Category: motherhood

Teaching my child to love God

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

As Tov is now 3, David and I have been discussing more about how to intentionally instill a living faith in our children, and that got me thinking about how I was raised as a Christian.

I grew up as a pastor and missionary’s kid, so my parents were very intentional about developing our faith. We spent about as many hours playing in church as at home. We had family worship time at home, with my father strumming the guitar as we sang Korean hymns from black-leather, zip-up Korean Bibles that included about 500+ classic translated hymns. I engaged in a lot of cat fights with fellow PKs and broke a couple of glasses that way. We were required to sit in the front row while my father preached for two hours, which meant everyone behind me could see my head nodding away, and I knew I’d get a scolding from my father on the way home.

All that intensive training to be a devoted Christian, and by God’s grace, and through my parents’ fervent prayers for us, I am today a committed, Bible-believing Christian. I thank my parents for that, but mostly, I thank God, knowing how much of a child’s faith is out of the parent’s control.

Still, if I have to confess: I don’t always love to pray. I never did, actually. Growing up, I really did not like reading the Bible; I didn’t like going to church; I didn’t like participating in worship; and I especially hated the children’s worship time, absolutely detested those perky Sunday teachers forcing us to stand up and do silly dances and hand motions when I’d rather be tucked in bed reading and sucking on chocolate mints.

I also remember the week-long church retreats in Korea that my parents registered us in. Koreans can be kind of extra, and the prayers there were definitely…dramatic. Korean Christians do a lot of simultaneous prayers, which means everyone prays out loud together. Today I see a lot of value and beauty in that kind of communal prayer setting, but even as a kid with a sensitive BS meter, sometimes all I saw was a bunch of adults competing to one-up each other on passion and zealousness for God. It was mostly a lot of ahjummas with the ubiquitous Korean perm, lifting their arms up, beating their breasts, wailing, hollering, weeping, screaming “Ju-Yeo! Ju-Yeo!” or “Lord! Lord!” in Korean. And I remember watching some littler kids looking around stupefied, and then starting to cry themselves, and nobody paid heed to them, because that was just the kind of response one was supposed to have in the presence of God.

All these religious rituals of prayer and worship and Bible-reading felt onerous to me. At times it felt performative. Mostly it felt burdensome, like doing worksheets after school or eating broccoli because it’s “good” for me and because my parents said so. I still remember the shame I felt when my father glared at me from the pulpit because I couldn’t keep my eyes open, or the family worship that erupted into tears and bellows as my father boxed our ears because we weren’t paying attention and showing proper devotion to God.

Now as a mother of two still very young children, I feel the impendence of this terrible, tremendous, awesome burden of Deuteronomy 6: 5-9:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

My parents certainly did this for us, quite literally. They truly loved God with all their heart, mind, and strength. My father in particular also had a lot of zealousness, and the severity of an eldest son of an extremely traditional Korean household. He talked about God all the time. He preached to us from the dinner table, during the drive to church, after church, on family vacations, at random times during the day when he was struck with a conviction to teach us something Very Important, and we better sit up and listen with the respect due to him as our father but especially, to God.

We weren’t allowed to watch a lot of movies and shows. (Beauty and the Beast was evil, my mother told us, because it was too close to bestiality. Thankfully they relaxed on this a little as we got older.) We couldn’t listen to secular music, because Satan was a worship leader, and rock and roll is near satanic. We didn’t have much decor at home, because my parents had no time or aesthetic sense to design our house, but we did have a small wooden cross, a giant painting of (white-looking) Jesus and his disciples, and scripture verses in Chinese printed out on A4 paper and taped onto the bathroom wall at eye level from the toilet. When my parents visited our house, my mother commented with dismay at the lack of religious decor in our home, and I internally shuddered, because I now associate religious decor with the hideous, cheesy, ostentatious artifacts of the 90s and early 2000s. (I do appreciate a simple cross though. We have a small wooden cross in our house– gifted by my parents, of course.)

I don’t want to raise my kids exactly like the way my parents raised me and my brother. But they also did a lot of things well. They taught us that God is to be taken seriously. They taught us to take His Word with reverence, to the point where my father would get upset if we placed the Bible on the floor. They drilled into us spiritual disciplines such as going to church, tithing, and reading the Bible, and they themselves lived that out diligently and faithfully in their own lives. I never once doubted the existence of God, because I saw that God is real to my parents. God is not a political symbol, a cultural expression, a proud heritage of our forefathers– He is a real, living being. They placed this faith– love God and love others– first and foremost in their priority of values, and to this day, this value comes before all other common values such as wealth, comfort, popularity, health, ego, success, and vanity– and for that, I’m eternally thankful, because that shaped my own value system to this day.

My parents modeled what it looks like to be a Christian in real time, and as a missionary kid, I also heard a lot of testimonies from people all over the world whose lives were transformed by God, and I heard lots of biographies of missionaries who sacrificed everything to share the gospel. I had so much knowledge. I had so many examples of how to be a real Christian. I was proud of my parents, and I still am.

As I look back, however, I think something was also lacking. I don’t know if it’s lacking because of something deficient in the way my parents raised us, or if it’s because of my own sins and shortcoming. But what was lacking was joy. There were not enough joy and delight in the way my parents taught us faith. I didn’t find God very enjoyable or delightful. In fact, church services were stressful for me because I knew I would fall asleep and then have to face my father’s disappointment, and I absolutely dreaded family worship because I knew it’ll end with, again, my father’s anger and disappointment.

But what could I do about it? I told myself honestly that I simply did not love God enough, didn’t love Him like my father did, but I did not know how to make myself love someone I couldn’t see, hear, or touch, no matter how much my parents tried to discipline this apathy out of me. God felt like a distant cousin’s uncle, yet His presence was heavy and stifling, like a thick blanket over me, making it hard to breathe or move without feeling its fabric hanging over my face.

It didn’t help that my father was also my pastor, and our family was rather patriarchal and hierarchical, in which my father’s word was the ultimate authority, so it was confusing to me whether my father’s words was God’s Word, or a human father’s words. So much of God was channeled through my parents’ words, actions, and expectations that I couldn’t disentangle the two; it was like trying to hear God through a faulty landline buzzing and hissing with other people’s conversations. I suppose this is a very common issue among second-generation Christians, especially those whose parents are in ministry. There were just too many words, too much knowledge, too much theology, stuck in my mind like an apple core in a gullet, unable to be fully digested and absorbed into the heart.

And so. Now the responsibility of raising our children according to Deuteronomy 6:5-9 falls upon David and me. It’s our turn now, and that means we need to start with Deuteronomyu 6:5: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength.”

When I really think about it, really sit and dwell on it in the midst of the chaos of early parenthood, I feel stabs of anxiety. I can go to church every Sunday, tithe a good amount, go to small group and discipleship groups, do my devotions, serve others, all that. But love the Lord with everything I have, to the deepest depths of my soul? Oh, dear. How much of my daily life reflects that? And my goal for our children is pretty lofty: I don’t want to them to just be good Christians; I want them to be better Christians than David and I. I want them to love God– truly, desperately, delightedly, joyfully love God, with all their heart and soul and might.

Now, how do I achieve that?

When Tov turned 3, I decided it’s time to be more intentional about setting healthy spiritual habits for our son. Every morning, during breakfast, we now have Bible time. It’s short and relaxed, especially because Tov has a hard time sitting still, and he’s only just begun being able to sit through a picture book.

Here’s how our Bible time looks like: We begin with a short prayer. Currently we are praying for gentle and kind hands, because Tov can be quite rough with his little sister. Then we read a short story out of a children’s Bible. (We started with The Tiny Truths Bible for Little Ones, which is really more on Tov’s level and he loves the cute pictures of angels in there, and now we’re going through The Jesus Storybook Bible, which I love but the artwork is not as engaging for Tov and the narrative is profound but seems a little over Tov’s head.) Then I read a short passage out of my Be Thou My Vision liturgy book, which is definitely way over Tov’s level, but the purpose of it is just to get Tov habituated with the language and posture of liturgy, and it’s really for me, because I’m part of this Bible time, too. Then depending on the story we read in the Bible, I play a song for him so he can get the wiggles out. For example, when we read about Abraham, I played the song “Father Abraham” for Tov, and he turned on the karaoke mic to sing (scream) along and ran to his room to get his guitar so he can have a proper jam session. We end with a brief lesson on an alphabet letter.

All this is maybe 15 minutes, at most. That’s the longest I can hold his attention at a time, and I don’t want to push it in case Bible time becomes more burdensome than enjoyable. Even within that short 15 minutes, it’s controlled chaos: I’m often telling Tov to sit down instead of climbing onto the table, being interrupted by Woori who’s flinging food everywhere, and reminding Tov to eat his breakfast. For now, at least, I was surprised by how easily Tov adopted Bible time into his daily routine, and even asks for it every morning.

Fifteen minutes of Bible time, but then there’s a long stretch of all the other hours when my children are also learning about God through David and me– and that’s the terrifying part. These kids are always watching you, learning from you, including things that you weren’t even aware of, things you don’t want them to learn. Everything is a teaching moment. And I wonder: Is God real and loving and lovable and awesome to them, based on how David and I live our lives? Sometimes I think they’re just too young to even understand the concept of God. But then, I also wonder at what point they will being to understand, and what they’ll absorb and learn until the day I realize that they do understand. It doesn’t matter when they understand. We have to start living our faith out authentically, today.

Two nights ago, we had a teaching moment come by, and it would have passed us if not for the fact that I lost my cool in front of Tov.

Tov had pooped in his little potty in the bathroom, and as he left the room to ask me to wipe him, he pushed the lock inside and then slammed the door shut. So now there his poop sat, steaming in the little pink plastic Baby Bjorn potty, out there in the open air, and I could not get to it. I could smell it from behind the door as I fiddled with the knob.

David was out for a work dinner, so it was up to me to figure out how to open this door. Google told me to straighten a hair pin and poke it into the lock until I hear a click. I did that and I heard no click. I jammed and rammed and jiggled and wiggled the damn hair clip, hearing the metal scratch at metal, while Tov, in a great state of excitement, tried to “help.”

“I’ve got an idea,” he told me, poking his finger in the air, and ran around the house ransacking drawers and cabinets, bringing me a bandaid, a cheese knife, multiple masking tapes, batteries, a wine opener, even a Covid test. He shoved each item into my face, talking up a storm, while I wrestled with the locked door, the fumes of his stool bruising my nostrils. It was just too much sensory overload for me, and I let out a frustrated roar as I violently shook the door knob.

Tov immediately burst into tears. “I don’t like that!” he cried, fat tears running down his red cheeks. He grabbed my face and held it. “Don’t do that! I don’t like that!”

I felt ashamed of my behavior. It wasn’t Tov’s fault. He had shut the door because I had previously told him to do so, as I didn’t want Woori climbing into the toilet and licking his potty.

“Hold you, hold you,” Tov cried, trying to climb onto my lap. I hugged him and apologized. “Omma isn’t angry at you,” I told him. “I’m just frustrated. I don’t know how to fix this. I’m trying, but it’s not working.”

He understood what this means, but he was also puzzled, because every time his toy stopped working or something broke or his Yoto went out of juice, we knew how to “fix” it. What did it mean that his mother couldn’t fix this door?

And then God convicted me: This was a great teachable moment. An opportunity to make faith come alive, in ways that Tov can understand.

“Let’s pray,” I told Tov. “I can’t fix this. But you know who can? God! Can you pray to God?”

Tov bowed his head, put his hands together, and mumbled something with God and Jesus in it and declared, “Amen!”

“Amen,” I echoed. “OK! God is going to fix this!”

OK, God, you heard him, I prayed silently. It’s all up to you now. You’re not going to let a little boy down, will you?

So I continued wiggling with that hair pin in the lock, trying to conjure up that magical “click,” but to no avail. I was losing faith. I mean, did God really care about a stupid locked door? Does Tov even understand what he prayed about, who he prayed to? This lock is probably faulty. Maybe I’ll just wait till David gets home and he’ll either figure it out or we’ll have to break the door. And then I reminded myself that I needed faith, even just for the sake of my child’s faith. Surely God cares about Tov. Surely He’s listened to this prayer, however trivial it is.

“Your omma has less faith than you,” I remarked to Tov. And then I prayed, Come on, God. I may have little faith, but a young boy’s faith is on the line. Please please don’t fail him!

Woori began to whine. It was past her bedtime. I nursed her and put her down. Then David reminded me via text that we may have some tools in the toolbox that’s small enough to fit the lock.

I dragged the toolbox out. I tried with a small screwdriver that fit into the lock, but no matter how much I jabbed, there was no click. I tried another. Nope. Then another. And there it was– that gorgeous sound, click! And the door swung open to a gentle whoosh of poop fumes.

“Oh my God! Tov! Tov!” I exclaimed to my son. He came sprinting over. “What, what omma, what?”

“Look!” I yelled. I almost said I fixed it, and then caught myself– “I– God fixed it! Look!”

Tov opened the door and entered the bathroom with open-mouthed amazement and wonder. We high-fived in glee. Then I went in to clean his poop.

“Who fixed the door?” I asked him later, as we got ready for his bedtime routine.

“God!” he beamed.

Oh, I never felt prouder of our son.

It was a pretty silly, insignificant event. People unlock locked doors all the time. It doesn’t take a genius. But that event transcended into something that fed into the eternal soul of a child who learned that nothing is too small or silly for God’s attention. And that child was me.

That’s it, though. So much of parenting is reminding ourselves that we are daughters and sons of God first, omma and abba second. God commands us to talk to our children about Him when we’re sitting at home or walking on the road or lying down or getting up, because we also–especially so– need to hear it, as guardians of young, impressionable, moldable, wonderfully and fearfully made souls.

When I think back to how I was raised as a Christian, I have a lot of gratitude and compassion for my parents. They were both the first Christians in their family. They were first-time parents and first-time Christian parents. They discipled us the way they knew how, which was very traditional, formal, and rigid. But they did it out of genuine love, love for both God and their children. That love set the foundation from which God added brick and mortar, curtain rods and wallpaper. God honored their love and prayers, and sprinkled so much grace over their mistakes. And over the years, my parents grew, too. They are not the same people they were when they were raising toddlers. They too were son and daughter of God first, parents second, and they are continuing to grow and change to this day.

I felt immense peace that night. It’s not that my sense of duty and responsibility to raise my kids in the Lord has in any way diminished. It’s just that I felt a little wind in my sails. Oh, so this is what it’s like: I invite my children into my growth process as a Christian, as a daughter of God. We don’t have to have it all figured out right now. We just need to have our sails up and ready, so that when that gentle wind of the Holy Spirit blows, we take off in the right direction, with our kids aboard us. And putting our sails up can start as simple as a 15-minute Bible time in the morning, with Tov hopping up and down on his seat, while Woori spread banana paste on her hair.

A son made in my image

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

When Tov was first born, I started imagining.

I imagined how our son will grow up, what his personality will be like, what interests and passions will drive him, who he’ll hang out with. Would he be into sports? Music? Art?

That’s what makes the Korean tradition of doljabi so fun, but also laced with anticipation: What destiny will my 1-year-old pick? As parents of young, not-yet-formed human beings, we have the power to present to our children certain life opportunities, but absolutely no control over which path they will pick, and that’s what makes doljabi a fun, light-hearted way to play-pretend. We lay out only the desirable options for our children’s doljabi, but ultimately, our 1-year-old babies will grab whatever their heart fancies.

I remember for my niece’s doljabi, my sister-in-law refused to include a ball because she didn’t want her daughter to go into sports. I didn’t want to offer sports as an option either, but David would be apoplectic if Tov didn’t like baseball, so I reluctantly allowed him to include a baseball, comforted by the fact that neither of us has athletic talents, so most likely, neither will our children. Our doljabi was not very traditional. Because I would love for Tov to become a journalist like me, I added a reporter’s notebook into his doljabi options, and I also included a globe because I wanted him to be well-traveled and globalized in his worldview.

Tov chose the globe. I rejoiced, even as I knew all this is just a game designed to please the parents’ ambitions for their child, nothing more. Even then, I thought, “I don’t care what Tov chooses to be when he grows up, as long as he’s just like his name– a good person, full of God’s goodness. I will be content with whatever he chooses.”

That was then, when Tov was still very young and malleable. Now that Tov is 3, I realize I might be more ambitious than my professed noble goal for my son. I know it, because I have been fighting some rather strong disappointment that my son– my wonderful, adorable, good son, who is indeed so much like his name– does not seem to be much literary-inclined.

Often with firstborns, there are childhood stories that parents repeat to prove their firstborn is special (these kinds of stories seem to diminish with the younger siblings, interestingly enough). For me, apparently I was about 2 when my parents searched all over the house for me until they finally found me hidden behind a pile of books. I had been “reading” for hours, completely engrossed. There’s another story that apparently prove my unique brightness. According to my parents’ folklore, as a child I had very curious, observant eyes. I would stare at things and people with intensity, as though analyzing them in deep thought, and I remember my parents constantly admonishing me to stop staring at strangers.

Now that I think about this, I don’t think it proves anything about my specialness or intelligence; it sounds like I was a pretty creepy child indeed. But all that to say, my parents told these stories proudly to anyone who would listen, which showed a value they upheld and instilled in me: Intellect.

I too uphold this value. I value minds that think and read and create. I admire people who are well-read, who can quote literary giants, who can discuss Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard and C.S. Lewis. If I’m completely honest, I probably uphold that value higher than any other virtues such as goodness, gentleness, self-control. And that value system is becoming more blatantly obvious as I watch Tov grow from a baby to a boy, as I take him to the library and offer to read him books, but he’d rather just run and climb between the bookshelves. Or when five seconds after I pointed out the letter “A” to Tov, he’s already forgotten what it is. My literary ambitions for my child is even more abundantly clear when I meet other kids similar to his age who love reading, have a strong grasp of language, and can recite entire books front to back. I can’t stand those kids. I hate them, really.

One evening, I was trying to read a book with Tov, when as always, he kept grabbing the page from me and interrupting me, fixating on that one page with the picture he likes. “What’s that?” he asked, for the fifteenth time.

“Oh my God, Tov, can I just finish this book!” I cried, losing my patience, yanking the book away and startling the poor little boy, who just wanted to look at the orange ball again and again.

At that moment, so many thoughts were flicking through my head, all poking at perceived flaws in my son: Why can’t Tov just sit through a book? Why does he only want to read this one stupid book? Why doesn’t he like books? Are we letting him watch too many stupid firetruck shows on YouTube? Why hasn’t he learned his letters yet? I’ve been trying to teach him his ABCs for months now! Is it the screen time? My niece could memorize the entire Brown Bear book by his age; why can’t he? God, we need to stop letting him watch shows, it must be rotting his attention span!

Oh, the slash of terror: What if…God forbid, my son never likes to read? What if my son is not very intelligent? What if…Good God!– my son becomes an atrocious writer? And, to my self-dismay, what I felt then was shame. Shame, that my flesh-and-blood might not carry this value that I hold so dear. Shame, at the thought of my son struggling with math and spelling and grammar.

And then, of course, I felt instant shame at my shame. Is this what I’m really all about? I, a professed Christian, called to set apart from the world, has allowed secular standards to infiltrate my value system, and it’s going to impact my parenting and shape my children. But is it not an instinctual, parental desire to create my child to my own likeness?

I wrestled with this thought for months.

I don’t think that wanting my children to love and read books, to have deep critical thinking skills, and to cultivate a rich intellectual mind is a bad thing. I know it’s a worthy and good goal to try to instill these values into my children’s education, which will serve them well in life, and raise them as solid citizens of the world.

It’s also healthy and natural for me to want to share my passions and interests with my own children. Just like David can’t wait to take our children to their first baseball game, I can’t wait to read the Harry Potter books with my children, and also The Good Earth, Jane Eyre, East of Eden, The Brothers Karamazov, and discuss them together.

What I struggle with is how much I want it. How much it’s insidiously tied to my own ego, ambition, and identity. And how disappointed, frustrated, and mad I fear I’ll get if they fail to meet my standards.

People say Tov looks like me, which pleases me, because I think Tov is a very handsome boy— no bias at all. And maybe, if I’m brutally honest, I’d like people to also say Tov is sharp and intelligent because that too reflects well on me. Because those are values I hold high and dear. Because I want Tov to fit my ideals of a worthy person, and create him according to my image, when he has already been wonderfully and fearfully made in the image of God.

As a parent, I have the responsibility to raise my children to be the best person they can be, to stretch their weak points and cultivate their strong points. But it’s also my responsibility– and joy– to get to know and understand who they already are as a person, and delight in how God created them, just as they are. There’s a fine balance between accepting who my child is, and recognizing that they have more potential, and then pushing them lovingly and firmly towards it. It’s this fine balancing act that make my head twirl and my heart clench. Man, parenting requires so much wisdom and discernment. There’s just so many life-altering decisions and judgments that I feel, at this current moment, so ill-equipped to make. Lord, help me.

Tov is still only 3. I have yet to see all the hidden parts of Tov. He has yet to emerge from his chrysalis, yet to fully spread his wings. He might still learn to love books. Or he might not. My brother was raised the same way I was, with the same parents, and he is still not a reader, but he has many other interests and capabilities that I don’t have.

So what can I do?

I still want to do what I can to foster a rich intellectual life for my children. So I plan to take Tov and Woori to the library once a week. I can keep surrounding them with books, keep reading with them, and let them see me read.

And also: I can just relax and enjoy who they are.

That’s easy enough. Tov truly is a wonderful person. He is kind and empathetic and sweet and resilient and curious and fun. He loves his little sister, loves his umma and abba, loves his teachers and friends, loves laughing and rolling and the color pink and fire trucks and Lightning McQueen and listening to music and collecting rocks.

I adore 3-year-old Tov. He makes my heart so full. And I’m so proud to be his umma.

Tov’s first Disneyland trip

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

The last time I was at Disneyland was three years ago with David, when Tov was but a fetus tucked into my womb, his presence only having just been revealed to his soon-to-be parents.

It was our babymoon. We booked a hotel near Disneyland, to which I lugged my new best friend, a giant slug of a pregnancy pillow, and then spent a whole day at Disneyland, grousing about the lines and the crowds. I remember for the first time noticing how many strollers there were at Disneyland. I had previously been completely blind to them, but all of a sudden, I noticed parking areas for strollers, double strollers, four-seat quad strollers, bougie strollers, cheap-as-plastic strollers, rental strollers, everrrrrrrywhere. How had I never noticed the tens of thousands of strollers zipping around Disneyland?

Oh, those were my before-kids days, when my eyes didn’t even register babies, toddlers, or any young children whose heads reached under my waist.

Three years later, I am back to Disneyland, this time with an almost-3-year-old and a 8-month-old, testing out our super-nifty, ultra-lightweight Zoe double stroller for the first time. My last visit to Disneyland, my biggest luggage was my pregnancy pillow and my skincare products. This time, I had two full bags jammed with about a dozen different snacks, water bottles, four extra sets of clothes, diapers, wet wipes, teethers, and God knows what else, and I STILL forgot the kids’ sunscreen.

And man, was I excited! It was Tov’s first ever Disneyland experience! We decided to take him there just before he turned 3– young enough not to have to pay a ticket, and old enough to really appreciate the magic of Disney.

“We’re going to Disneyland tomorrow!” I kept telling Tov the day before, and although the kid had no idea what Disneyland or Disney is, has no idea who Mickey and Donald and Goofy are, he grinned and gleamed as though he knew wherever that was, it was gonna be awesome.

The next morning, we woke him up with excited cheers: “We’re going to Disneyland!”

David dressed him in his favorite T-shirt– a hand-me-down, imitation Lightning McQueen blue T-shirt bought from the Philippines– while I bustled around getting all the snacks and my coffee ready, and then we were off! I was so excited I didn’t even fall asleep on our way there.

Oh, the wonderful magic of Disney! First, we got on the 50-minutes-long “line up to get into the car park” ride. And then, we got on the 15-minute “line up to get on the tram” ride. Then! A “line up for the restroom” ride. And then! The “line up for the security screening” line. And then, dum dum dum, here comes the “line up to get through the entrance” line!

Altogether, it was almost two hours of breathless, thrilling waiting in long lines so that we can line up 40 more minutes for the Astro Orbiter ride, which lasted all of 5 minutes. Is THIS the magic of Disney? We are all magicked into happily lining up for hours and hours under the scorching California sun, grinning and sweating under our Mickey ears, and then leave the park saying, “That was fun! What a great day”

Yes. That’s pretty much how our day went. We spent a small part of our day with my friend Joyce, her husband Tyler, and their sons Cían and Taigh until they left around 2pm, and we chugged on for more than five hours. We rode on a total of four rides. One of them was Pirates, which David was most excited about, except Tov yelled, “I want to go out!” soon after the ride took off.

He loved Astro Orbiter though, and rode it twice– once with David, once with me. It’s this rocket ship ride that lifts you high into the air and spins you round and round, and I HATED every second of it, close to puking and passing out from dizziness. Grimacing, I looked down at my son who was leaning against me, smiling with his mouth open, his hair flailing in the wind, and that redeemed every agonizing second.

After we got off the Astro Orbiter, the ground was still spinning around me, and I felt every ounce of the greasy turkey leg I just ate churning in my stomach like cement in a concrete mixer truck. David tried to take Tov to the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, which we know would be so fun for Tov, but he refused, afraid of the dark indoors, too much like Pirates.

So we ambled instead. We got Tov a strawberry ice cream cone bigger than his face– his first real cone!– and while we sat by the sidewalk, watching all the other Disneylanders pass by, he licked and licked and licked his cone until the whole thing was gone into his belly.

Then, because Tov had been asking for a lollipop all day, David caved and got him a cherry lollipop, also the size of his face.

On any other day, I would have gotten very annoyed that we are giving him so much sugar, but I shook it off– eh, it’s Disneyland. There’s only one first experience of Disneyland, and half the joy of Disney is being able to eat all the sugar you want.

Of course, we had to go to California Adventureland, where Tov got to meet his hero, Lightning McQueen, and take a picture with him.

We also got him a set of toy Cars that light up underneath, and oh, the joy on his face! He really doesn’t need more car toys, but really, we bought the set for ourselves– for that momentary, yet eternally pleasing, joy of seeing the delight on his face.

It might have been Tov’s first Disneyland trip, but it was my best Disneyland experience.

I remember the first time I came to Disneyland, I was 12, on a family trip from Singapore to the United States. Back then a Disneyland ticket cost a lot less, but it was still significant, especially for a missionary’s income. I thought it was so magical. I don’t even remember most of the day, but all I remember is how in awe I was of that place, how I deemed it the most magical experience in my life, and to this day, I can still taste the leftover pixie dust from that trip. And I remember too how happy my parents were that day, not because they enjoyed Disneyland, but because they kept looking at our faces, grinning at our grins, excited at our excitement, wondrous at our wonder.

“Did you have fun?” abba kept asking us as the day ended, and each time we nodded happily, he beamed.

And now, full circle, here I am, a mother myself, grinning at my son’s grins, excited at his excitement, wondrous at his wonder, a child again through my child.

I actually did not even mind waiting in line, because that was a rare Tov-and-omma-only time, in which I got to hug him, lift him, spin him, kiss him, for the full 40 minutes we waited in line. I squeezed his hands, still little in my own adult hands, marveling that this boy with a real neck and sweat odor was, last time I was here, a curled, thumb-suckling mystery in my womb.

That chapter of my free, childless days has closed, and then the newborn baby chapter opened and closed, and now here I am, in the last few paragraphs of the toddler chapter, feeling so incredibly thankful and sad at the same time.

While Tov was eating his ice cream and I sat by him, holding Woori and people-watching, I saw an Indian family standing near us. It was an older couple and an old lady in a wheelchair with a long, grey braid, who was, like Tov, licking happily on an ice-cream cone. While we were at Disneyland to treat our child, it was clear they were at Disneyland to treat their mother.

For some reason, that scene moved me. They were enjoying the same moment as David and I, but flipped generationally. For this family, a chapter had opened and closed as well: The chapter of their mother taking care of them had long closed; the chapter of their young parenthood days have also closed; and here they are now, probably with adult children long out of the house, here to relive the Disney magic with their aging mother, before she got too frail for Disney.

I hugged Woori closer to me, as she wobbled on her tippy toes and scratched my face with her sharp tiny nails. She is still a baby now, but the next time we come to Disneyland, she might be a running toddler, and Tov a Kindergartener. And who knows? Maybe one day they’ll be the ones taking David and me to Disneyland in wheelchairs. By then, so many chapters would have opened and closed, opened and closed, each with its dragons and witches, each with its adventures and feasts and magic like this day at Disneyland.

At about 7:30 pm, as both kids started to fade and Tov was no longer running around licking walls and pavements like King Nebuchadnezzar when he turned mad, we got in line to ride the tram back to the parking lot.

In front of us stood a young Arab family, a good-looking couple and their young toddler son. They too were saddled with a stroller and diaper bags and all the goddarn tools a parent needs to keep tantrums and blowouts at bay. As we struggled to hoist all our stuff onto the tram, every one of us weak with exhaustion and overstimulation, the mother commented wryly, “I don’t know why we pay so much to do this.”

But we do it anyway, and we’ll do it again, because that cliche is so true: Time passes so fast. They grow up so fast. And at Disney, time seems to stand still for a day. At Disney, we all turn into a child, from the grey-braided old Indian lady to this young tired mother in a hijab. It doesn’t matter if there are dozens more chapters of our life left, or if we’re on the last chapter— here at Disney, the magic goes on and on, passed from generation to generation.

That’s the magic of Disney.

And as David and I drove back onto the 5 freeway, while Woori shrieked in her car seat and Tov complained that the baby is “too loud,” we looked at each other and said, “That was fun! What a great day!”