A total teacher

I just got these two pictures from a student, Chloe, taken last Tuesday in my evening Basic English Conversation class.

In one I'm posing; the other was taken 'in action,' me not knowing I was being hunted by the papparazza. Sometimes students do that.

Apparently, I look like Drew Berrymore. Or, perhpas her onni? Mother, even? Aigooo.

This is the hour of lead

"Only white roses on my grave!" she used to say. Although this is not her grave, it's the closest I can get to it here. It's a special "Korean shrine" I created for her so I can visit, like Cinderella. To ask. To say things. Sometimes to weep.

Language fails me; five years have passed. Life has been very different.

My home is now wherever I drop my suitcase. No place is a true home, her home which was also mine for about two decades. How can any place ever be like hers? Without all that was so proudly hers? She was a working woman but deep down she was a Martha Stewart wannebee. Why else would she bleach and starch and iron her bedsheets to blindingly perfect stiff whiteness; why else would she get up early each Saturday to make her winter famiily breakfast special -baked potato halves served with cottage cheese, sour cream, fried bacon and fresh bread; why else would she spent half a day on Sunday happily cooking a great Sunday feast; why would she bake 12 types of complicated Christmas cookies; why would she slave away in her garden, vegetables in the backyard, flowers in the frontyard.

Now I think I understand why she - on top of her full time accounting job- spent her life slaving away in her house, her cottage, her garden, with her flower pots, at her stove. Now that I know it, I don't resent anymore being her unwilling assitant. I wish I could tell her that I finally get it. My mother grew up in the hungry pre-war, war and post-war years. She was simply creating the home that must have dreamt about as a poor little immigrant girl. What stories she must have had! What pain she must have burried deep inside her.

I got to hear only a fraction of her story and most of it on one starry breazy night at our cottage. This was the summer before she died, the last summer we, my older brother and I, would see her alive.

My brother and I were both visiting. We are talkers able to spend hours in idle mouthmotoring. It was late. Everyone else was sleaping, only he and I were still sitting on the terrace, drinking beer and enjoying the night. The air smelled of salt, algae, pine, pungent Mediterranean herbs.

We had the lights out to get the full impact of stars and the moon.

Well after midnight mom appeared in her favourite, old-fashioned lacey white nightgown, looking like a ghost with wild hair. Even in the hottest of nights she couldn't sleep in sleeveless nightgowns claiming that her arms felt freezing cold. I used to tease her about it, but now, I am like that! My mother's daughter. Also, just like her, I can't stand anything tight around my neck, no scarves, not heavy necklasses, no turtlenecks. I feel like I am chocking - and I used to laugh at this, too.

She sat down with us - and our little pow wow lasted until dawn. I heard for the first time that she had almost been given up for adoption when they first settled into their new environment. It was her hysterical crying and kicking that broke her father's heart and made him say that if they were to die of hunger they would die together.

I heard about little gifts my grandfather - a renowned carpenter in their knack of the woods - would bring his three girls from the trips he took. She told us about a silk scarf, 'the most beautiful thing she had ever owned" forcefullly snatched from around her neck by some nasty soldiers who added it to the pyre where everything else from their house had already been disappearing in flames, right before their own eyes and right before they were forced to leave their home town and embark on a months- long, 350km march. Incidentally, on this same trip was my paternal grandmother and her brood of six young children, three of whom did not survive the journey. The two families, not knowing that one day their kids would be united in marriage, shared a raw pumpkin because there was nothing else ther to eat.

All these memories were swarming in me like bees on Prosac as I was walking around my mom's designated Korean 'shrine.' I was also thinking how, as years pass, I feel evermore grateful for bits and pieces of memory about my mother that come to me. At the same time I am growing more regretful about not getting to know this mysterious, brave, complex person who was my mother. Just when I realized that she was a person first and my mother second, that's when she died. Now I think, we could have been great friends. We were treading on this path, more and more decisevely and bravely. Alas, death doesn't really care about family reconciliations. It takes whatever it wants whenever it wants.

Many times, thinking of her, I am in the 'hour of lead.'

This is the Hour of Lead--

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons recollect the Snow--

First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go--

(this, of course, by E. Dickinson)

I borrow again someone else's words, no idea whose.

So much beauty have I seen on earth,

So much to marvel over and admire;

Yet each new sight but bred a new desire

To stray still farther from the quiet hearth.

*******

Now am I stirred with mightier unrest

For longer journeys than old I knew.

I would set forth upon that final quest

That Large Adventure which has come to you.

Somewhere you wait to show new worlds to me.

Pilot! draw anchor! let my soul go free!

( hope the above is not copyrighted)

Getting bigger and better every day

...my family, that is. I've become Aunt no. 5 on April 14th, with the arrival of my new nephew Andrija (pronounced Ahndryah). He's as cute as a button, and last night when I called I could hear him in the background, alternating between cooing and protesting.

In less than two months, I'll get to meet him and get to spend time with his older siblings who are adorabl. I really appreciate my brothers' efforts to keep me present in their kids' minds by photos and stories. Although I don't see the kids very often, when I call, they talk to me very naturally and openly and express their joy about me coming to see them this summer.

The wheels of time keep on turning: I can't believe that my older brother just celebrated his 17th wedding anniversary and even more surprising is that my younger brother has 3 kids now!

The worst things about living very far away from the family is missing most of things that are happenning in the lives of people who you love most.

Thank god for the miracle of the internet and digital technology. I can emotionally blackmail my brother into taking some pics immediately and sending them to me to enjoy with morning coffee, which is what I've been doing for a good hour.

What remains behind

I suppose a good insight into one's way of life would be to look at what's on her study desk on a Sunday night, or Monday morning (12:17 a.m.). I am looking at my desk and the closest bookshelf that is a part of it. My item list and what it could possibly say about me:

1. two books of the 'let's speak Korean type'. My efforts to conquer this linguistic monstrosity are most seriously shown in the amount of textbooks I buy, not in the time I devote to studying

2. my (repaired camera). Love photography. Less enthusiastic about it as of late, though. As is the case with most everything. However, I did take the dica for immediate repair. I've been needing new glasses for a long time, but still haven't gone to the optometrist.

3. four Movie DVDs (Das parfum, Black Dahlia, You me and dupree, The good sheppard, 200lbs of Beauty). Not only does this show my rather eclectic taste in movies, but also the indecisive side of my personality. All of them are out on the desk becaus I literally need to sit down, look at the jackets and think for 5 minutes about which one I want to watch. So far, only watched You, me and Duprees - and that was the choice of my friend HJ.

4. a tea towel. I am a late night snacker. The towel helped me to hold a hot bowl of soup. Now, that's not all I ate, of course. If it were, I'd be a slim lady. As it happens, there are also two empty cans of Cass Red, and an empty bag of cheese Dorritos.

5. a tangle of cables (for my dica, my phone, my ipod, my earphones... I might be more of a digi diva than I give myself credit for

6. a pot of wilting cyclamen. I'm trying to grow things, but all that I touch seems to have problems prospering, including plants

7. a hair clip. They are everywhere cuz I can't stnd my hair being in my way. Can't stand my hair period. Never the right colour,never the right cut. ghrr.

8. Salman Rushdie's 'Shalimar the Clown.' Or, rather Shalimar Rushdie's Shalimar The Clown. Yep, it was one of those pirated book copies, so they got the name of the author wrong. A beautiful, beautiful book that I've been reading for a long time. It's about Kashmir. Kashmiri boys I met in India were beyond beautiful. The book is a witness to my love of things and people Kashmiri, and perhaps even more to my reading style. I start a book, then pick up another one, then go back to the one I started, and on and on. They are all eventually read, but am a very careful, slow reader who likes to copy little fitting passages into my diary. Alas, I forget them all.

9. a lantern from The Lotus Lantern parade of a couple 0f years ago - a testament to my willingness to participate in things cultural and Korean. Hah! You wouldn't think, would you...

10. A crystal salt lamp - no, no, I am not the new age philosopher nor a believer in positive and negative streams around us. I got it as a gift after yesterday's Wine Cruise. So, if anything at all, it tells about my love for wine and freebies.

11. A cute buddhist monk figourine on the bottom of which I wrote: Heinsa Nov. 18, 2006. I travel around Korea. I've casually dropped many times that I collect them, hoping my thoughtful friends would pick me one up on their travels. In my mind's eye I saw a beautiful army of monks presented to me by people who care that would comfort me in the winter of my life. Well... thoughtful friends I might have, but perhaps a bit hard on the ears. Same goes for wanting a teddy bear for birthday.

12. A ridiculous souvenir from Thailand: a saucer with a picture of me in a hot pink t-shirt, smiling over my quite deep decoltage. Above my head, is says: Floating Market, and below my knees Thailand. It is one of those terribly kitchy pieces of travel memorabilia shoved in your hands by pushy yet poor people who know how to make you feel guilty about their miserable jobs and lives so you end up buying something that is later used as a dish for loose paper clips, change, glue,

13. My diary, quite dusty actually. I haven't been very dilligent about it.

14. An ancient phone book. I need to use it to call members of my family: yep, I still get confused about their numbers. Bad memory, or lack of caring to remember? Or, they just keep moving and making it difficult for me.

15. a brochure that lists many Indian charities. I had the most serious intentions to set up a regular charity donation to one of them - specifically the 'jewelry girls' in Jaipur, but havent' done it yet. High on intention, low on action. Depressing.

16. An empty tin box of Ghana Sugarless chocolate. It was terrible. Will never buy again. Love chocolate. With sugar, of course.

17. A collection of pens, pencils, business cards... I will go through them one of these days.

18. On top of my printer, my "in" basket that contains addressed but not written and long overdue: anniversary card for my bro and my sis-in-law; a thank you card for Sandra who sent me a wonderful little package for my b-day; a home-made card I meant to send to Christine, Jesse's mother, but didn't know what to say; bank statements from Canada, phone bills from Korea, a notebook. All of these need attention but they are not getting it.

19. An elephant- shaped coaster that Frau Konigi brought for me from Thailand. It's quite pretty .

20. I have some books here most of them being in my office. You gotta impress your colleagues with your impeccable reading taste, don't you? The books I kept here are of the more practical reference kind: Windows for Dummies, Office XP simplified, Korean Cookery, The Thyroid Solution, Sinus Cure, more DVDs, but not movies, rather Belly Dance, Yoga, Pilates, Carb Burners. On top of collecting Korean language textbooks, I am also an avid collector of exercise tapes and DVD's. Now, when I say collector, I don't mean it's my hobby. I mean, I collect them intending to use them, to get fluent in Korean and turn the ab-flab me inot the ab-fab me. Again, intention vs. action. I feel like I've been in some kind of a bad college where they taught me only how to plan but not how to execute. If I were a doctor, I think my diagnoses would be quite acurate, but I woulnd't have a clue how to cure the poor patient.

21. A heap of wet tissue smeared with snot and tears because what I really sat down to write about (but couldn't and instead started this crappy incoherrent list) is about the fifth anniversary of my mother's passing on. It is today, April 30th. Five years! Hard to believe because the pain right now this minute is as acute as at that moment at the airport when I was told she was gone. They say: time is a healer. What a load of crap. Possibly, love is a healer, but what if you are doomed to spend your life looking for good doctors and a good hospital, and in the end not finding them?

My googling paid off as I found two wonderful quotes, as in: "I totally agree and couldn't have said it better" wonderful.

One is from a Dutch Canadian, a religious leader, Henri Nouwen:

--When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. --

I wish I could have had someone like that in those early stages of grief. I tried to be that kind of friend for a dear friend who had also lost a parent. I have serious doubts about my success. She said that my kind of "therapy" led her to start smoking again. But, that's a seperate issue...

The other one is from Edith Warton: There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Yep, if there's one thing this middle-aged lady ( I mean me, not E.W) can say is that sorrow is exhausting and with its constant accumulation, we're getting wiser and more understanding (that's the hope), but at the same time soooo tired.

Sixty-six times have these eyes

beheld the changing scene of autumn.

I have said enough about moonlight.

Ask no more.

Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars

when no wind stirs.

(a Japanese poem)

My mother was 67 when she died. And if I were to live to be 167 I would still miss all of her, her voice, her smell, her touch... To say anything else now, to reveal more of what I feel, would probably be melodramatic. So, I stop.

Mama, cujes li me? Posalji mi poruku preko borova i jela...

"The Ugly" will make you beautiful

Spotted at Technomart mall, Gabyeong Stn. Line 2.

The store is called "The Ugly" (engl., of course) and "Mot saeng gin" (Kor.), just in case there are any doubts about the possible abuse of English.

It contained the usual fashion faux pas liberally spotted on Korean women everywhere, not just in this store with a bizzare name for a fashion store. Example, blouses with oversized bows, shirt dresses with bizzare prints, etc.

BTW, Cool mall for digi geeks and elecltronics enthusiasts. I don't truly qualify for any of those; rather I was there on a mission to pick up my repaired Panasonic Lumix that had an accident about two weeks ago when it fell onto cemented floor from about 1,5 m. Apparently, it got badly injured and needed surgery. The final cost of the procedure and 3day hospital stay: 52,0o0 won, way less than I expected. I would have given much more for my lumixnous baby. And, another btw, this is the first pic taken by the repaired camera. It seems to be working fine.