I was born in the Hospital Garrahan in Buenos Aires on December 19, 1990. I was a complete breech birth and the woman who delivered me, a Buddhist from South Korea, told my mother that it meant I was a bodhisattva- a wisdom being. My parents chose the Korean word 'rae' as my middle name in her honor (although neither can remember what it means) and from time to time they still call me 'little lotus-eater.'
My parents met near Port San Carlos in the Falkland Islands. My mom was there on U-Chicago's photography foreign study program and my dad was stranded. He'd gone as a Baptist missionary intent on converting indigenous peoples through rudimentary hand gestures and drawings. Upon arrival he was surprised to find that the majority of the population not only spoke English, but also already practiced some form of Christianity. Rather than rebound by converting them all to his kind of Christianity, he promptly converted to Sikhism. Upon learning of his transgression the First United Baptist Church withdrew sponsorship and refused to finance his return to the United States. Recently-graduated English major that he was, he couldn't afford the trip himself and so settled down to studying Punjabi and doing freelance landscaping work.
One morning in mid-March my mom rose early and left her host family's home with the Nikon F4 on loan from her local paper. After a few hours of photographing sheep and Magellanic Penguins she wandered towards the seaside to eat her picnic breakfast. As she neared the coast her surroundings became more distinctly boggy and an eerie chanting floated on the cool-ish autumn air.
"Ik oankar sat nam karta..."
Seated on a protruding rock in the middle of a pool of bog water was my dad, now donning a long beard. My mom wondered at how he'd managed to reach his perch without wetting his clothing and determined to wait for him to finish his recitation in order to introduce herself. A full hour passed before my dad opened his eyes to the blond college student seated on the bank across from him.
Did she ever find out how he made it across without wetting his clothes? Well.. I happened about nine months later.
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