I Leave It Up to You

by Jinwoo Chong

And for the longest time, with my eyes fixated on his face, wondering how in the fuck he had gotten so much older without my noticing, I just kept laughing, tears streaming whole rivers down my face, thinking just two things: that all of it was the funniest shit in the world, and that I would never really figure out why.

“I’m not the only person allowed to be important,” I said.

I’d heard him laugh in ten years, and I don’t know which was sadder, the idea that he hadn’t laughed in all that time or that I just wasn’t around to hear it.

“I’m not blaming you, I’m not saying you should’ve done anything different. I can’t. If I think that way, I’m going to die.”

“I’ve been trying something out where I care a little bit less about how I feel and a little more about how other people feel. It’s hard. But it feels right.”

“Are you afraid to lose your parents?” She squinted at me quizzically. “What kind of question is that?” “Just wondering,” I said. “I’ve always been afraid of it. I’m worried I’ll never get over it.”

good. I hoped she could understand what I was really asking, which was, will it ever be easier to forgive family for the things they do? Do the lines become clear between the black and the white? And if so, on what side do we come up in the end?

Family is give and take: When you’re born, you take, and when you get older, you give, more and more, to everybody that gave to you. To them.”

“Sometimes you look at me like you expect me to live forever,” he said. “I hate letting you down.”

“You should know,” Appa said, “when you came in here and asked me if I was retiring, I was afraid you’d figured it out and were planning to tell me you wouldn’t do it. That you’d decided enough was enough and you were going back to the city tomorrow. And I hoped, just like I did the first time you left, that maybe I’d done enough to make you miss us, miss the restaurant, and Fort Lee, and everything we have here. Just hoped, without thinking about anything or trying to come up with ways to stop you. Just hoped.”

“No matter where you might be or how old you get. I’m always going to need you.”

Time was such a stupid fucking scam. I had wasted so much of it. There wasn’t enough anymore to tell myself that I’d done it well, any of it. What’s one guy against all of that? What’s one guy to try to make sense of all of the things that don’t?