Lilly Sullivan

And the meaning of this story has always been clear. If they didn't pick him up, we would, all of us wouldn't be here right now. Here I am with my niece and nephews. I wouldn't be here, and you wouldn't be here. Mom wouldn't be here.

There's something predestined about it. This is such an important story, I thought. You know what? I want to visit the spot where the meteor struck. My dad died 10 years ago. I miss him. Always. And he doesn't have a grave. He insisted on cremation by, quote, the cheapest means possible. He didn't like fancy things. And I also think that he didn't want to be a burden.

Anyway, when I want to remember him, there's not like a location I can go to. I can't like put flowers by a tombstone. So how about this place? This legendary spot where he climbed into a car and our family began. So, can't be hard. So where was it? Anita says it was by the freeway exit by our house. Manuelita says it was an on-ramp heading downtown. But they're not definitive about it.

So I went to the third person in the car that day, my mom. And she says, sure, I know exactly where it was. And then she starts to tell me this story.

The bus stop? He was taking the bus? This is not the story I'd always heard. In my mom's version, they weren't in a car. She and Manuelita were walking down the street. They'd just left the Jacksons' house. The Jacksons were a family where my tia Manuelita worked as a cook. She says it was a beautiful day, not raining at all. And most importantly, dad wasn't hitchhiking.

Was he like holding up a sign or something saying he wanted a ride?

Because the story's always been hitchhiking.

Wait, Mom, but your story and Anita's story is completely different. She remembers it, clearly.

Then why does she remember this other story?

From my mom's point of view, this is especially mysterious because she's quite certain that Anita wasn't there. Not in a car. Not on the street. Not there for this moment at all.

Anita remembers it.

No, no, no. This kind of knocked me over. The hitchhiking story, as I've said, is the origin story of my family. My mom's had a private version of it for 50 years that she's kept to herself during the many, many conversations where we tell it. When my dad died 10 years ago, we wrote about this story in his obituary, like printed it in our local newspaper. We ran that obituary by my mom.

She didn't think it was worth correcting. Dad was the memory keeper of our family, a big-hearted, big-brained guy who held on to everything that happened. Who had chickenpox first as a kid? Natalie, he'd say. What was the name of that iguana that we had that died? Mari Iguana, he'd say. He would absolutely know exactly where this happened.

And the thought that he's not here to tell us, it makes him feel so... gone. Like we had a favorite photo of him, and we have no idea where it is anymore. When my dad died, it was sudden. And it devastated me. As time passes, we've lost so much of him. His clothes have lost his smell of wool and sawdust and too much Tide laundry detergent. And this, it was like losing a big piece of him again.

Because in his absence, and in our negligence, we simply forgot to remember. Unforgivable. I had to fix this. I had to get to the truth. I force the three of them, Manolita, Anita, and my mom, to sit down together to try to work this out. Come to some agreement about what happened and where. Anita is stunned to hear that my mom and Manolita don't think she was in the car.

So yeah, my story's not going to change.

Mom turns to me. I don't remember anything wrong. She tells the others they weren't even in a car. But Manolita, you remember him hitchhiking and you were driving and you pulled over, right? Yeah, of course. That's why I picked him up. She remembers walking, that you all were walking. No, we were not walking. Oh yeah, I was driving.

This went nowhere. And the fact that we've been telling this hitchhiking story for 50 years, and my mom's never mentioned that she thinks it's complete bullshit, I have to say, that's very much like my mom. She's eminently capable of keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself. She has feelings, obviously. But she shows love in concrete ways. An unasked-for plate of fruit. A bowl of soup.

She'd give me her kidney or hide a body for me, no questions asked. But sitting around gabbing about feelings? Not her thing. She finds that trying. She'll either roll her eyes or blurt out something explosive and walk away. Or clam up. Here's us in the car. Mom, so, but, but, I just, is it interesting to you that you have one memory and other people have a different memory? Is it interesting?

I know, I know, but is it interesting? I want to talk about the feelings of it. That's good. Yeah, that's how we met. Yeah, but what's it like? How do you feel? Nothing. It's okay. She gets impatient. She dodges. In response, I get impatient with her. About everything. I compulsively nitpick everything she does. Can you put your bag in back? There's no noise. It's too much noise.

Rustling that bag makes noise that gets on the mic, I tell her. So does her beaded necklace. Could you take off your necklace? Yeah. Rather than engage with me, she whips out her little pot of Mary Kay cold cream and starts stabbing it on her cheeks and forehead. Let's focus. Okay.

I'm a nightmare. She lets it go. She's a good mom. Of course, the day my parents met, there was one other person there. My dad. I'd interviewed him in 2010, years before he died. Before he even got sick. I've never been able to bring myself to listen to that recording. Just too hard. So I had no memory of what we talked about that day.

But I had a hunch that if I'd done an interview with him, I would have asked him to tell me this story. I had no idea where this interview was, but I'd given him a copy and I knew he would have kept it. The week I talked to my mom, I spent hours digging through old file cabinets and boxes in the garage. I finally found it one night at 2 a.m.

I threw on all the lights, ran into bed, and listened immediately. Okay, um, how did you meet mom?

Oh, my God. Of course he has all the answers.

What kind of car were they driving?

And what did you think when you got in the car?

That's the first thing you thought when you got in the car?

You weren't like, who are these tiny ladies picking up a huge... I didn't know.

Why did you think she was cute?

So they picked you up on Rio Del Mar in front of what? Like, what would it be there today?

Oh, right there?

And so then what happened in the car? When did you get out?

Anita was against this.

And then, did you ask Mom out?

What did she say?

This recording is from 14 years ago. I haven't really heard his voice in 10 years, since he died. I hadn't forgotten, but I sort of had forgotten, how much fun we had just talking to each other. And my dad told the same story as Anita and Manuelita. This story my dad tells about their meeting. It was not news to my mom. She says, yeah, we always disagreed about that. Of course he said that.

He's got it wrong.

I've thought a lot about why my mom prefers her version, where he's walking to a bus stop and not hitchhiking. And the main thing I keep thinking about is, in my dad's version, my mom's people make the first move. Their meeting is kind of random, a split-second fluke. But in the version my mom likes, everyone's on foot on this rainless, beautiful day, and my dad sees them and approaches.

He makes the first move, which is maybe more romantic. Everyone wants to be chosen. I run my hypothesis by her. She kind of blinks at me blankly, slightly impatient. Nothing. The day after I found that interview with my dad, I woke up early and the mismatched memories, it all started clicking together. Okay, this is just me in my room. It's Wednesday.

Last night I listened to that recording and dad said it was in Rio Del Mar right by the bridge. So I think... I think I just figured it out. I think their car was parked on the street a little ways from the Jackson's house, and they had to walk to the car from the house. So my mom remembers that walk. And then they got in and had just started driving when they hit that bridge and saw my dad.

That's like a block away from the Jackson's. No time at all. Easy for my mom to forget. And there he stood, not at a bus stop, but hitchhiking. Okay, here's me explaining my theory to my mom. And you had barely gotten in the car, you went around the corner, and dad was right there.

Maybe because what dad said, and dad has a really good memory, you know?

But what I think might have happened is, mom, your feet, can you stop?

I think you guys might have just gotten in the car, barely driven, and then he was right there.

You think that sounds right?

Do you want to go drive and see where he said? Let's go look at that.

We drive to the spot my dad said. You remember.

The Jackson House is maybe a minute away, around the corner. There are trees everywhere, an intersection between residential blocks. Not much around. Except for... There's a bus stop.

She had been talking about this bus stop the whole time, and I didn't believe her.

I think this is it, Mom. I knew this road like the back of my hand, and I'd never seen a bus stop there. But here it was, tucked under some trees, just a sign and a little bench.

This was it. What I'd wanted to find. The place our family began. A bus stop I'd driven past a million times. Not the fanciest spot in the world, but pretty. A place you wouldn't mind visiting again. My mom said next time I'm in town, we should go sit at that bus stop. Bring champagne. Toast my dad. Probably get a ticket, she said. But to hell with it.

Part of what made this whole project a little weird for me was this thing that I've mentioned a few times. That my mom doesn't really like discussing feelings. But I learned something talking to my sister Kim about all this stuff. That driving home, I really wanted to tell my mom. Do you know that when he was sick, Manuelita came to the house and she was sitting with him. And, um...

And he was sick, you know, he was just lying down and not really talking that much at that point. But he did say to her, he said, Manuelita, thank you for my life.

What does it feel like to hear that he said that?

Tell me more. Tell me more about what it feels like.

I know that he wouldn't do that so fast, so soon. Well, like, I think when I hear that story, it's kind of beautiful to me because he loved his life so much.

And he loved his family, and he loved you. Yeah. Yeah.

I brought up my dad's last days and my mom's mind went straight to their last night together. Cut to the heart of her grief. To this moment when he was dying and they forgave each other for their hurts. We've never talked about this. My mom never talks like this. Yeah.

When I was nine, my parents had a rough patch in their relationship and decided to separate. After a few months, they got back together. I never really knew how or why. We didn't like to speak about that time in my family. But as I was talking to my mom about all this, she brought it up. You want to know the real hitchhiking story, she said?

She told me that during the time they were separated, one day, she was driving down the street, and she saw my dad was walking. And as she approached him on the road, he saw it was her and her Volvo, and he threw his thumb in the air. Cool joke, huh? So she stopped, picked him up. A couple days later, they got back together. That's the important story, she said.

After that, my parents stayed married another 20 years. During that time, they had a blast together. Sometimes inseparable. The best time of their marriage, my mom tells me. After they returned to that root moment where everything started. Only this time, it wasn't random chance. It was his choice to flag her down. And hers to scoop him up.

In my family, there's a story. The kind your family never forgets. It's about a hitchhiker. It happened decades ago in 1974. There were three women in a car. My aunt Manuelita, her daughter, and their cousin. Manuelita was driving.

Holding his finger in the air? Uh-huh. Manuelita is now 96, and her daughter in the car, Anita, remembers more of the details. So I'm going to let Anita tell a lot of this. She was a kid at the time, 10 years old.

Anita was scared because they were in Northern California, and there were serial killers, a few of them, around there in the 70s. Even at 10, Anita knew this. All three women in the car were small, all under five feet. Anita in the front seat, their cousin Cecilia in the back. Again, here's Anita.

Anita remembers sitting stock still, staring straight ahead, afraid to make eye contact as a stranger somehow talked them into letting him into the car.

Serial killer looking white guy? Turns out, Fluent in Spanish. The hitchhiker lumbered into the backseat next to Cecilia. Cecilia had only been in the country a few weeks at that point and was like, what on earth? She was 26.

That was the hitchhiker's name. Which I know because... That guy's my dad. Cecilia, that's my mom. And this story, it's the story of how our family came to be. Their legendary first meeting. It's followed by a similarly legendary first date. My mom's sister and cousin dressed her up in their own clothes. White bell bottoms, white platform heels. My dad showed up in a poncho.

and he took her hiking in the Redwood Forest, where it rained. He ended up carrying her so that she wouldn't ruin the shoes she'd borrowed. Two weeks later, they eloped, headed off to Reno, but ended up stopping in a random town nearby, where marriage licenses were $5 cheaper. They got married at 7 a.m. on Christmas Eve. Anita remembers them coming home after with their marriage license.

That's so cool. It's such a good story. Like I said, legendary. This story is the bedrock foundation of how I see my parents, especially my dad. I picture him at 26, his Miss Button shirt, catching rides through the West Coast alone. This big white guy from Detroit climbing into this car full of immigrants, just exuberant, and thinking, wow, I'm going to marry this lady.

And I picture my mom at 26, having just arrived in the country, self-contained, determined, seeing this weirdo and deciding... Yes. Him. When you enter the family, this is pretty much the one story we make you memorize. And then you can be a citizen of the family. Here's my brother-in-law, Lars. How many times do you think you've heard this story?

And that one line is what spawned this entire myth. The letter is signed, Robert Ho Man Kwok, M.D.

Like, you know, why is a board member calling me?

I am the author of Ho Man Kwok. my brain just sort of goes, what?

And I'm listening to the voicemail in my living room, and my jaw is just dropping. Because up until then, I had completely, I had operated under the assumption that Dr. Ho Man Kwok was a Chinese-American researcher. And all of a sudden, I don't know what to believe.

And he just had this sort of throwaway line that, yeah, this myth of MSG being harmful can be traced back to one letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.

And I was just sort of sitting there going, huh, one letter. It was like, oh, it's an origin story.

I mean, the titles were very, very offensive. Let's see, let me see if I can find the one. From the Chicago Tribune, in broken English, the headline is Chinese Food Make You Crazy? MSG is number one suspect. Wow. Chinese food make you crazy. I can't believe that was a headline. Yeah. So I was like, hmm. They were all reacting to something that wasn't even real. It was all projection.

So the letter reads, for several years since I have been in this country, I have experienced a strange syndrome whenever I have eaten out in a Chinese restaurant. The syndrome, which usually begins 15 to 20 minutes after I have eaten the first dish, lasts for about two hours without any hangover effect. The most prominent symptoms are numbness at the back of the neck.