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6 DEPARTURE

The eer And yet when I accompanied him to the local Social Security office in Colorado, what I saw instead was vulnerability I’d agreed to help hi a brief visit home, years after I’d filed for my mother’s benefits, when I enty-four or twenty-five Because my mother received Social Security disability payible to receive monthly payments of one-half her benefit amount

I’d finally convinced him that he should apply for spousal benefits when he mentioned casually that wheat bread was too expensive to buy, and so he had been buying white bread instead

“I don’t like it, but I can’t afford wheat,” he told me, as we stood in our kitchen, lined with yellow linoleum “It’s two dollars more per loaf” He shook his head

I preferred only returning to my childhood home when my father was elsewhere, in Korea On a rare occasion when I visited with a friend, my friend told me my father and I avoided each other whenever ere both within the house, soh; we followed elliptical paths, atte to prevent collisions

Despite our differences, in thatbread, I was struck by sadness Poverty was so entrenched as part of my father’s identity As a family, we could have afforded wheat bread, but he didn’t feel he could He didn’t regard iven her condition And he his So he chose to continue downsizing his quality of life, rather than ask for help

We drove over to our appointment in our family’s maroon Honda Civic Our car was so old and broken that I had tied red ribbon around the windshield wiper lever and secured it with Scotch tape to the steering wheel, to keep it pulled up in its place Driving required a gentle touch He insisted on driving

When hitting buer loose, and the wiper blades would fly furiously across the windshield until the driver repositioned the lever gently into its notch Accelerating required physical effort, too, in pushing the resistant pedal down slowly, slowly toward the mat

Visiting froovernrihtest possible picture of local govern was efficient, clean, filled with sun, and spacious There were even happy, s employees, to boot

After checking in with the security guard, ere quickly ushered into the cubicle-lined back-office area The wo brown hair, and of average height She looked so innocent and fresh I iined her to be a need, so others I remember few other details about her, except that at certain hout the interview, I felt her respond to my father with suspicion

I had dug up ly brown cabinet in their bedroos I had ar his Social Security card, passports, my mother’s tax return, disability application, and other such docus we didn’t have

“Can I see a copy of your birth certificate?” she asked

My father explained that he did not have one, for co to the Korean War, lack of record keeping in South Korea, and his parents’ short-term relocation to China

This, I could see, confused her As did the idea that his income statements ritten in Korean, because he had lived there for the majority of each year until retirelish Each question beca, because of the details of his nontr