wrong I had been my whole life. I regret staying silent during our encounter with our neighbor, but after that moment, I never spoke English with my parents again. I stopped ridiculing the cultural traditions they practiced every year. I never mocked their inability to speak the language ever again.

I figured that at the very least, my parents should feel welcome at home in their own home.

Ten years I wasted being ashamed of my background, my heritage, my family, my traditions. I'm seventeen now, but I still cringe when I think about the narcissistic person I once was. The shame and guilt of having realized something I should have known a long time ago will stick with me forever.