by Hannah Park
I.
The thick Korean air subsides as we descend down to the subway station. People sink into their seats and phone screens. I can’t remember the last time we visited my grandma. I must have been ten.
I remember visiting her temple when I was little. The smell of incense was overwhelming, and the golden Buddha – even more. We used to swim in her blood red colored buckets, my brother and I – filling it with water – snacking on boiled quail eggs. During the day Siddhartha looked like he was at peace – happy even. During the night, he transformed into an overhearing presence – his eyes on me as I tiptoed to the bathroom. The room next door shelved Zolaman comic books – what a strange juxtaposition between sacredness and vanity.
We meet her at a jang-uh restaurant that serves health eels. She wears a neatly tucked grey robe, with a texture similar to wheat cereal, the ends gently tucked into her sides; a matte gray hat sits pleasantly on her glistening bald head, and the brown beads circle around her wrists like a promise.
Mom, how have you been? Is the beginning question that ignite the thirty-two other questions that my grandma had locked away for many years – questions buried under several years of broken phone calls, walled by the distance of living two continents away.
Let’s order more eel! It’s good for you! I can tell my mom missed her. I can tell they missed each other. What a strange moment of seeing myself through the eyes of my mother’s mother.
We walk back to her temple. It’s the same as I remembered it to be: Siddhartha greets me with his unchanging poise. He has a feast before him– half-peeled apples, dried dates, stacks of rice-cakes, and Korean pears, all reflecting a an act of worship, an act of reverence. The blood-red buckets are still tucked away from when I was little. She has new plants, a few grown go-chu bushes. I’m not sure if the room next door is still filled with comic books. I take a deep breath and allow the scent of incenses to fill my lungs.
We accept a photo album she prepared for us of her temple and monk ordination: photos that capture with a little light, the depth of her belief, and the shallowness of her unforgiving bitterness. As we leave, I see my mom whispering a word of prayer.
Grandmother and mother
Gold and silver
Hair and volume
Grey and bald
Heaven and hell
Walking and worshipping
Two different roads
And as I leave I “turn out the world with a waterfall” and think,
May I love you more,
To overcome the incenses,
So that one day
We’d walk together
On the same road