Is full time artist dream or a reality?

"Aunt, do you know how hard it was for me to get back here? I thought I couldn't come."

The sound of a friend's child telling the secret he had held in his heart for a long time, I felt beaten to the head with an iron bar.

The friend sent her baby to Korea because it was hard to raise a child while working. Then, a few years later, when she was settled, she brought her son back. The child was playing in the park with my children and sat next to me to see if it was not fun, sighing and said.

From the mouth of a first grade elementary school child poured out the things grown-ups say. I had no choice but to sit vacantly by with no consolation.

My husband immigrated to Los Angeles in 1975, worked a kitchen helper in a restaurant, paints and worked in newspaper advertising. After coming to New York he finished school by working at a vegetable shop, a clothing store and wig wholesaler. After getting married, he worked at peddlers, clothing stores, carpenters, and shoe stores. Finally, he did color up at the lamp shop that his junior runs.

At first, he worked five days a week at a lamp shop. Then, it was reduced to four days. As if a determined drug addict was cutting back on his drug, he ended up working for only one day, and finally quit his job.

Finally, my husband has been a full-time painter. Every time he cut back on his work day by day at a lamp shop, I was nervous and restless. Life doesn't get better, and children grow up every day, so how can we live? Fortunately, he has been working hard on his drawing. The paintings were sold.

"Mom, we've helped a lot of saves, haven't we?" the children say as if they were a devoted son. Every time they say that, I lose my words and get lost in the old thoughts as if I were rewinding a video.

Every winter, the children learned to play tennis for free at 6 a.m. at Roosevelt Island Indoor Tennis Court. They learned swimming in a city-run Metropolitan swimming pool and music in the school band. The children grew up without the properly clothes. I got it from others or bought it in a thrift clothes store. Fortunately, boys were not picky. Even now, they buy at the Beacons Closet, a second-hand clothing store in Brooklyn. In their own way, old clothes are comfortable for them. Is it a vintage look?

Every time my husband cuts down his work day by day, I had sighed like the friend's son sigh.  I'm also like the friend's son said; I may have lived looking forward to the day when I could say, "How hard it was for me to come here?"