By Seattle summer — the season we earn through the rest of the year. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.
Hana, 2, on a step stool stirring miso into broth. She knows the order. She is bilingual already in food vocabulary. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.
Naengmyeon for the heat. Cold buckwheat noodles. The summer dish.
Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.
I drank tea on the porch in the rain. Standard Seattle. The kitchen warm behind me.
Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.
I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.
I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.
Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.
The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.
The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.
I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.
Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.
I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.
Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.
The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.
The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.
My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.
Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.
James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.
A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.
David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.
Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.
Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.
Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.
Naengmyeon was the anchor this week — the cold buckwheat noodles I mentioned, the dish that says summer has finally arrived and you are allowed to stop being warm for a moment. But on the porch in the Seattle rain, tea in hand, what I kept coming back to was something even simpler: cold, bright, a little sweet, something you could pour for Hana or share with David when he brought the tomatoes over. This orange punch is that — no ceremony, no complexity, just the cold thing that makes the season feel earned after all the meetings and the therapy and the pre-dawn writing hours and the layered work of being who I am.
Orange Punch
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 2 liters ginger ale, chilled
- 1 can (12 oz) frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
- 1 can (12 oz) frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
- 2 cups pineapple juice, chilled
- 1 orange, thinly sliced, for garnish
- Ice, as needed
Instructions
- Combine concentrates. In a large punch bowl or pitcher, stir together the thawed orange juice concentrate and lemonade concentrate until well combined.
- Add juice. Pour in the chilled pineapple juice and stir gently to incorporate.
- Add ginger ale. Just before serving, slowly pour in the chilled ginger ale along the side of the bowl to preserve the carbonation. Stir once, gently.
- Add ice and garnish. Fill the bowl or glasses with ice. Float orange slices on top for garnish. Serve immediately.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 180 | Protein: 1g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 45g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 30mg