Not all grief is cut from the same cloth. Some days, it’s a weighted blanket; others it’s a tulle canopy, creating a gauzy haze between me and the rest of the world. Some days it’s not cloth at all but a cloud of fine dust that stings my nose and throat and coaxes tears from my face.
That last one is, unfortunately, not a metaphor. This is a story about how I triggered respiratory distress in an attempt to honor my heritage.
I was born in Korea but have spent most of my life in the U.S., where it’s far more normal to have a chemically treated lawn than it is to convert every patch of available dirt into something beautiful or edible, as in Korea. My Korean mom gardened a lot when I was a kid for reasons I didn’t think much about, other than that she was raised on a farm, and I thought, okay, she farmed in Korea; she farms here. I realize now that America is a country where a lot of the ingredients my mom grew up eating aren’t available unless you grow them yourself. This is less true now than it was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, but still, to an extent, pretty true.
I didn’t have any interest in the process until I started working from home in 2020. I was home all day, and plants were some of the only living beings we knew were safe to hang out with, and I desperately needed a reason to go outside every day. I had a few potato plants, a couple of cherry tomato plants in buckets, maybe a jalapeno. It was the smallest amount of food production I could reasonably call a garden, but it worked: keeping those potatoes alive got me out of bed.
In September of that year, we lost my dad to cancer. After a long period of ordinary sadness, consideration of a future without him brought my own filial life into sharp relief. Dad was from Kentucky, and Mom is from Korea. Since Dad died, my Oklahoma family hasn’t eaten American food on any major holiday—or most any other days we’re together. None of us like turkey, and in his absence, we all felt like it was finally okay to say that out loud.
Since 2022 (when Korea started letting Americans back in) I’ve spent more time with family there than I did from ages six to 39. It’s easier, now, for Mom to leave home for weeks at a time, without Dad to care for. She needs to see her mom too, and she doesn’t like to travel alone, and I’m the child with the most flexibility and willingness to sit in economy for 14 hours. Getting to know that half of my family for the first time ever has been sobering and upsetting and exciting and lovely; only a few of them speak English, and I don’t speak Korean. The experience has created a substantial Korean emptiness in me that I need to backfill. I am grieving Dad, still. I am also grieving an imaginary, lost version of my life where I am not American.
While in Korea, I made a point to eat an entire microwave meal inside a convenience store like I’ve seen in Korean dramas. I started shopping for seeds online; it’s hard to find fresh, green Korean gochu (chile peppers) in the U.S., and they’re a common side dish for all kinds of Korean meals. I took a few daytrips from Seoul through the Korean countryside, seeing fields of baechu (Napa cabbage) and tiny yards with no grass, but instead, rows of daepa (big green onion).