W0XjdP

order at restaurants. You barely pass.
The ties are the last to go. You rarely speak to your relatives
unless you visit or call, the distance becoming more than
just geographical. You try to keep up with them on Facebook,
but you hide parts of your life because you don't know how
they'd react. even your mom gets in on the gig, saying that it
would be best if they didn't know some things. You dream of
living back in your ancestral homeland, but reality reminds
you that it would probably only be fun for a little while, before
you want to come home, here, to the Americas.
It's a story about gain, about building.
When your roots are loose, the first thing you do is to put new
ones down. You end up in a place you find rather agreeable.
You make friends, build your own 'extended' family. You let
your best friends' families 'adopt' you, and you bring your own
to their Thanksgivings, their Christmases, their Seders. You
get hurt when these friends move away, but you eventually
realize that wherever they settle, you have carte blanche to
visit them, to make new roots someplace new.
When your knowledge of your ancestral culture is fractured,
the first thing you do is try to create one. You do this
by voraciously reading up on your own. You still don't remember
all the details, but you go through the motions, hoping
that there's some meaning there. You read up on others', and
you discover ones that you never knew existed. You fall in
with the nerds, the punks, the gays, the outcasts. You pick
up their slang, their argot, their mannerisms. You move on,
sometimes, after you get bored, but they're always a part of
you, and you make your own.
And when your traditions are hazy and gone, you make
new ones. Your Christmases are now spent with your family,
watching bad movies like Jingle All the Way. You always
block time out at the major holidays to visit your best friends.
When you're sick, you always order out from that same Korean
restaurant that makes 짬뽕. Is that what your relatives
eat when they're feeling sick? no? You don't care. It makes
you feel better. every birthday, you invite your friends out to
a Korean restaurant, and put what little Korean you still remember
to good use, and on theirs, you learn how to wrap
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