7/3/2026
I wanted to record this encounter before its freshness faded.
On July 1, a clinician from our health insurance company came to our home for a routine health assessment. She was highly professional. Originally from South Korea, she had immigrated to the United States about ten years ago. Her story immediately reminded me of one of my former Korean students, who also came to America 10 years ago. Like my former student, she communicated well enough in English for her work, but I still found myself listening carefully to understand her.
Our conversation began when she asked whether we had any relatives nearby. I told her that both of our children live in Brooklyn and that we are expecting our first grandchild this month.
She clapped her hands and exclaimed, "This is so perfect!" There was such genuine joy in her reaction that I was curious. So I asked about her own life.
She told me she was in her early forties, single, and all alone in the United States while her parents remained in Korea. She also remarked that in Korea, "you have to be young and pretty to get a good job."
For the past two days, that brief conversation has lingered in my mind. I think it's because, before anything else, she was an immigrant, alone and far from home.
In that moment, I wasn't just talking to a healthcare professional. I was talking to someone who had left her home country all by herself, built a life in a foreign land, learned a second language, and was living thousands of miles away from her family. Her story brought me back to my own early years in America, when my family was far away and communication was difficult and expensive. It is, in many respects, the common experience of first-generation immigrants—a story of leaving behind the familiar world, learning to navigate a new culture and language, and building a life from the ground up.
Her spontaneous delight that my children live nearby suddenly made sense.
In both Chinese and Korean culture, family occupies a central place. Having children nearby, watching them begin families of their own, and becoming a grandparent is not simply another life milestone. It represents continuity across generations. Perhaps that was what she meant when she said, "This is so perfect."
Perhaps I should be grateful. We often appreciate what we have only after seeing it through someone else's eyes.