2012.06.12 18:49
우연히 미국정신의학회잡지(JAPA)에서 읽은 글을 소개합니다. Baltimore에서 일하는 정신과의사로 초등학교졸업때쯤 미국으로 이민가서 의과대학을 졸업하고 노인정신의학을 하는 분입니다. 1998년에 미국 APA총회(토론토)에서 만났습니다. 그 때 레지던트였고 98년 미국에 있는 한인 정신과 전공의를 대표해서 그 해 우리 학회(가을)에서 논문도 발표한 사람입니다. JAPA 2011년 10월호에 Introspection 란에 "My Father's Shoes"란 제목의 글이 있는데 감동적이고 정신과 문제가 아닌 미주 한인의사(서울대출신이 아님)의 글이기에 이곳에도 적당한 글이라 생각합니다. 내 기억으로 한국문화와 미국문화와 정신의학이란 문제에 고민을 많이 하던 분입니다. My Father’s Shoes My brother asked, “You know what he said? ‘Son, I’m sorry..., hope you prepare for your old age better than I did...so that you won’t burden your children...like I did.’ What has he ever done to burden me...?” My brother’s voice trailed off over the phone. I knew that he was in tears, but I just couldn’t picture him over the phone. Hojin, 6 years older than me, the rock of my Korean immigrant family, has never shed tears in front of me. Today, however, was a very unusual day. Hojin had to drive Dad to a nursing home in Seattle. I diagnosed Dad with dementia 4 years ago, but I live across the continent in Baltimore. As has always been the case, it fell on Hojin to take the steering wheel to drive Dad to the nursing home for Dad’s fnal journey away from home. A low-level civil servant throughout his life in Korea, Dad decided to move our family to the United States at the late age of 52, when most of his co-workers were preparing for retirement. It is still a mystery to me what led this meek, shy man to make such an audacious decision against Mom’s bitter opposition. Several years before my family’s move, Dad had taken a business trip to the United States, and it must have made quite an impression on this lifelong salary man. A seed of the American dream planted during the trip must have kept on growing. Meanwhile, Hosun, my eldest brother, received a scholarship offer from a Ph.D. physics program in Boston. Dad reasoned, Why not have the younger ones educated in the U.S. as well? He cajoled Mom, quit his job, sold our house, packed up all our belongings, and had our family depart for the United States on Thanksgiving Day in 1982. The day before we were to leave Korea, he took me to a fancy shoe store in downtown Seoul and bought me a pair of trendy leather shoes that I had seen on television commercials. His eyes twinkled as he talked about how I should walk in the new country with a new pair of shoes. He excitedly described our new life in the new country across the Pacifc Ocean. How we would live in a bigger house with green lawns and our own cars in the two-car garage. How I would study in much better schools and go to world-famous universities in the United States. I think he even asked me what I thought about all this. I don’t remember how I answered; I was just a 12-year-old kid with a new pair of leather shoes. Like most immigrant families, my family also struggled in the beginning. Dad could not fnd a regular job for over a year, Mom cleaned motel rooms to make ends meet, and Hojin dropped out of college to get a job as a data entry technician to help out the family. I got into some fights at school while I learned to read the alphabet and speak English, but I was largely shielded from whatever troubles my family was going through during those years. Eventually, it worked out as Dad had dreamed. By the time I left home for college, my family had saved enough to make a down payment on a modest house with a two-car garage and a green lawn. Hojin went back to college and got a job as an accountant near my parents’ home. Ironically, Hosun, who had provided the initial impetus for our immigration, went back to Korea for a faculty position after getting his doctorate degree. I went to a medical school on the East Coast and became a geriatric psychiatrist specializing in dementia care. A few years ago, Mom called me at work and told me that Dad had fallen and injured his face. She had been worried about Dad’s frequent falls and his increasing memory problems. Dreading what sounded like a familiar story in my clinic, I went back to Seattle and took him to see a local neurologist. Since Dad could not speak English, I had to serve as an interpreter and provide a detailed cognitive examination in Korean for the neurologist, who kept deferring to me. I found this annoying. It was hard enough for me to demonstrate Dad’s deficits in several cognitive domains, but did I even have to blurt out the dementia diagnosis for him? Later that day, I also saw the MRI film of Dad’s brain, which had shrunken pitifully. I had viewed such an appearance many times before in my clinic with the smug assurance of an expert clinician at a tertiary medical center. This time I felt every groove and fissure that was curling away into the darkness of the cranial cavity. Dad asked me if everything was OK with him, and I just smiled at him without saying anything. Dad smiled back and told me that he knew that his doctor son would take care of him. Last summer I made my annual trip to my parents’ house and noticed Dad’s beat-up, dusty canvas shoes on the shoe rack. By then he could not walk without a walker. Even with a walker, he would struggle to keep his shuffering steps moving forward and drag the front of his shoes on the ground to keep his balance. When I picked up the shoes and looked at the bottoms of the soles, I saw several deep holes in them and treads that were all but gone. That afternoon I took Dad to a shopping mall and bought him a pair of sturdy leather shoes. He kept fussing about how expensive the shoes were, but I could see that he was having a good time. Unsolicited, in his broken English, he kept telling everyone at the shoe store that I, his youngest son, was a doctor. As the kind shoe sales- man humored Dad by pretending to look impressed, I saw the same twinkle in Dad’s eyes that I’d seen a long time ago but had forgotten. At that time, however, I didn’t know that I was buying him a pair of shoes for a journey on which I couldn’t accompany him. I am sorry, Dad. Hochang B. Lee, M.D. Address correspondence to Dr. Lee (hochang@jhmi.edu). Introspection accepted for publication June 1011 (doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.1011.11050757). |
2012.06.12 22:11
2012.06.13 00:42
마치 이민 가정들에 있을법한 그래서 마음에 더 닿고 감동적인
글을 우리들에게 나누어 주셔서 감사드립니다.
미시간주에 사시는 조의열 김우신 동문들과 동기 이시군요.
환영합니다. 규정
2012.06.13 11:26
Dr. Kim, thanks for a heart-warming story. Here's my feeling on it.
Between me and my father, we didn't buy each other's shoes.
However, I am sure that we exchanged something in a similar way.
My father having passed away 20-some years ago, I don't remember what it was.
However, in the basic background of a father-son relationship, it is always the same story.
It doesn't have to be a pair of shoes as in this story,
but it might have been something else, real or abstract, that was equally heart-breaking.
In the process of immigration and living a tough life in a foreign land,
all fathers would regret that they have not done well enough for their children,
and all sons also regret that they have not done sufficiently enough for their aging fathers.
After having lost both of my parents one by one, each time I had been sad and regretful for a while,
but I have taken solace in the fact that such is the fate of life that runs through the generations.
I hope that, somewhere in the eternal end, it all becomes equal with no one having been short-changed.
There's another hidden story that the author would not say openly.
Please read carefully after reading the paragraph below. You may be able to see the message.
It's about the eldest son, Hosun, who took all the glories but conveniently stayed away
from his family in the pursuit of his own success.
Who took the responsibility of taking care of his father?
You might have guessed it. It was the second oldest son, Hojin,
who went through the same hardship as an immigrant with his father.
Hojin appears to be the least loved and endowed one among three brothers.
Yet, he's the one who stayed with his father to the end.
The first moral of the story: The most loved and endowed child is not necessarily the one
to stay dutifully and take care of his parents.
Let's see... How about Hochang?
By the time he was entering his college, the family had gotten out of the hardship.
Hochang was a lucky child. Yet, all he did was buying a pair of shoes to his father
and felt like he had done tons of good deeds for his father !!
(The judgement is based on within the context of the written story of his.)
The second moral of the story: Life is basically unfair. The rich always get away and the poor get stuck.
God bless poor Hojin !! My heart is with you.
2012.06.13 14:28
This is an interesting tale about us, Dr. Kim!
This one forces us to look into ourselves.
Me and my father, and 3 sons of mine.
We lived in different generations with different ideologies.
My father living in Confucian feudalism,
I lived in Westernizing rationalism,
And my children believing in something else.
Entering 70s in my life,
I realize this is the way with life cycle in Eastern culture as well as in Western Culture,
Not just because we came from Korea.
This cycle repeats and repeats everywhere.
We all persue different ways hoping to reach happiness.
It is good to read your article here!
How are you, Dr. Kim?
You are doing good, aren't you?!
2012.06.15 15:57
조선생, 우리가 만난 것이 2006년 졸업40주년 만찬이었지요.
그 때 이미 건강이 나빠서 나는 여행에 못 가서 진정한 만남을 동창들과 나누지 못했습니다.
그 때 조형의 사진을 보았고 원래 내 꿈이었던 은퇴후 생활을 (여행과 사진) 하는 것이 얼마나 부러웠는지요.
이곳에서 조형의 사진이 하루 하루 아름다워지느 모습을 보는 것이 하나의 낙입니다.
나는 2005년 은퇴후 Gogh의 흔적과 바울의 발자취의 극히 일부를 따라간 여행밖에 못했고 2006년이후는국내여행도 못하고 있었습니다.
작년에 우연히 민경탁화백과의 facebook만남을 이곳을 알게 되어 외출을 마음대로 못하는 처지라 거의 매일 들리고 있습니다.
나는 2009년에 문턱까지 갔다가 그야말로 속된 말로 기적이요, 내 말로는 크나큰 하나님의 은총과 어느 갸륵한 아가씨가 천국 가는 길에
주고 간 간으로 덤의 인생을 살고 있는 중입니다. 이제 조금 먼 거리도 혼자 외출할 정도가 되었씁니다.
앞에 있는 황규정님의 글을 보고 국내에 살고 있으면서도 못간 곳에 대한 여행을 마치 내가 하는 것처럼 느끼고 있습니다.
사흘전에 LA에서 온 # 65기의 임남진군(고교동기생)을 만나려고 수술후 처음 서울까지(분당에서) 혼자 지하철 타고,
걷고 하면서 나갔습니다. 남의 간과 남의 심장으로 사는 두 사람이 만나니 묘한 기분이 되더군요.
이렇게 쓰다보니 조형과 나는 59년 고졸에 66년 대학 졸업이란 공통점이 있네요, 하하.
나는 http://blog.chosun.com/ey10kim으로 조선일보에 있는 blog에 글을 올리고 있습니다.
요즈음은 좀 게을러져서 최근 한동안은 못 썼습니다만.
혹시 조형이 facebook을 하고 있으면 ey10 kim@gmail.com으로 친구 찾기를 하실 수 있습니다.
앞에 댓글을 달아 주신 황규정님께 감사 드립니다.
혹시 본문의 주인인 이호창선생에 관심 있으실 분을 위해 그의 주소변경을 적습니다. 최근 Yale Univ.로 옮겼답니다.
hochang.lee@yale.edu로 주소가 바뀌었습니다.
운영자님의 글 의미있게 읽어씁니다. Dr Lee를 처음 만났을 때 자기를 동부의 의과대학에 다닐 수 있게 고생하신
부모님과 형들에 대한 복잡한 감정에 대해 많은 이야기를 나누어씁니다. 저는 한때 mid-child syndrome이란 말도 한적이 있습니다.
운영자님의 말씀대로 호창은 어리니까, 호선은 이미 독립했으니까, 그래서 혼자 짐을 져야 했던 호진에 대한 이야기 많이 나누어씁니다.
Caucus of Korean-American Psychiatrist의 모임에 모두 참석하면서 한국의 의대 출신 선배들,
미국에서 의대를 다닌 선배들을 될수록 많이 만나서 이민 1.5세대, 2세대인 재미 한인 의사들의 고민을 토론하던 모습이 기억에 생생합니다.
그런 그의 심성이 그를 Yale까지 가게 한 힘이 아닌가 합니다.
이곳에 계신 분들, 아마도 미국에서 태어나서 미국의 의대를 다닌 자제분들도 많으실터인데
한번쯤 자제분들은 어떤 생각을 했는지 들어보시는 것도 좋을 것 같습니다.
횡설수설의 글을 읽어 주신 분들께 건방지다는 지청구를 들을 각오를 하면서 마칩니다.
감사합니다.
2012.06.15 16:43
2012.06.15 17:44
김선생글 무척 반가웠읍니다. 김선생건강에 관해서 어렴풋하게만 알고있어서
앞뒤를 종 잡을수 없었는데.
이 미주 홈피에는 우리동기중 오하이오주에 사는 노재선동문만 가끔 들어와 몆줄씩 적었었고.
딴 동문들은 글을 올린적이 없었답니다. Masschusetts의 정상국동문은 주기적으로 들러서 글들을 읽고만 간답니다.
Facebook에는 가끔 들르는데 거기서 김선생을 다시 찾아보겠오이다.
2012.06.15 20:26
Kim sun-bae-nim,
It seems to me you have a lot of stories to tell.
Please, get on this site and share your stories
with us. Will you?
If I find Essay Book - collection of our young
generation's view of their life in America which
we, The Korean-American Youth Foundation,
collected under the title, "My Life in America",
to find out their inner thought as a second
generation, I'll send to you as a cheerleader
for our site.
Thank you and see you more often here.
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It's a somewhat sad, but moving story.
Welcome aboard, Kim sun-bae-nim.