in between

today i went to get my second session of acupuncture; i sprained or strained my back playing basketball and it was getting better until i decided i was well enough to lift weights and play football. i wasn't well enough. so i walk in with my copy of Scar Tissue, a sex, drugs, and rock and roll memoir by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. there are two sides of chairs facing each other; two black people were sitting on one side with a seat in between them and there are two korean people on the other side with a seat in between them. without thinking about it, i sat down between the korean people and a few minutes later i realized what i had done and remember that before i came in i saw a couple of black people in a car next to where i parked, and i had a sudden rush of fantasy involving them stealing my car. all of these negative stereotypes of black people flood into my mind as i sit there reading my book, but all of that changes as the black woman sitting across me opens her mouth. it turns out that she's African and then i relax. i don't know what it is, but African people and African-American people are completely different. a whole bunch of other African dudes walk in and sit down, and i continue reading.

a little girl runs in holding her friend's hand and says hi to her grandmother who is sitting next to me. she speaks better korean than i can and i wonder if that was how i started out as a kid. a little boy running around saying hi in the language of the motherland and i get a little sad knowing that i've lost a lot of that language. soon the waiting crowd dies down a bit and an older grandmother walks out and she slowly shuffles towards the empty seat next to me (the other grandmother switched to the other side somehow). she's a bit hunched over, has white hair, but is rocking a Coach bag as perhaps a status symbol or as if to say fashion doesn't grow old. she uses her energy sparingly and i'm honored that she uses it to sit next to me. she asks me in korean what was wrong with me. and i answered in my limited korean that my back hurt. she asked if i was a high school student. i told her i was in college and that i was 22. during the conversation she had a very soothing warmth to her voice and she put her hand on my knee just as she would to her own grandson. she went on to talk about things that i couldn't understand, but i caught the korean words for "acupuncture clinic" and "best" so i put two and two together and found that she was talking about how she looked for a good acupuncture place and that she heard that the one we were in was the best. she asked me a question that i couldn't quite answer in korean, but right when she asked the doctor called her over to give her the prescribed herbal remedies. i saw a white man come out and watched him pay the doctor for his own herbal supply, but i heard him ask, "is this one, mom's?" pointing at one of the boxes of herbal remedies, i assumed that he was either a son-in-law or some kind of caretaker, but the first seems more likely. the grandmother got up and paid for the box and she came over to put on her jacket. i said goodbye as she left and she said goodbye. as she left the little girl came back running around not knowing what to do with all the energy inside her little body.

i realize that i'm in between. in between death and life, between old and young. i'm not considered old yet, but i'm not considered as a kid either. i can't speak korean as i can english, but i know that i'm not fully american or korean. i'm in between. i look forward to looking at youths when i'm an elder. i just don't know what to do with the time between then and now.