I Am a Raindrop

By Hye Won Ahn

A short essay collection describing an immigrant teenager's coming-of-age.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631923425

Book preview

2013

Thought 1

I always enjoyed singing.

Even though I never displayed a great deal of talent, I always found satisfaction and enjoyment in belting out whatever song came to mind.

Of course, I knew nothing would come out of this, though I did dream for years of becoming a professional singer. The chances of failure were much too high; the contingency of success much too remote. Although I never admitted it to myself, I slowly let my dream go, knowing underneath my denial that I would never make it.

For a while, I stopped singing altogether, thinking, 'What was the point?' I never was able to sing outside the small comfort of my room anyway. I never had the confidence to even hum in front of my friends. Even when I had a chance, I failed to grab it. For example, when I entered high school, I had the chance to enter the beginning choir class, but never did, feeling too self-conscious.

Although I regretted my decision for months to come, I received another chance to sing: following my parents' instructions, I started singing in my church choir. While we did not sing the lively pop songs that I was accustomed to singing, there was something about the antiquated hymns from centuries back that rekindled my interest in singing. Every Sunday, when I dressed in the dark green robes and stood upon the stage, I felt utterly at peace, making harmony with the rest of the choir.

The choir taught me that I should never sing for the sake of pleasing the audience. I should sing for the sake of music, for the sake of making this mellifluous flow of harmony. And for the first time in years, I started to relax about music. Music became not a source of stress, something that showed my lack of ability, but an activity for my pleasure.

Every December, the choir put on a cantata celebrating the meaning of Christmas. Two months before the 2012 Christmas Cantata, the choir director asked if I would be interested in having a small solo piece in one of the songs.

I accepted eagerly, but never realized the enormity of my situation until the night of the performance, the moment I stepped from the choir platform onto the main stage.

Standing there, in the company of the main soloists and narrators, the microphone extending gracefully in front of me, staring at the packed auditorium, I realized that the moment I had been waiting for had just arrived. Reaching out, gripping the mike, I took a breath and started.

Only a few lines, only a few measures of music... Yet I am now that much closer to the dream discarded so long ago. Only perhaps a minute long, but I am now a minute closer to reaching the dream thought unattainable only a little while ago.

Thought 2

As I write these words, I am eating an apple.

It is a Kiku apple from New Zealand, carefully selected amidst many from the produce section of Fred Meyer by my mother during her weekend trip home.

I have never had a Kiku apple before, but I find it highly enjoyable. There is a warm tangy sweetness that inspires the image of sun-dappled orchards somewhere across the ocean, and while there is not the satisfying crunch to this apple, there is crispness enough to make my chewing clearly audible in this silent classroom.

Apples are an obvious staple in the American diet—no quintessential American lunchbox is complete without one, apple pie boasts of having the distinction of America's favorite pie, and no grocery store is fully stocked without the requisite towering pyramid of apples in the middle of the produce aisle.

Never have I pondered upon my connections to the apple, but now that I do think about it, I find that my life is intricately connected with the apple. I have grown up with apples, and each kind of apple, with its different taste, texture, and color, carries certain indelible memories within.

For example, I don't think I can ever forget the sweetness of the Korean apples eaten at my grandmother's house. My grandmother would lovingly peel and cut the best apples for me, and I would marvel at the golden pockets of crystallized sugar—honey, we called it—that formed in the depths of the sweetest apple. Apples were, and still are, extremely expensive in Korea—normally, 3-4 apples sell for around $10—but no matter. My grandmother would always have them ready at every Sunday gathering at her house.

Now, my grandmother's house, with its beautiful, sweet-smelling persimmon trees and the shiny dark wood of the interior, has gone. Another family resides on the plot of land, having rebuilt the house, and now, when I visit my grandmother (alas! no longer every Sunday, but every five years...), I go to an enormous apartment building, where she still