Whole Life Times: Of Fathers, Needles and Pins

June 2006 | BackWords

Of Fathers, Needles and Pins

by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee

When I was a little girl, I used to sneak into my parents’ room to play. I loved to feel the silky texture of my mother’s colorful scarves and bury my face in the soft dresses that filled her closet.

But the parental artifact I treasured most was the rich brown leather case, heavy with mystery, that lay hidden beneath my father’s side of the bed. I would furtively slide it out into the light, carefully lifting with both hands to place it gently on the covers. I clicked open the lid to reveal inscrutable little glass vials, small piles of soft moss, tiny brown sticks and rows and rows of antiseptic needles. My dad was an acupuncturist.

Growing up, our bathroom medicine cabinets were nearly empty. You would have been hard-pressed to find even an aspirin rolling around our house. If I had a headache, Dad would just stick a few needles in my head, and I was fine within minutes. If one of my siblings had a stomachache, needles in their hands and feet magically cured them. I came home many an evening to find some stranger lying on the living room, his back studded with Dad’s glinting needles.

My father’s gruff manner of speaking and stoic countenance instilled fear in my childhood friends. When we kids were being extra rowdy, he would call us into the room with a single word and pull out the dreaded metal box from his back pocket. Just a brief glimpse of the needles twinkling menacingly from his wallet-sized case was enough to send us backing out of the room, shrieking in terror. I could swear I caught a secret delight in his eyes once or twice, as we ran.

But when it came to administering a treatment, there was no joking around. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I trembled with anticipation, every muscle in my body tensed, listening to my dad preparing in the other room. Although he had introduced me to acupuncture before I could walk, I dreaded each new treatment. I would sit there waiting, imagining that the pain would be so excruciating that I was going to die. Yet, when he finally inserted the needles into my chi points, each small prick of relief dispelled my fears. Sometimes, he would leave the room, ordering me not to move while we both waited the prescribed time for the treatment to take effect. When he was well out of sight, I would cautiously touch a metal tip with a finger or move my muscles slightly to feel the physical presence of thin metal buried in my flesh.

Sometimes, Dad let me remove the needles myself, rubbing the spot where they had been with my thumb and forefinger. When I got older, he even let me put them in his legs when his knees bothered him after long days on his feet. I would hold the hexagonal tube gingerly in my hand as I tapped the needle into just the right point on his body. After slowly removing the hollow casing, I would twist the needle in just a little more, my palms damp with nervous excitement.

I wanted to understand the secrets of the needles, so I dutifully studied the diagrams in his large, dusty volumes. The books showed pictures of various body parts carefully rendered with numbered dots to represent the relevant points—gallbladder 6, liver 12—some mysterious body language I could never understand.

I eventually bought my first bottle of aspirin well into my college years, when trips home were spaced out longer than my ailments. But even today, I still try to relieve minor headaches by pressing pressure points in my hands and feet. I soothe my husband’s ailments from hunching over the computer by pressing the prescribed points in his back, arms and shoulders.

Although I never unraveled the complexities of the needles, my father instilled in me a healthy distrust of Western medicine, an awareness of my body’s innate wellness and the sure knowledge that, whatever challenges arise, the power to alleviate life’s pains and sorrows lies within me.

Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee is the author of the cookbook Eating Korean. She writes, meditates and paints in Los Angeles.

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