So I was looking at my tshirt and wondering.

It's one of those things that your parents bring you in the hope that you'll grow into. My dad lugged it back from DC in the summer of 95, and promptly mothballed it until 2003, whereupon I used it as a rag/mop/bathmat and also wore while doing things to my Herald.

It came out of a 4-pack of them. I asked my dad why on earth he bought 4 tshirts that said Washington DC, and he was like, "Oh there was this Korean family selling them outside the Smithsonian, and it seemed like a bargain". Typical.

Even as a kid, it made me wonder. Selling tshirts outside a museum struck me as the sort of thing poor people did, and at 10 I didn't realise there were poor people in America. I mean, everyone drank Coke and ate burgers, and drove cars.

Then I began to understand. How some people are immigrants. How some people have no choice. How some people give it all up to start afresh, in the hope that things will be better.

It takes guts.

Once in a while, I think about that Korean family. I hope they made it. That their kids went to Harvard or Columbia or MIT, or wherever they wanted to. That they bought their Buick and paid off their mortgage.

It can't be too easy to leave your homeland. They're not particularly good at English, them Koreans. What made them leave the warmth and security of their country, to gamble on a better life thousands of miles away? No knowledge of where they were going, no one to fall back on, no guarantee of success.

Just hope.

It's always hope. Hope that things will get better. Hope that one day, your children will have a better life than you did. Hope that you will have all that you ever wanted. Hope that one day you will find happiness.


"And it’s hope that keeps me holding on
It’s just hope that makes me carry on"