Origin Story
In the beginning (as in the day she was born), they tried to kidnap Cocoa (as in me). My mum was very tired that day (obviously), but the nurse taking care of her insisted that they rearrange the furniture in the hospital room after my dad left with my hungry unnis and oppas for food. (I also mark this as the moment when I became obsessed with ice cream cake, which they went out to buy, but I digress).

The nurse said the room arrangement was precautionary, as there had been reports of someone trying to get onto the new baby ward (fresh babies are hot commodities apparently). Later, Mom awoke to a different nurse in the room, who has just squeezed between the bed and the wall to get to the crib where Cocoa lay sleeping obliviously (setting up a precedent for the rest of my life). Groggily Mom asks the new nurse, who is gently trying to take sleeping Cocoa from the crib, what she needs, and the woman instantly becomes defensive, fiddling with the IV pole which Mom notices is not hooked up to anything (but her pain addled brain just registers it as “huh, weird nurse”). She notices that the new nurse is wearing a different uniform, but also just shrugs it off (I should stop wondering where I get my nonchalance from). The weird nurse books it from the room, rattling the bed as she quickly squeezes back out through the space between the bed and wall.

A few minutes later the original nurse checks on Mom, who is by this point TIRED of the weird nurse shenanigans, and asks why she needs checked on AGAIN when she’s trying to sleep (she just had a baby for goodness’ sake). The nurse instantly turns on the alert, asking what the other nurse looks like, what she wore, twenty questioning my (again) exhausted mother.

Turns out the other nurse was wearing a uniform from a costume store nearby, and that day she had finally managed to sneak onto the new baby unit, and nearly got away with it (it being Cocoa, being me).

Anyways, (and most importantly) my dad and older siblings appeared later with ice cream cake,
The End
PS No I was not allowed to eat the cake. And yes, I do hope that poor woman trying to steal babies got some help. Babies really don’t solve any problems.

Oppa has CANCER! WHAT CAN BE MORE MAKJANG!

I found out in the past two years that my oppa had cancer when we were children. How did I not know this? See origin story for my obliviousness from, well, birth.

I always thought V oppa (his name starts with a V, nothing to do with BTS, though he is a good looking musician), was the best of my oppas. He was funny, always ready with a joke or a waggle of his eyebrows, athletic, he was a skater boy, and could do flips over picnic tables, musical, I can still sing the song about pie he made up for me one day on his guitar (he can play almost any instrument by the by, not to brag, my oppa is the best).

He was the best looking too, a prince version of Snow White if you will. Skin as pale as snow, hair a black shaggy ebony. Long eyelashes, black eyes, and a fineness, a fragility, a preciousness to him, a fire that flared brightly (yet like many bright flames easily put out).

I recall him being sick, of course. His waves of hair spread out black against a white hospital pillow. His inability to eat for so very long. When I found out about his cancer recently, suddenly so many things in my memories made sense. My intimate knowledge of children’s hospital play areas, my hatred of Sprite that lasted years (sprite in little paper medicine cups was the drink of choice as Mom got the cups from a nurse so she could have us kids share a bottle of the noncaffeinated soda during those long hours in the waiting rooms).

My oppa survived, but that sickness changed him. He became the bad boy with a tragic past in a school drama. He was kicked out of school minimum of three times, was chased by girlfriends’ fathers in the middle of the night, broke an arm here, knocked his teeth out there. Was a master of snark. Came home like a skunk kite at 3 am (I can still vividly remember peeking from the stairs as he actually physically drop kicked our oppa who was trying to restrain him one night). Finally dropped out of school and disappeared from the country.

Oppa was a firework that burned so bright because he was convinced he was burning out. He didn’t though, because he is and always will be one of the best oppas. Even at his worst points he would randomly show up to take care of us younger kids (he is eight years older than me), and make frozen dinners the most fantastic meal ever. He taught us drinking games with bottles of soda, introduced us to anime, never left the house without a guitar.

It took untimely deaths of others, his friends and fellow bright stars, to make him finally run away, this time to another city where he got competitive with his girlfriend at the time. But this time productively, a competition of who could get a university degree first. He lost the race, but still won a graphics degree. He is a software engineer now who gets to travel to different countries regularly for work, he’s a foodie, a devoted cat dad, the bass player in a weird punk techno band in New York City.

He’s my oppa, and he’s worked so hard. Even if his life is a makjang.

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In the end, I’m so long winded I only had time to write two stories (snippets are hard to attain when you are as verbose as me).