LALATOWN LIFE

A few days ago, I started cleaning the house again.

Every morning, I get up and make my bed with almost ridiculous precision. Sharp corners. Everything pulled straight.

Then I unload the dishwasher, feed the animals, make coffee, vacuum the floors, sweep, mop.

Was I always this organized?

Well… sort of.

But not like this.

The perfectly made bed and the morning cleaning came later.

They became something I did to survive.

A routine I created so I wouldn’t lose my mind.

It started when my father began showing signs of dementia.

Around that time, our family went on a Caribbean cruise for my mother’s 70th birthday, Korean age.

My parents paid for the trip, but I organized everything.

My parents came from Korea. My sister and nephew came from New Zealand. My former spouse and I came from the United States.

Flights. Reservations. The cruise. Everyone’s schedules.

I remember feeling as though my head might explode.

My father’s dementia wasn’t severe yet.

But something was changing.

He was becoming anxious, especially in unfamiliar places. So even though we were on this enormous cruise ship filled with restaurants, we mostly ate at the same one.

It was quieter there.

We got to know a Filipino waitress. We tipped her generously and kept asking for the same table.

It became our safe little place on that enormous ship.

That was my first time seeing the Caribbean.

I had imagined that water for years.

That impossible emerald blue.

I thought it would feel like paradise.

It didn’t.

Honestly, I didn’t enjoy the cruise very much at all.

I don’t remember whether the food was wonderful. Half the time I didn’t know whether it was going into my mouth or my nose.

I was watching my father.

Always watching.

One day, Dad and I were walking together on the deck.

It was one of the largest cruise ships in the world at the time.

The ocean below us was unbelievably beautiful.

Dad stopped and looked at it.

Then he asked me,

“If I jump from here, will I die?”

My father was thinking about suicide.

I looked at him and answered as casually as I possibly could.

“No, Dad. You’re too good a swimmer. You probably wouldn’t die. The ship would have to stop, you’d be swimming around down there, and we’d probably have to pay a huge fine because of you.”

Ridiculous.

That was my answer.

A stupid little joke in front of an emerald sea.

Because what else was I supposed to say?

I held my father’s hand.

And I made him a promise.

“Dad, I promise. I will never send you to a facility. I’ll stay with you until the end.”

I kept that promise.

That period of my life also taught me something else.

Hard times have a way of revealing people.

My former spouse had always seemed to respect my father, perhaps even be a little intimidated by him.

But when my father became ill, that respect began turning into irritation.

He complained because he wanted to eat at other restaurants.

On the airplane, when I desperately needed help, he sat in his seat reading a book.

I remember looking at him and feeling as if he were treating me like someone he had never met.

As though none of this had anything to do with him.

After that, I began traveling back and forth to Korea frequently.

I had a job.

Our old house was beginning to fall apart and needed renovation.

There was always something.

My father.

My mother.

The house.

Work.

Marriage.

Life.

And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, I discovered a website called Spoonflower.

I think I found it through YouTube. Maybe through a Korean creator.

Fabric patterns?

I stared at the screen.

Wait.

I know this.

I could do this.

I want to do this.

I had an iPad back then, although I didn’t even own an Apple Pencil.

And I remember having this little fantasy.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someday my life could be like that?

Just sitting somewhere, drawing.

Making patterns.

Uploading them.

Seeing my drawings become fabric.

What a dreamy little life that would be.

Guess what?

That was ten years ago.

Exactly ten years.

My father is gone now.

My mother is gone too.

Even my mother, who once clung to me and begged me to somehow make everything all right, is no longer here.

And recently, without planning it, I found myself thinking about another memory.

It was much earlier.

I had been married for less than a year.

Denver International Airport wasn’t yet the enormous airport it is now, and my parents came through the little airport in Centennial to see their married daughter in America.

They knew I was struggling.

They were worried about me.

And apparently my father had arrived at Customs with an absurd amount of stuff.

Bowls.

Teacups.

Ceramics.

A teapot.

Things for the kitchen.

Things for the house.

Things my parents thought their daughter might need.

When Customs questioned him about all these “gifts,” my father argued.

“They’re not gifts! They’re used! We used them at home!”

A complete lie.

My parents had packed all those things and carried them across the ocean because they wanted to make my life a little easier.

Recently, as I began preparing to close the first chapter of my life, I looked at some of those things and wondered whether I should leave them behind.

There is so much to sort through.

So much to let go.

For a while I thought:

Maybe I should just leave all of it.

And then I laughed.

Because if Mom and Dad were alive, I know exactly what they would say.

“Hey. Leave everything. Just get out of there.”

I can practically hear them.

But yesterday I looked at one of those little teapots again.

The ridiculous little teapot that traveled all the way across the ocean with my parents because their daughter was having a hard time.

And I thought:

No.

I know what I’m going to do with this.

Wherever I begin the next chapter of my life, I’ll put it outside.

I’ll fill it with water.

And the birds can sit on it and drink.

Maybe that is what some things are for.

Not to remain exactly what they were.

But to carry love into another life.

Maybe a teapot doesn’t always have to remain a teapot.

And maybe neither do we.

Because somewhere along these ten years, something else happened.

I kept drawing.

I never wanted to give that up.

One day, while working in Procreate, I wanted a certain kind of brush.

I looked for it.

It didn’t exist.

I thought,

Why doesn’t anyone make a brush like this?

Then another thought came.

Oh.

I can make it.

So I did.

And to my surprise, making brushes came naturally to me.

It was fun.

Ridiculously fun.

I started making digital tools from my own drawings.

Then I used those brushes inside new illustrations.

Those illustrations produced new characters.

Some of those characters became new brushes.

Then they became little objects.

Then PNG files.

At first I thought people could buy my brushes and color everything themselves.

In retrospect, perhaps I was asking a little much.

Ha.

So I started making finished PNG objects too.

And those little objects began wandering around.

Onto a ramen topper.

Onto decorations.

Onto little things I never imagined when I first drew them.

And then one day I looked at everything I had made.

The houses.

The people.

The food.

The signs.

The shops.

The tiny objects.

The brushes.

All these little pieces of LALATOWN.

And I thought:

Wait a minute.

These are patterns.

I already have all the ingredients.

I had always imagined that becoming a pattern designer meant opening a completely empty canvas and starting again from nothing.

But I didn’t have nothing.

I had been making the ingredients for years.

I just didn’t know that was what I was doing.

And here is the part that makes me laugh.

My original major in Korea was craft design.

My emphasis?

Fabric.

Yes.

Fabric.

Ha!

Back then, we did everything by hand.

Drawing.

Silk screening.

Matching edges.

Building repeats.

All of it.

And somehow I spent years dreaming about becoming a pattern designer as though she were some completely different woman living somewhere far away.

She wasn’t.

Apparently she had been here the whole time.

She was just very busy surviving.

I don’t think this is the hardest period of my life.

People might expect me to say that it is.

But it isn’t.

Maybe I have become stronger in certain places.

A little chipped around the edges, perhaps.

But stronger.

And over the last few days, I have kept thinking about my father standing beside me on that enormous ship.

That emerald water.

His hand in mine.

“If I jump from here, will I die?”

Ten years.

So much happened after that question.

I kept my promise to him.

I lost him.

I lost my mother.

I carried things I thought I couldn’t carry.

I made beds with sharp corners.

I cleaned floors.

I got on airplanes.

I took care of houses.

I took care of people.

Sometimes I clenched my teeth and acted as though I was perfectly fine because I thought showing how hard it was would somehow make everything collapse.

And still—

somewhere inside all of that,

I did not lose myself.

That is what surprises me.

I did not forget her.

The woman who wanted to draw.

The woman who loved fabric.

The woman who looked at a pattern website ten years ago, without even owning an Apple Pencil, and thought:

Someday.

I took the long way.

A very long way.

But somehow, I came back to her.

So today I’m going to do something I don’t always do.

I’m going to pat myself on the shoulder.

Just a couple of little pats.

You can be proud of yourself.

You did well.

You held on.

And now—

look what you get to make.

Welcome to my LALATOWN Pattern World.