As closing day for my new home approached, I knew that I was going to meet the sellers of the place eventually. There was admittedly a little bit of apprehension in the thought, since these are basically the people that I’d been playing hardball with in negotiating listing prices, how much of the closing costs I wanted them to cover, and the additional costs I made them incur in repairs and requests found through home inspection, and now I was going to have to face them so they could hand the keys of their property over to me.
This was somewhat a new experience to me; the last time I was at the closing table, I was the seller, and the buyer was tremendously low-maintenance, was willing to cover most of the closing costs, and barely asked for any work at all. And the first time I purchased a home, it was brand new and purchased directly from a builder, so there was nobody on the other side of the table that I had the innate feeling that I was taking something from them, regardless of how legitimate and normal the transaction was.
Furthermore, I had my suspicions initially based on an errant piece of litter on the property that the prior owners may have been Asian, and it was confirmed during the process that despite not being anywhere near Duluth or Suwanee, they were in fact Koreans. Yeah, I lol’d too at the strange coincidence of it all that I would of course, pick the home of other Koreans to choose to plant my new roots into. So, I knew going into closing day, that I would be coming face-to-face with other Koreans, after I had kind of put them through a little bit of the ringer, just so they could sell their home. I wasn’t necessarily scared to face them, but there’s no denying that my requests probably cost them a little bit of money they probably were hoping to not spend.
Regardless, the whole closing process wasn’t at all a bad one; the seller(s) were really nice people, and there was no indication that they were at all sour over the expenditures necessary to make the sale happen. I was amused by their realization that mother couldn’t speak to daughter discreetly in Korean without me being able to understand it, so most of the correspondence was kept in English, for the sake of the other non-Koreans involved in the process.
However, this whole experience stuck with me to where I felt the compulsion to write about it, mostly on account of cultural reasons, especially dealing with fellow Koreans. Long story short, I got the distinct impression that if it were up to the omma (mom) of the family, they wouldn’t have sold the house at all. That’s pretty abundantly clear when they make remarks about how if it were up to her, the house would have been rented so that it could one day be returned to.
But the reason for their moving in general hit home a little hard for me, because of just how much it resonated with my own life. To cut to the chase, the family was moving because of their teenaged kid. The way the schools are set up in this particular area, kids can go to the same schools for elementary/middle but different high school and any other variety of changes. In this instance, the teenager and all their friends went to the same middle school, but it turns out that the district lines for high school would result in them being the odd man out, and that was declared unacceptable by the teenager.
And in such a typically Korean self-sacrificial manner, the parents put the kid first, and decided to move to where they could go to high school with their existing friends, and presumably remain comfortable and capable of academic excellence, get into Harvard or Stanford or Johns Hopkins and become success lawyer or doctor. Needless to say, I’m fairly certain the Koreans whom I bought my house from moved no more than perhaps 10-15 minutes at the most away.
This hits home with me, because there was a time in my life where I was a similar age to the teenager where my family moved for financial reasons. But instead of considering the world their oyster and keeping all options open, they chose to stick within a particular area, mostly on account of me. Now, I didn’t demand that I had to stay in the same high school, but they clearly felt similarly to the parents of the child whose home I just bought, and opted to stay somewhat nearby, because they didn’t want to uproot me from my friends and school that I already knew and did well enough at.
I look back at that situation, and think my parents could have moved me anywhere at all, to somewhere more fiscally responsible for their situation than they did. Even if I had to go to a different high school and kind of start things over, I’d have adapted, because that’s something I’ve done my entire life as it is. I adapt, that is nothing new for me to deal with, and I probably would’ve been capable of doing such back then. But they put me first, and I don’t look back at that situation and not understand and be aware of what they did, and it’s one of those things that make me realize that they might not have been model immigrant parents, but they certainly tried their best.
Regardless, none of the unearthed narrative was going to change the end result; I wanted this house, and bought it, and I’m going to live in it, presumably for a very long time now. The Korean family from which I bought it from moved a stone’s throw away, and will hopefully be happy with their child’s happiness as they go to high school with their existing friends, instead of having to start all over somewhere else. But it was a truly interesting scenario being on the other end of the table in homeownership, and I can’t help but have a little bit of empathy for the omma who didn’t really want to sell, but did anyway for the sake of their children.
