That’s My Best Friend, Lil. She’s A Delight!

I tell my white friend something about my immigrant childhood, maybe something my parents said or did. I’m sharing very matter-of-factly because it is something I find totally inane. But then they look at me in disbelief. I had expected a laugh, or a smile at the very least. Instead, I’m taken aback by her response: “I can’t believe your parents would say that to you. It is amazing how well-adjusted you are as an adult, given how harsh your parents were.” 

My parents are normal — strange sometimes, strict about some/many/everything for sure, but also ridiculously generous and funny in their own way. It only takes experiencing these moments of “othering” a couple of times to realize that some stories are meant for specific audiences. 

I take the same story to Lil, who also grew up in an immigrant household, and she immediately appreciates the situation. She knows without knowing everything: “Oh, I totally get why she did that. How funny!” Sometimes, she tells me an equally ridiculous story about her parents, and we snort and belly laugh and say, “Yes! Yes! I can’t believe your dad would say that and also, of course, he would!” 

The white listener of my childhood stories notices my parents’ inability to communicate fully in English or understand Western cultural nuances, and ends up hyper-focusing on their Asianness. I don’t worry about this with Lil. Even though the details of our stories differ in geography traversed (Korean Canadian by way of the Philippines vs. Chinese Canadian by way of Malaysia), languages spoken (Korean vs. Hakka), and eggs eaten (soy sauce and chili powder-marinated eggs vs. tea eggs), the brushstrokes of our stories are the same. They are the same in that we both get asked “What kind of Asian are you?” (How polite) or get yelled, “Chinese! Ching Chong!” (Not polite). Go back up the chain of ancestors and you’ll see that before they shared similar immigrant stories, the same bearded men instilled in our Korean and Chinese parents the importance of filial piety.

I remember in high school going to her house for sleepovers. Her house was not my house but also comfortingly familiar. One time her older sister yelled at us for watching “Sex and the City” in the basement TV room (“Aren’t you two too young for this show?!”), and I found that delightful because it reminded me of my dad yelling at me (“Why are you lying down on the couch again! You can stop moving when you are dead!”). 

After I ended a call with my parents (a one-way lecture to remind me to do well in school) during a sleepover at her house, Lil just started laughing and said, “It’s so funny because all you said during that phone call is ‘Neeee Neeeee Neeee’ and then you hung up! It’s so funny because I do that, too.” 

I remember appreciating her so much in that moment because she made me feel so normal. The tension between my parents and I was high during my teenage years, and I think I would have pushed my parents away even more if it wasn’t for Lil, who helped me see that my parents were not exceptionally hurtful. They were normal Asian immigrant parents who showed love differently for their Westernized children. 

Two decades later, Lil continues to be a steadying force in my life. During the pandemic at the height of anti-Asian rhetoric and violence, we talked for hours to process our grief and anger. In our search to get to the other side of the darkness, we made our podcast “Call to Delight.” Like two teenagers at a sleepover, we prattled on about how my parents kept dishes in the oven growing up and how I do the same now with the dishwasher that came with my apartment. We talked about the film “Parasite,” the book “Goodbye, again” by Jonny Sun, and other quotidian things probably not worth anyone else’s time. 

We just wanted to take note of each other’s delights because as prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay wrote in “Inciting Joy,” “noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive.” 

This year, we decided that we would be each other’s accountability buddies. We are individually pursuing different projects this year, and the plan is to call each other every month to share updates and cheer each other on. We’re calling it “accountability phone calls,” but it’s really no different from what we have been doing for the last 20 years. She lives in Canada, and I live in the Netherlands, but when we talk, we are 16 years old again. I’m in her bedroom, wearing her T-shirt and lounge pants on her bed with my legs up against the wall, head hanging off the bed. 

We are talking about nothing and taking everything the other one says very seriously and not at all. There is never disbelief in her face, or more accurately these days, detectable in her voice: only recognition, mutuality, and shared understanding of the struggles and delights of our unfolding identities. It’s the best. She’s the best. That’s my best friend. Go best friend. (Delight.)

Cover Image: Yeon Joo Roh; Illustration by Lisa Wakiyama