My chats with Grandma

There I was, indecisively fidgeting over which journal to write in and thinking about what content to fill them with when my 75 year old grandmother, wearing a layered orange long-sleeve polo shirt and brown spandex pants came huffing and puffing into my room. She was carrying a plate full of bright organge tangerines on which little drops of water had formed from the condensation. Her hair was as crazy as ever, a brown mess of artificial curls she had paid $20 to a local Korean salonist to do.

As she handed me the plate of tangerines, she looked at my messy coffee desk and smirked, "books again?" In fact, there were no books except for my lattered brown journal, held shut by a red and white rubber band. She fingered the brown sheets of paper I had recently torn out from my bound journal and asked, " Is this English?" I nodded as I started peeling the juicy tangerines. The sweet smell penetrated my stuffy nose and my mouth began to water as I brought the tender crescent-shaped pieces to my lips. "If only I had learned to write like you," she said, still staring at the brown sheet of paper filled with my messy cursive notes. "You're good in English and Korean and Spanish and Chinese and Japanese!" she exclaimed. "No grandma, I don't speak Chinese and Japanese," I replied, smiling at her excitement. "Not even a little?" she asked. I shook my head.

"But you know, Grandma, my teachers in my Korean program make fun of me sometimes because I use satooli (a rural Korean accent with a tangy drawl)," I noted. She burst out in laughter, slapping her thighs. "Well, you should tell you professors that your grandma uses satooli, and be proud of it!" she replied. As the echo of her laughter died down, I saw my grandmother staring out into the spaceless time of her past. She sighed. "You know, your mother was born in Seoul, but we moved back to Daegu for 2 years because, well, we had to. But when we came back to Seoul, your mother had such a little Daegu twang that the whole neighborhood came by to hear her speak. She was a spunky little kid," my grandma narrated. I imagined my mother returning to her playful 6 year old state, entertaining the neighborhood and especially the elderly with her cute smile and impossibly adult-like sayings. It contrasted deeply with the mother I knew now, who was always tired after a long day of work and tended to channel her frustrations onto our family.

"Back in the day, I used to have a small cigarette stand," my grandmother continued. By this time, I had already peeled and eaten four sweet tangerines and my senses were alive to absorb the story my grandma was about to tell me. "Whenever I would have to go in the house to answer the phone or take care of some business, your mother would stand out in front to take the customers. They would ask for different types of cigarettes and hand your mother a big bill. Your mother would calculate the cost of the purchase in her head and give them back the exact amount of change. Now, most of the fellas that bought the cigarettes were old men, and they just about fainted when they saw how smart your mother was." A broad smile creeped upon my grandmother's wrinkly face.

"Your mom's older sister, your aunt, on the other hand, was quite another story," she laughed. "At the store, we had a batch of gourmet candies that nobody bought. Then one day, a whole bunch of them disappeared. I thought someone had come bought them, so I filled up the space with more candy. They kept disappearing, so I assumed they were being sold to some well to do stranger buying treats for their kids. Then, as I was washing your aunt's backpack, a whole string of candy wrappers and boxes came out from the bottom of her bag. She had been taking them to eat all by herself." My grandmother shook her head and giggled to herself. Her eyes twinkled while she told her stories of the past.

"If I had a chance to study, I would be able to read and write myself. But those Japanese imperialists made us learn Japanese until I was in 5th grade. It was only after liberation that I learned the Korean alphabet. But then my father died when I was just finishing grade school and I had four younger siblings to look after, so my Korean is all improper. By the time our family settled down and recovered from my father's death, I was already ready to get married." But Grandma, your Korean is perfect, I told her. "These words are not really words," she replied sadly. The everyday language she had learned had only gotten her so far, she continued, and put up a impassable wall between her and the high society she had for so long yearned to be a part of.

"But you know it, your mother was that smart, I tell you," she kept repeating. She patted my hand and got up from the bed. She straightened out the slightly wrinkled orange bedsheet where she had sat and slowly walked downstairs. "Your mother was that smart."

Later that night, I nonchalantly questioned my mother about her experience working at the family cigarette stand. "I heard you were quite the calculator," I said, giving her a playful nudge. My mother laughed and replied in a childlike voice that I hadn't heard since we went on vacation to Europe, where she was able to see her favorite painters' classic masterpieces, "Now, you know your grandmother always exaggerates things two times as much as the real thing. It was only once or twice that I calculated the cost of those cigarettes in my head."

Without giving me a chance to respond, she moved onto the next topic: her apprehension about me not being able to find a good spouse. "It's time for you to get married, you know," she said, as if our previous conversation never existed, leaving me only to imagine the childhood life of the woman I should know most about.