Yesterday’s love letter to meditation led me to the 1 hour sit at 4:05am.
I wonder. What yonder yesterdays got me here?
Women are born with fixed number eggs (1 to 2 million oocytes), unlike men who create sperm throughout their lifetime. Divine Mother Nature.
All of us were once a speck of an egg in our mother’s body, inside her mother’s womb, created 20 weeks post conception.
For five months, Grandma’s intake of calories not only fed her child, but also her future grandchildren.
Grandma’s range of emotions and experiences were felt by every cell inside her body, by you and me.
For 140 days, three generations live inside one body.
How we take our body for granted. Abusing and cursing the body for not fitting the mold of billboards and magazines. Berating it for not staying strong. Getting sick. Not resting. This holy body of ours. The house of our lives. Wanting to escape and run away from discomfort. Wondering why we long for safety and predictability.
Having forgotten, how we came to exist. Ancient wisdom of the past, surging to become the present.
The desire to return to safety. Longing so deep inside our being, seeking comfort and familiarity. Carried inside our ancestors, bubble wrapped and insulated, safe and secure.
Here we are. You. Me. Us.
Halmeni was my cocoon of love, care and affection. She was my beacon of love, a safe harbor of existence. The space in between. The giver of life and its lessons.
She showed me her love and care for her child. “Use laundry soap bar to wash your hair. Leave the shampoo and conditioner for your mom”
She bathed us when we were dirty, boiling three black cauldrons of water in the middle of winter. Heat applied in the 아궁이, the empty space beneath the cauldron, fire kindled with straw from rice, fed with logs of wood. She sits and blows into the fire. For hours, I imagine. Squeezing my sister and me into an orange tub used to make kimchi every autumn. She washes our bodies not unlike cabbage leaves. Thoroughly yet gently as to not bruise. Our hands and toes become wrinkly in the heat, not unlike cabbage leaves dehydrated after being salted.
She is up before the sun. As steam shoots out of the white electric pot, her house is filled with scent of white rice ready to simmer. She prepares the rainbow of raw ingredients. Washing, boiling, frying and chopping. A sheet of black paper. She wets her fingers, before spreading white rice across the rectangular surface. She creates rows of green (spinach), yellow (fried eggs), orange (carrots), white (crab meat) and yellow (pickled radish). She wipes her hand dry before wrapping the rice and rows of rainbow inside the black seaweed.
Rolling and rolling, she rolls them tight. Pyramid of black logs glisten, coated with sesame oil.
One by one, she cuts them into small tokens.
Taking out two metal containers, she places tokens inside; currency of her love. Into our lunch bags, she packs a metal container of kimbap and a can of coke or Fanta orange.
The happiest day of every school year, a field trip at local mountains, eating our favorite meals in the shade of trees after climbing all day.
She is in turmoil. I have never seen her like this, and I’ve witnessed her be presented with plenty opportunities. Her son came home with blood in his face after fighting. Nothing. One day, I came home with blood on my forehead after a boy threw rocks on me. Nothing.
Today, she is shaking. Her entire body, and earth beneath my feet tremors and foundation cracks. I have never experienced such emotion, from her small frame, giantess of my life.
“Who took the bone marrow from the fridge? Who took the bone marrow from the fridge wrapped in plastic? Who would do such a thing,” she starts.
“My baby cannot eat. She cannot chew. My baby. My baby. I brought the marrow so I can make soup for my baby. My baby, my baby.”
She wails and wails.
“How can you do this? How can you steal from me? I cannot feed my baby. My baby.”
She is at the hospital, looking after her daughter. I am here to visit my mother, who has been away for how long, I don’t know. Children have no sense of time. At the entrance of the six-patient room, I watch in silence. I feel her loss and her sadness too.
“How can you… how can you…”
She sobs and sobs, and I not only feel bad for her, but for everyone here. Someone stole it to do exactly what she intended. Make soup for her sick patient. Her flesh and blood. Her child. Her mother. Her sister. Her cousin. All poor people gathered to take care of their sick. To look after the perishing in the best way how, in this cramped room with one fridge to share.
How a mother loves her daughter, my mother. Her child, her baby. How she wants her first born to stay alive. Despite the sadness that washes over me, I feel her love more. How much she cares for her baby.
She cries and cries, until her body stops shaking. Like an earthquake, tremors leaving her face.
She is on the phone. “I’m going to send them to an orphanage. We cannot take care of them. If their dad doesn’t come and get them, they’re going to the orphanage.”
She sprays into my hair, emptying the blue can. “shoooooooooooooooooooo” She quickly wraps our heads tight with towels. Holding my hands, she tells me to be still. It’s okay, she repeats. Lice sprints across the scalp, trying to escape. It feels like an eternity. Definitely an hour or two. Using the fine comb she removes eggs and dead insects before washing my hair.
She holds my hands as she sleeps. She peers into my face, trying to catch every detail. She keeps touching me, making me feel uncomfortable. She is happy to see me. It’s been 12 years since we last saw each other. I was eleven years old, leaving for America.
She calls a number from her black notebook. She is calling my friend from elementary school. How does she even remember? How thoughtful is she, to connect me to my friend? Home visiting her family for Chooseok, the Autumn Harvest, she answers, and I meet her and other friends from elementary school. We still keep in touch, thanks to halmeni.
I have so many memories of my dear grandmother. A woman who taught me how to love. To be loved. Always kind and fair. I have never seen her say anything mean or spiteful. She was always patient. Love personified. If love were a person, it would be you. It would be her. I wonder if it is me too.
And so, on this eighth day of 100 days of love letters, I dedicate this love letter to my grandmother.
8 is an infinite sign pretending to be a number, standing on its side.
8 is a snowman we make in the dead of winter.
8 is a pair of glasses we peer into, this world of wonder.
8 is a set of balls sitting atop, bouncing around, close together. Like two peas in a pod, not unlike two beavers holding hands as they sleep, so they don’t float away from each other.
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