I stood before the full-length mirror in my dorm room and scanned myself for errors, scouring my outfit for snags and loose threads. I tried to see myself through my mother’s shrewd eye, pinpoint the parts of me she’d pick apart. I wanted to impress her, to demonstrate how much I’d grown and how I could thrive without her. I wanted to return an adult.

My mother prepared for our reunions in her own way, marinating short rib two days before my arrival. She filled the fridge with my favorite side dishes and bought my favorite radish kimchi weeks in advance, leaving it out on the counter for a day so it was extra fermented and tart by the time I got home.

Tender short rib, soused in sesame oil, sweet syrup, and soda and caramelized in the pan, filled the kitchen with a rich, smoky scent. My mother rinsed fresh red-leaf lettuce and set it on the glass-top coffee table in front of me, then brought the banchan. Hard-boiled soy-sauce eggs sliced in half, crunchy bean sprouts flavored with scallions and sesame oil, doenjang jjigae with extra broth, and chonggak kimchi, perfectly soured.

Julia, the golden retriever we’d had since I was twelve, fell onto her back, paws up, submitting her giant stomach in a pose my mother always referred to as “breasts up!” while my mother grilled the galbi I would always associate with the taste of home.

“Julia is getting fat,” I said, running my hand over her protruding belly. “You’re feeding her too much.”

“I only give her dog food…and just a little bit of rice! She’s a Korean dog; she loves her rice!”

Blissfully I laid my palm flat, blanketed it with a piece of lettuce, and dressed it just the way I liked—a piece of glistening short rib, a spoonful of warm rice, a dredge of ssamjang, and a thin slice of raw garlic. I folded it into a perfect little satchel and popped it into my mouth. I closed my eyes and savored the first few chews, my taste buds and stomach having been deprived for months of a home-cooked meal. The rice alone was a miraculous reunion, the cooker having imbued each kernel with textural autonomy, distinguishing it from the gluey, microwavable bowls I’d been surviving on in my dorm room. My mother lingered to take in my expression.

“Tastes good? Masisseo?” She opened a package of seaweed and placed it next to my rice bowl.

“Jinjja masisseo!” I said, my mouth still half-full, fainting in dramatic appreciation.

My mother sat behind me on the couch, pushing my hair behind my shoulders and out of my face as I gorged ravenously on the bounties of the feast. It was a familiar touch, her cool and sticky hand smoothed with cream, one I found myself no longer lurching away from but leaning into. It was as if I possessed a new internal core that gravitated toward her affection, its charge renewed by the time I’d spent away from its field. I found myself eager to please her again, savoring the laughter she broke into as I regaled her with stories about confronting adulthood, drawing out the details of my ineptitude. How I’d shrunk a sweater two sizes in the wash, how I’d taken myself out to a fancy lunch and accidentally spent twelve dollars on sparkling water, thinking it was complimentary. Admissions that surrendered, Mom, you were right.

* * *

—

AS I DESCENDED the escalator of the Eugene airport, I half expected my mother to be waiting for me like she used to, alone in the terminal just beyond security, waving as I came into view. She’d always be there to get me, dressed neatly in all black with a large faux fur vest and huge tortoiseshell sunglasses, looking out of place among the other residents of Eugene in their baggy green Oregon Ducks hoodies.

Instead, I found my father outside, parked by the baggage claim exit.

“Hey, bud,” he said. He gave me a hug and lifted my suitcase into the trunk.

“How’s she doing?”

“She’s okay. She went in for the chemo yesterday. Says she just feels a little weak.”

We were quiet in the car and I rolled down the window to take a deep breath of Oregon air. It was warm and smelled like cut grass and the beginning of summer. We drove past the long stretch of empty fields, then the big-box stores on the outskirts of town, past the home of a best friend I no longer knew, repainted now, the lawn fenced in.

Per usual, my dad drove aggressively, weaving in and out of traffic at odds with the naturally slow pace of the small college town. It felt strange to be together without my mother. The two of us never spent much time alone.

My father was happy as a provider. His mere existence in our lives was testament enough to how he’d transcended his own upbringing and overcome his addictions, and that counted for something.

As a kid I was enthralled with the stories of his past, his machismo and grit. He would regale me with the fights of his youth, sparing no detail. How he’d once blinded a man, how he’d been held at knifepoint, how he’d stayed up for twenty-three days on a speed bender living under the boardwalk. He rode a Harley and wore an earring and his stockiness always made me feel safe and protected. And he could drink. After work he’d hold court at the Highlands, a local bar across from his office. He could knock back shots of tequila and a half-dozen beers like it was nothing and the next morning appear completely unscathed.

Unlike my mother, he tried to raise me with indifference to gender, teaching me how to ball a fist and how to build a fire. When I was ten he even bought me my own Yamaha 80cc motorbike so I could follow him along the muddy circuit in the backyard.

But for most of my childhood he was away at work or at the bar, and when he was home, most of his time was spent roaring into the phone, looking for a missing pallet of strawberries or trying to find out why a truckload of romaine was running three days behind. Over time our conversations became a lot like explaining a movie to someone who has walked in on the last thirty minutes.

My father often blamed his work for the distance that grew between us. I was ten when he took over his brother’s business and his workload practically doubled. But the truth was his new position coincided with the purchase of our family’s first desktop computer, which was when I first stumbled across the paid affairs he’d been scheduling with women online. It was a secret I kept from my mother my entire life.

Even at a young age I was quick to rationalize my father’s infidelity. He was a man with needs and I assumed my parents must have come to some sort of understanding. But as I grew older the secret began to fester. The same stories grew tiresome and repetitive, his violent past less the exploits of a hero than excuses for his shortcomings. His constant lack of sobriety was no longer endearing; the drunk driving after work, irresponsible. What had been a delight as a child fell short of what I needed from a father as an adult. We were not innately, intrinsically intertwined the way I was with my mother, and now that she was sick, I was unsure of how we’d manage to pull through together.

* * *

—

WE HEADED UP Willamette Street, clearing the steep hill that passed the sloping cemetery. The pavement changed where a sign marked the end of city limits and a sequence I’d seen a thousand times unfurled. There still were the same bends where deer were likely to jump, the straightaways where my dad would try to pass slow-moving Volvos and Subarus headed up to Spencer Butte. Then the winding stretch of guardrail and the clearing, where hills of yellowing grass opened west to the uninterrupted sunset. Up and up, the pines taking over, obscuring the houses behind them, past the butte and Duckworth’s Nursery, where peacocks roamed freely through the groves of potted trees and shrubs, past the Christmas-tree farm on Fox Hollow Road, and down the gravel path covered by a canopy of trees and ferns and moss all growing into one another like a lattice until the lush mass broke open to our home.