Verified by 
The first time I met the woman who would become my stepmother, I knew almost at once that I wanted my father to marry her. He had been divorced for over five years, and I worried about him being alone each time I had to leave him to go back to my mother’s house. To my shy, 8-year-old eyes, she was as beautiful and poised as a swan. With her stylish designer clothing and her demure, yet queenly manner, she seemed almost too perfect to look at, let alone talk to. But her dark eyes sparkled with a mischievous warmth that melted my shy reserve, and before I knew it, we were chattering away, as if we had known each other forever.
As soon as they were married, I began to call her Omoni, the Korean word for “mother,” and she began the serious business of mothering me in ways that my American mother did not. She cut and styled my hair (always shorter than I wanted,) taught me to crochet sweaters and embroider tea towels, designed and made clothes for me, and instructed me in the art of tasteful dressing. She supervised my posture, making me walk around the house with two hardcover books on my head. She made me practice the piano until I had mastered each week’s assignments perfectly. We played duets of her choosing on the piano; she sang with me and presided over my studies while I memorized my multiplication tables and vocabulary words. But when I had mastered my lessons and begged to borrow her clothes to play “dress up” with, she patiently smiled and rummaged in her closet for just the right mix of cast offs to make me feel like the prettiest of princesses. She filled a void in my life I hadn’t even realized existed, and I opened my heart to her like a crocus to the first warm rays of spring sunshine.
My father and I taught Omoni to ride a bicycle, to swim in the nearby ocean sound, to play tennis, and to ice skate. With her trim, athletic build, she was quick to master the basics of each of these sports, confidently advancing to a level of proficiency that belied her lack of experience. Dad became her driving instructor, while I coached her in the finer points of ping-pong, badminton, and crazy eights. Omoni had led a sheltered childhood in Korea and had never learned to play sports. Instead, she attended convent school, took piano, voice, and kayagum lessons, embroidery, flower arranging and calligraphy. She learned to be a wonderful cook and a welcoming hostess. She was raised, like all nice Korean girls of her generation, to be a good wife and mother, which according to custom, meant she was expected to be a tiger mom.
After Omoni married Dad, he encouraged her to become a social worker, which she did for over 25 years. I remember hearing her talk about the lectures she gave her “clients,” how she insisted they try harder to go back to school or at least to find work, how she insisted they stop having children until they got their lives in order and could take better care of the ones they had. At the time, I felt sorry for the poor women she lectured in what I secretly called her “bossy voice.” While it couldn't have been easy for her, I didn’t realize until I was older that taking care of her “clients” gave Omoni a sense of purpose and fulfilled her longing to be needed in a way that mothering one child part time could never begin to satisfy.
As I grew older, Omoni became stricter. No longer was it permissible to get just an A. Why was I not getting A pluses? Why was I not studying every second available? When eventually I went to live with them full time, she was dismayed that I immediately joined the middle school gymnastics team—so dangerous! When she attended my first field hockey game, she vowed never to do so again. “All that running and yelling! So unladylike!” she complained to my father. “And how can we let her wear jeans?”
“She’s an American girl. We have to let her do these things.” My father shrugged and changed the subject.
“There should be no television allowed, except for the news, on weeknights. And certainly no telephone calls on school nights, unless they’re about homework!” She was adamant, not that Dad disagreed with these particular rules. And “why are we letting her go to sleep away camp?” was the refrain for months before I eventually left for gymnastics camp for six weeks, since Dad was still the boss, and he thought sports were good for me. By the time I became a teenager, I thoroughly resented Omoni and Dad’s endless and antiquated rules, vowing to be an entirely different kind of parent when it was my turn.
But once I became a mother, I began to appreciate how difficult it must have been for her to be so strict, especially when other parents around us were so lenient. I also learned how much harder it is to say “no” than to say “yes.” I saw what a good wife and stepmother Omoni had always been. I also suddenly realized how much she loved life and loved taking care of people, especially my children. While she had been rather strict and exacting with me, she was a complete and utter pushover with her grandchildren. From the time they were born, she spoiled them at every opportunity. When our son was born, she and Dad constantly elbowed each other, vying to hold him every second they could. When at last our daughter came along, they took turns holding her, while the other trailed behind her brother as he explored the confines of their grassy backyard, picking cucumbers and tomatoes in their garden, gathering raspberries from their bushes, chasing butterflies, and singing with him at the top of their lungs.
As our children grew, she delighted in cooking them exotic foods, such as Japanese tempura, Korean bulgogi and kalbe, Italian calamari, and French chicken cordon bleu. No dish was too complicated to make for her grandchildren, and my friends often asked to borrow Gamma, as our children called her, since nobody’s kids were better eaters than ours—all because she introduced them to a variety of delicious foods at an early age.
During the six summers that we lived in New York City, we spent almost every weekend with them, as their house was very close to the beach, and they had plenty of room. Our kids came to love visiting Gamma and Kappa, as they called my parents, in part because Gamma once told me (in her bossy voice) that I was “not allowed to say ‘no’ to her grandchildren in her house!”
Once when my husband and I returned from playing tennis, we found Gamma and our four-year-old son sitting at the kitchen table watching TV together while our two-year-old daughter and Kappa scribbled with crayons at the dining room table. At first, we smiled to see Gamma feeding our little son with her chopsticks as they watched their show—utterly enthralled. But when our eyes turned to the television, we were horrified to find they were watching “Bay Watch,” which was obviously much too racy a show for our young son.
“Gamma!” I sputtered, struggling to speak as I watched Pamela Anderson bounce along the beach in her barely there bikini. “What in the world are you two watching? I mean, how can you let him watch this show?”
“What are you talking about?” Gamma asked, genuinely confused. “It’s a very nice show. They’re lifeguards…they’re saving people,” she added, as our young son nodded solemnly in agreement with his grandmother.
“I like this show, Mommy. Gamma’s right. They’re saving people.”
And Gamma was right. They WERE saving people.
Gamma always looked for the good in people. She was a devout Christian and believed we must all take care of one another. Now this didn’t mean she let anyone get away with anything. It means she expected everyone to do their best, to try their hardest, and to do it all without complaining. Like my father, she lived through some pretty difficult times during the Korean War, and also like my father, she didn’t talk about those hard times very much. Instead, she focused on the positive, on counting our blessings, on looking on the bright side. She didn’t suffer fools, she didn’t want to talk about feelings, and she certainly didn’t want to hear any excuses why something you were supposed to do didn’t get done. Period.
Her positivity was contagious. Even when she started to lose her memory, she didn’t succumb to despair, the way so many people do. Instead, she became happier and more cheerful. By the time she passed, she no longer recognized anyone, yet she always had an enormous smile for every person who greeted her. When she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I wasn’t surprised to learn that she had “euphoric dementia,” which occurs in only about 4 percent of dementia patients.
Because she was so positive, so strong, and so faithful, you did what she wanted, even if it was really difficult. She made you feel like you could do anything, and in her way, she lifted you up and made sure you succeeded. She was the most positive person I’ve ever known, and she taught me some of the most important life lessons I’ve ever learned. She was a tiger mom, or at least a tiger cub mom. And she’s in a better place now, making it even better, even if she has to use her bossy voice to do it.
