Born as a middle child among 9 children to poor parents
in a small farming town, my mother had rarely drawn attention or special care
at home. Once in her childhood, she was wanted by a Japanese couple with no
child living next door as their adopted daughter, but she did not wish to leave
her mom, dad, and eight loving siblings even if she had not been viewed as a
special kid in the family but rather one of those many children or even a diddly-squat. No more than a shy and quiet girl, but deep down inside, she had a
dream of becoming SOMEBODY in the future, although she had no clear idea of
what that SOMEBODY might mean. In her mind, “somebody” might refer to someone
who at least would not be a swarthy, thewless
person with nothing to achieve in a secluded town, but rather the one who tries
to hypostatize her amorphous dream.
The day came for this almost invisible high school girl
to put her first step forward to get closer to become someone special in her
family. It is applying for the air force as the first female air cadet corps in
the Republic of Korea, which was supported by the government. When her parents
came to learn about what their ‘non-person’ kind of insignificant daughter was
up to, they furiously opposed the addle-headed idea of becoming a pilot. Since
aviator was regarded as men’s job back then, her conservative parents even
threatened by telling her they will repudiate
her to say the least. She was locked inside her room, but her dream of
flying made her escape through the window of her room.
She was the Korean War veteran and later discharged from
the air force as a captain. Although her dream was not embraced by her own
parents since she became a pilot, fortune
favored the brave. She was granted the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to
study abroad by the government scholarship. Literally not knowing the ABCs of
English, her stay in the small college named Guilford in North Carolina had been no picnic at all. Eating, sleeping, and working myriads of part-time jobs
with English dictionary in her hand finally led her to the point of showing up
on a popular CBS TV show “What’s My Line?”. In the year of 1962, she became the
most popular female pilot from Asia in the States and was fortunate enough to
be presented a light aircraft called ‘Piper Colt’ funded by other American
female aviators’ under the slogan of ‘We
Help Captain Kim’ using their collection of green stamps. The precious aircraft was donated to the Aerospace
University in Korea when my mother came back in the year of 1963. 
My mother’s life had often been filled with trepidation and upslope throughout her
path to the sky, but each time she was considered by the square viewpoints of
the world and her own parents calling her “enfant
terrible”, she reminded herself of Amelia Earhart’s beautiful thoughts in
life: “Everyone has oceans to fly if they have the heart to do it. Is it
reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?” Who cares if your goals
or dreams in life could be no more than a reverie
that will never come to fruition? As long as you are putting your best foot
forward, just one step at a time, you are already in the right direction
towards your dreams.
Expressions
1.
diddly-squat:
nothing/ zero
2.
thewless: cowardly;
timid
3.
to
hypostatize: (verb) to treat or regard (a concept,
idea, etc.) as a distinct substance or reality
4.
amorphous: (adjective)
without a clearly defined shape or form
5.
to
repudiate: (verb) to cast off or disown (one’s children)
6.
Fortune
favors the brave/ bold: (phrase) "Fortune helps the
brave", and "Fortune favors the strong" are common translations
of a Latin proverb.
7.
Green
stamps: (proper
noun) S&H Green Stamps are a
discontinued line of trading stamps popular in the United States from the 1930s
until the late 1980s. They were distributed as part of a rewards program
operated by the Sperry & Hutchinson company (S&H), founded in 1896 by
Thomas Sperry and Shelley Byron Hutchinson
8.
trepidation:
(noun) a feeling of fear or agitation about something that may happen
9.
enfant
terrible: (idiom) a person whose unconventional or
controversial behavior or ideas shock, embarrass, or annoy others.
10. reverie: (noun) a fanciful or impractical idea or theory
