Autobiography of a Childhood: Prologue

Here the story starts with the one that started it all: me, Natalie Haejin Lee, ringleader, eldest, and storyteller.

This is a story of a life – multiple lives, actually, each moment an interwoven fabric of thousands of quivering existences, all with one common factor – we.

I say ‘we’ instead of ‘me’ because though the story started with me, it never was really within my grasp. It was we, and we grew up shaped by my wild imaginings, Emma’s amicable willingness, Jeannie’s stolid spirit, and Taylor’s stubborn heart.

I was born on September 12, 1990. Emma was born on the New Year’s Day of 1991. Jeannie, my younger sister, popped out on the leap day of 1992. Taylor, Emma’s sister, completed us seven months later on November 3, 1992.

But now the dates no longer matter because we have become indefinable even to ourselves. We are four girls wearing matching han-boks silhouetted against a cherry-blossom background. We are four overlapping figures on a moonlit beach.