I recently returned from visiting my parents in Seattle.  No husband, no kids, no siblings with nephews and nieces accompanied me this time.  I had undiluted time with my parents, and we engaged in a nice give-and-take in our choice of activities.  I recommended something one day, they recommended something else the next.  It was really enjoyable because there were no expectations for exciting or “meaningful” activities intended to “create memories.”  Our decisions were very simple, like which route to take on our daily walk or which movie to see or whether to go out for dinner or not.

One of my mother’s requests was for me to help her shop for a new laptop.  My 79-year-old mother has recently become an Apple groupie.  She has an iPhone and an iPad.  And she really wanted a MacBook with retina display.  She had gone online and done a lot of research about exactly which MacBook she wanted, how much memory, the size of the screen, whether to get a MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air.  One of the biggest concerns she had was whether or not she would be able to get a Korean-character keyboard programmed in so she could respond in Korean to all her emails from her friends.  Which, of course, is definitely possible and very easy.

So, when my mother felt she had done enough research and had a few remaining questions that could only be answered by a real person, we went to the Apple store.  When we arrived, we found someone to help us, a young man who looked to be in his mid-twenties, with a mop of dark brown hair and speaking very rapidly.  My mother pulled out her list of questions and my anxiety level immediately went up.

Both my parents speak English with a heavy Korean accent.  When I was growing up, my father’s English was better than my mother’s because he was out in the working world.  My mother took some classes at the local college and got her license as a real estate agent, but her real job was raising her children.  Sometimes, teachers at school would have a hard time understanding her.  Many of my friends’ mothers did, as well.

Once, when I was in high school, the parent in charge of the PTA called our house and I picked up the phone.  She wanted to relay some information for my mom about upcoming activities the PTA was planning.  She asked me if it would be better for her to tell me what was coming up and then I could explain it to my mother, just assuming that my mother didn’t speak English because of her heavy accent.  I didn’t bother telling this woman that it wasn’t as if I spoke Korean and could explain any better than she could what my mom needed to know.  I just said okay and listened to the news, told my mom exactly what I had been told, and that was that.  But my childhood is littered with moments when people looked at my mother blankly, assumed she didn’t speak or understand English because of her accent, and turned to me to “translate” for her, pretty much treating my mother as if she were invisible.

I used to try to remedy the situation by correcting my parents’ English.  If they said, “After for a while,” I’d say, “No, it’s either ‘After a while’ or ‘For a while.’”  Or if they said, “Oh, what a heck,” I’d say, “No, it’s what the heck.”  But these corrections never took.

So, when we were in the Apple store, being shown the laptops by this young guy who spoke rapid-fire English that even I had trouble following, I was mentally leaning forward and standing on my tiptoes, ready to jump in when the time came.  But with every question my mother asked, this young man not only understood exactly what she said but answered her with exactly what she wanted to know.   I relaxed a little and looked around the store and saw so many different kinds of people and heard so many different languages that I had to smile.  When I turned back to my mother’s conversation, she was even joking around with the salesman.

Looking at this twenty-something man and my 79-year-old mother made me think of a family vacation I took with my husband and children to Italy.  We had somehow found a playground, complete with swings and slides and seesaws, and my husband was playing with our children.  It was a quiet, peaceful Sunday, and we were the only people there.  I was sitting on a bench, watching.  Very close to my bench was a monument of some sort.  There are so many monuments, statues, and plaques all over Europe that to read every one you come across can be overwhelming.  So I was sitting on this bench, vaguely aware of this monument and mentally making a note to check it out when we were ready to go.

An Italian man sat down on the bench next to me.  He looked like he was in his seventies; he wore a neatly pressed suit and an old but clean hat.  And he just started talking.  He had a very soft voice, but he spoke and spoke and spoke.  Once in a while, he would point to the monument next to us while he spoke.  Of course, he spoke in Italian.  Which I didn’t understand.  I had enough Italian under my belt to get, maybe, one in twenty words.  I picked up enough to understand he was talking about World War 2.  I desperately wanted to know what stories he was passing on to me; I wanted to be able to honor his gift by mentally recording his words and writing them down later.  But all I could do was listen quietly and watch him.  And when he finished speaking, he got up and left.  The monument was dedicated to the men of that small town who had died in the war.  To this day, I wish I could have been a more responsible listener.

When we got back to my parents’ house with my mother’s new laptop, she spent the entire afternoon fiddling around with her new toy.  She was so excited and happy exploring what the laptop could do and so engrossed by it that she didn’t want to cook dinner.  We decided to go out for pizza that night.  While we ate, my dad started telling me a story.  In the middle of which, he said, “And after for a while…”