by Meredith Seung Mee Buse

 

We stop at the bottom of the boardwalk steps to prepare: sneakers and socks off, me; crocs in hand, you.

I roll up my pant legs; you hold up your skirt.

Mid-October, tail end of shoulder season—we hadn’t planned to get in.

Not in the water, at least.

For months, we’ve been in all sorts of things—you in your bedroom, door locked, headphones on. Me in my head. In conflict. Indifferent.

But last night, fleeing the relentless waves of back-to-school routines, homework, presentations, we piled into a rented Nissan, took I-76 to the ACE, and ended up in Ocean City. Heaped our electronics into a bin—shabbat tradition—devices outnumbering people two-to-one.

Crammed into a crowded restaurant. Laughed and talked, the salt air so strong it flavored your bruschetta and calamari.

Stretched our family budget to fit in seven more years of your childhood.

How many more road trips to the Atlantic? Waves beckoning, wind roaring, hair pulled back.

Monster milkshakes, candy bags groaning with gummy sharks, peach rings and spearmint leaves from color-coded bins.

How many more times when you grab my hand and tug me toward the shore?

“Be careful, because you’re barefoot,” you say, when we venture out on a shoal of slippery rocks.

Memories surface now. Holding you at age 6. Cape Cod, bayside, nasty cut on your foot, a shell hidden in the sand. Two summers ago, five blocks south on this very beach, hours spent battered by waves, giggling as they pulled you under. Climbing a waterfall on Korea’s Jeju Island, spray soaking our clothes. Our first family trip to my home.

“When you were a kid, did you go with your mom to the ocean?” You ask. I sift through my memories. “Do you love your mom?”

I pause.

My adoptive mom?

Years of low-contact—tidy euphemism for almost estranged.

Radio silence about the important parts of my life—my writing, my birth family search, even you, my growing child (What grades are the kids in again?)—interrupted by an occasional text saying how much she wants to repair our relationship, followed by more silence.

Not enough water under that bridge to fill this fluid, rolling moment. I let the question linger.

*

By tomorrow morning, I’ll know what to say. Mid-french braid, uneven strands pulled tight as possible, bangs spilling out on both sides.

“Grammie was a good mom.” Is this true? Not sure. True enough, I guess.

“She just struggles with adult emotions. Her dad died when she was 8 years old,” I’ll say.

“And her brother died after the war, right?” You’ll add.

“Yeah, and her other brother. And her mom. She basically lost her whole family, and I think maybe when that happened, she stopped growing emotionally. That’s why she does better with young kids than adults.”

“Oh, okay,” you’ll say. Then hop off the bed to start your day, unburdened.

*

But right now, I just hold your hand.

“Let’s walk over there and then back,” you say, pointing down the shoreline. “I want it to take longer.”

We stand together, both soaked waist-high, watching the waves breathe us. 

Out, in.

Out, in.

 

Meredith Seung Mee Buse is an author, educator and Korean American transracial adoptee whose writing has appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Komerican Pie, Severance Magazine, Diverse Bookfinder, Adoptee Voices and Adoptee Reclaimed. Her creative nonfiction essay, “Variations on a Theme,” will be published in an edited anthology on transnational adoptee origins in 2026, and her debut picture book, Emily Min-Ji Makes Kimchi, is forthcoming in 2027. Find her at meredithseungmeebuse.com,