Single Dog Mom

Unlike my consistently happy brother, I went through sachungi, Korean for “adolescence.” Like most Korean words, sachungi signifies extreme emotions – in this case, deep angst and discomfort with one’s place in the world which results in an almost pathological inability to be pleasant.

My sachungi lasted from age 13 to my early 30s. During this time, life felt like an outfit that looked ok but didn’t fit me right in certain places. When I pulled at this outfit, annoying and disappointing my mother, she would yell: “My curse on you is to give birth to a daughter just like yourself.”  The logic ran that if I ever did give birth to my clone, I would finally understand the grief I had put her through since my accidental birth.

As it happens, I haven’t given birth to a daughter nor do I plan to in the near future, or ever really. It’s my contribution to sustainability. However, I did recently adopt a non-human, furry-faced son.

Meeting

In early February I fell crazy in love with a three-month-old second-generation fluffy white toy schnoodle. His parents are half-schnauzer, half-poodle, making him an expensive designer mutt. I’d seen a photo of his brother, the diminutive Hercules, on Facebook, had liked – then hearted it – and written something suitably sappy in the comments (“OMG. SOOOO CUTE.”). My colleague, one of his fathers, mentioned Hercules’s brother was still available if I was interested. 

Fast forward to me in Darlinghurst meeting the breeders, who were friends and neighbours, another gay male couple, both hairdressers. The whole thing was starting to feel staged and destined, like the puppy episode of Ellen meets Tales of the City narrated by Margaret Cho. The younger guy looked familiar because he used to work at a salon I had frequented many years ago. We both had left: he for professional reasons, I, because I could no longer take the Farah Fawcett layers the owner kept giving me in a vain effort to put more body in my fine, Asian hair.

(I now have an otaku Japanese hairdresser with a frizzy perm who runs marathons, loves animals, and gives me racially suitable blunt cuts. I am trying to find him a “hot woman with PR who speaks Japanese” so he can stay in the country.)

Hercules’s brother, named Boufa at the time for his huge bouffant like fur, came bounding up to me, kissed me all over my face, and it was over. Of course I said I would take him. A week later my friend Julie and I picked him up, he settled himself into his crate, and intense animal-human bonding commenced.

Naming

I named my furbaby Jae-young, phonetically in-between his cousins in Texas – a beagle named Jun-young and a huskie named Sae-young (he also has a transgendered cat cousin named Mia). People who aren’t Korean mispronounce it to make it sound more like how they think Chinese sounds (like my elementary school teachers mispronouncing my name the first day of school – Chaaiii-hyooon Park?? Where is Chaaiii-hyooon? – met with a squeaky, “Just call me Jane”) so I tell everyone his name is Jay. For what it’s worth Jae-young sounds like the letter J + the word, “young.” J-Young. Easy. Like a K-pop star.

When white people encounter an Asian name, they always ask, “What does it mean?” They never ask what Western names mean, presumably because they already know that Jane means “gift of God” and Nigel means “no friends.”

Jae-young can mean lots of things depending on the Chinese characters you use. I looked it up on Google which told me “young” usually means “great” and “jae” can also mean “great” among other things, so I’ve decided my baby’s name is Great Squared. Double Great like Double Happiness only better.

Repressed Memory

Once upon a time when I lived in the exotic prairie-land of Oklahoma, I had an unusually vivid dream that stayed with me when I woke up. The dream began with me walking up a long, winding, rickety staircase. It was dark and scary. At the end of the staircase was a little room, and in the little room, a little fluffy white dog. I wasn’t immediately attracted to the dog. It was cute but in a slightly creepy way. It had a very human face.

I knew it was a puppy, and even though it scared me a little I knew that I had to take care of it -- that it needed me. So I took it in my arms, and we went down the stairs together.

By the time we were on the ground, it was still a puppy, but I also realized instantly, in the way that you do in dreams, that it was also a little girl, and that little girl was me.

My inner child was a fluffy white puppy.

Who knew this dream would come true years later in Australia? Sometimes when I see Jae’s little face looking at me in that adoring, stalkerish way I get startled because he does look so eerily human, like a precocious child. And I imagine I must have seemed something like that to adults when I was a baby, a cute and vulnerable pink lump of flesh, talking before I could walk.

Koreans, Golf, and Dogs

Creepiness aside, Jae is awesome. All the clichés about dogs are true. He has changed my life. I knew this would happen because the same thing happened to my mother when she got her first dog in her early 60s, an affectionate, pensive-looking beagle with a Napolean complex that she and my brother have lovingly nurtured. People laughed at me for getting a dog stroller when Jae was tiny and couldn’t walk long distances, but my mother was the pioneer.

When she took her puppy in the stroller to the golf course which, like every golf course in the world, is overrun by Koreans, two ajuhshi came over to admire the puppy and ask its name. When she replied Jun-young, they burst into laughter. Because this is a common human name (indeed, it’s the name of our younger cousin who was adorable as a child), and Koreans do not name their pets human Korean names. They name them human Western names. For a long time, Koreans called their dogs Mary or John, depending on the gender. Sometimes the gender didn’t matter.

Also, Koreans and East Asians generally prefer white dogs over darker ones (unlike my mother who has always been a maverick). I wondered about this and the western naming habit. Were they symptoms of Koreans’ colonization of consciousness by Western/American culture? Cue double eyelid surgery, whiteness creams, budejjigeh, and the sad fetishization of ugly white men teaching English in Asia. Or were they subversive attempts to literally domesticate whiteness, raising white dogs with western names as surrogate children?

Or, as my friend Julie astutely pointed out, maybe it simply had to do with Asians’ proclivity for cleanliness. An aestheticized health choice.

I’m prone to agree with Julie. Jae-young matches my home décor, even though I didn’t plan it that way at all.

Boundaries

After getting out of my last relationship, I moved into a brand new apartment that I proceeded to decorate like a zen retreat. I got a new white leather sofa and white bedframe, a glass dining table and glass end tables to match my glass coffee table – all air and water like my astrological chart. To add wood and fire elements, I got an entertainment center that looks like a tastefully weathered log and threw a few yellow, red, and orange cushions onto the sea of blue and green pillows and throws that undulated softly on the marshmallow sofa.

My home set up was immaculate. A tranquil oasis of good feng shui and North facing sun that not only acknowledged but celebrated my mild OCD.

This was my space, not to be tampered with in any way by roommates or partners who did not know the rightful place of things. It proclaimed to myself and others that finally in mid-life, I had boundaries, and these boundaries were beautiful.

My new dog child joyfully jumped over those boundaries. Then he dashed back – with his horse gallop meets bunny hop (he has luxating patella and will get arthritis in his old age, like me) -- to shit, pee, and vomit on them. 

The pristine virgin that had been my apartment was deflowered by a dog.

There are no boundaries between me and Jae. We eat, sleep, train, play, and watch nineties TV together. We watch each other go to the bathroom. He has witnessed me break down at 2 am on the balcony with gin-spiked orange juice because I ran out of tonic water and couldn’t be bothered to go to the grocery store because all that choice gives me panic attacks. And he has come over and patted my hand and licked my tears when I have burst into spontaneous weeping fits from anger, frustration, exhaustion, boredom.

Then we have cuddled and gone to sleep.

Dog Child

There is a ferocious battle currently being waged on the Internet between dog parents and human parents. Many human parents are pissed off at dog parents (or “owners”) who refer to their dogs as their children. I understand their ire to a point. Human children require more investment in time, energy and money. They grow up, become adults, may take care of you in old age, and are more of a direct reflection on your character.  And we all know dogs are not human.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t love. And …  love is love. There’s even biological proof. According to Salon, a study was conducted recently that recorded the hormones dogs and their human mothers secreted when they gazed at each other. Each got a big hit of oxytocin (the happiness hormone). For the mothers the amount of oxytocin was the same as when they gazed at their human offspring.

So while I remain committed to staying childless, I also get an inkling of what it might feel like to be a mother. You make sacrifices (like the carpet and dating -- the only men who approach a small Asian woman with what looks like a toy poodle are gay, married, or drunk) but you don’t mind because you love your child. The great thing about having a dog child is they never grow up, they stay the equivalent of human two-year olds but better behaved, if properly trained, for the rest of their lives. The sad thing is they live such short lives compared to us.

Two things I’ve done differently this year from past years, is to meditate and get a dog. Both have had a similar effect on me. They have taught me to be more present and grateful.

My love for Jae is unconditional. Because language, thinking, performing don't interfere when we communicate. There is a simplicity and truth to our love, a bond that I know I will never have, except in fleeting moments, with other human beings.

© Jane Park