YOUNG CHANG -- Reporter’s Notebook

I was wearing a brown V-neck shirt and beige shorts.

My mom was wearing a very pretty flower-print dress.

My dad was in a casual button-down and black slacks.

The rented car was a white sport-utility vehicle, the drink I drank

afterward was a diet Coke, the song I played as soon as I got into my new

closet-sized dorm room was Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.”

I remember everything about the evening of Aug. 29, 1995. The tears, the expression on my dad’s face and how it almost ripped me in half, the

trees on campus and how they shed so heavily and how the cheesy piles of

fallen auburn leaves made me even sadder.

August always reminds me of this. Cars bursting at the hinges with

pillows and guitars and everything else we need to feign a second home

make me want to cry. I’ve seen these cars lately.

It’s that time again.

Six years ago, my parents dropped me off at college in Baltimore and

flew back to Korea.

We did the goodbyes in the parking lot near my dorm. It was a matter

of them getting in the car and driving away. It took forever to happen.

We hugged, my mom and I cried, we stood there, leaned on the car,

opened the doors, closed the doors, hugged some more, cried some more,

reopened the doors.

Then they started getting in. My dad’s face crumpled, and he motioned

with his hand for me to go to my room. I broke. I saw him cry. They

closed the doors. They left.

I watched the car disappear down a street called Charles Street and

stood there even with nothing left to see. The tears turned into an ache.

It was the most awful ache.

I thought it would never go away.

Back in my little room, I drank the diet Coke and listened to Mazzy

Star. I cleaned, I read, did everything I could to forget that my two

favorite people in the world were about to get on a plane and travel

across oceans and continents and be apart from me until winter break.

I did everything but sob.

The drama, I know.

For four years, my mom called and cried after having eaten salmon --

one of my favorite foods -- and lamented the tragedy that I couldn’t eat

it with her.

My dad called and asked, in his man-of-little-words way, how I was

doing and whether I was eating and how fast I was driving. I’d say “I

miss you!” before hanging up, and he’d say “yeah, yeah, OK” and hang up

quickly before the emotions crept in.

I never told them when I got sick.

I never called my mom after watching mother-daughter movies like

“Stella” that make me bawl every time.

I never forgot to call after eating salmon, to share the joy.

And I’m still that way. My parents are too. The calls, the salmon, the

fake voices to hide fevers and the flu -- forever the Chang way.

The one difference?

No more ache.

* YOUNG CHANG writes features. She may be reached at (949) 574-4268 or

by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .