IAMT #15: 할머니’s Apartment 16 Years Later
There’s a small closet to the right after you enter 할머니’s (grandma’s) quaint apartment in Suwon, Korea. The narrow room is partitioned into an outer and inner room. The inner partition, tucked behind a sliding glass door to prevent the collection of dust, has an overhead horizontal panel window. It hovers above the clutter and allows ambient sunlight to pour into the living room during the day.
When my cousins and I would play in the tiny room, we wouldn’t notice how restricting the area was. Instead, we’d soak in the light during the day, joking and chatting nearly incomprehensibly in our respective tongues. The communication barrier didn’t feel nearly as crippling as it feels today.
The apartment has stood there for over 18 years now, serving as the most memorable place when I visited in the summer of 2008. Now, visiting almost sixteen years later, what I remembered as surrounding empty plots of grass are now packed full of 24 hour unstaffed cafes, local restaurants, and new modernized apartment neighborhoods.
Near the tail end of lunch on the second day, my aunt got a call from 할머니. She took time to make bibimbap and wanted me, her beloved grandson, to have some.
We had lunch together with the whole family the previous day, but other than a quick greeting lost in the chaos, we barely spoke. The timing couldn’t be worse. Most of the family just had some malatang with me - bibimbap doesn’t sound the most appealing when your guts are bubbling with oily spicy stew.
My aunt hangs up and looks me dead in the eyes with a pitying smile. “You only need to eat a little bit.” I’m not so dull to only see this as food rather, a gesture of kindness; bibimbap is a hearty meal that takes especially long to prepare since each individual side dish needs to be made from scratch. I smile back, feeling a sense of filial piety well up inside me. I agree to go and eat some of 할머니’s bibimbap.
Aunt 윤정, uncle 윤구, mom, and I head over first. Having gone from a boisterous, silly energy I’ll come to know them for, the three siblings are uncharacteristically muted as we take the elevator up.
After our greetings, we settled into the apartment. I take a moment to soak in the nostalgia caused from nearly 16 years of separation. The low table was already set and 할머니 ushered me to take a seat. While I sit around, my mom and aunt serve as her sous chefs, speeding around the kitchen to help finish the last bits of prep. As my bowl makes its way to me, 할머니 secondarily offers bibimbap to the three siblings, whom all decline. I’m sure they didn’t have the stomach for it. 할머니 sits across from me, watching my reaction to each individual banchan I try so I feign as much delight as I can muster. Seeing her genuine smile when I thanked her for the food was enough to force down one and half bowls of bibimbap and banchan.
It’s quiet as I eat. The TV quietly hums. The oldest sibling, my eldest uncle who lives with 할머니, watches wordlessly from the far corner of the sofa. After having suffered a stroke years before, he mostly stays at the apartment watching television.
Uncle 윤구 sits restlessly two cushions from him. 할머니 intermittently cuts through the silence to dote on me which I try to continue to express appreciation for.
What lurks in the scene is invisible to the naked eye. Generational lapses in communication and trauma that was repressed for years fills the room in snide whispers or sardonic remarks. After a brief silence, uncle 윤구 whispers, “I wish I had a mom like this growing up.” It goes unacknowledged.
I’ve heard bits and pieces from my mom over the years as to what kind of mother 할머니 was but have had difficulty understanding it. Logically, it made sense but I never really “comprehended” it. Seeing the starkly contrasting atmosphere between my mom and her siblings that day solidified my belief that I likely never will.
It’s painful to hear such a deep rooted sadness seep out at what is an otherwise benign family gathering. 할머니, now in her mid to late 80’s, is deaf in one ear with an, at the time poorly adjusted, hearing aid in the other. When I look at her, it’s hard to imagine her as a source of any kind of pain. Her slow unsteady movements, her hearty laugh contrasted with her fragile frame is the definition of harmless. In fact, I pity her. She was born in 1939 into a Japanese colonial Korea. Growing up in the midst of the Korean war and living through the varying shades of poverty a developing nation would experience, her journey leading up to bearing five children in a neo-confucius patriarchal society seems, on paper, like an inexplicable hell. To make matters worse, she became a widow fairly early; my grandfather passed around the time I was two years old.
Unfortunately, none of this is what my mom and her siblings are thinking about. Uncle 윤구 remembers how she would turn a blind eye to my eldest uncle’s relentlessly bullying and physically abusing him and the other siblings. My mom describes how she would ensure her disdain of being their mother was explicitly expressed often. Aunt 윤정 laments, as a middle schooler, consoling and talking her down from threats of suicide after grandpa’s infidelity was discovered. They all recall how she was never present, treating her children as an afterthought and failing to do the bare minimum expected of a parent.
After uncle 윤구’s comment, a knock at the door breaks the silence. Two of my cousins whom I had lunch with earlier ran a quick errand then made their way over at my aunt’s behest. They look exhausted and I’m guessing uninterested in eating this second meal. They don’t say much nor really acknowledge 할머니, but it seems the concept of turning away a meal she prepared is a line of disrespect they aren’t willing to cross today.
They silently eat while browsing their phones and only nod when spoken to. My mom and aunt are busy cleaning up. I want to spring up to help them but the heavy atmosphere makes me self-conscious of any move I make. The two sisters deftly tidy up the kitchen and I convince myself to stay on the couch; I think I’d only be an inconvenience trying to join in. I take in the living room again and have a moment of excitement, wanting to reminisce about childhood memories with my cousins. I turn to both of them to bring it up but their backs are facing me. They’re on their phones.
Looking at the closet today, sixteen years later, it’s gray unlike I remember. Light no longer beams through the overhead window in the room. The sliding glass door is now an opaque brown from dust. Old calligraphy paintings lay on their side against the wall in stacks, seemingly untouched. Whatever youth that once filled the room is no longer there.
I make some small talk with my older cousin 은이 누나 (older sister). It doesn’t really go anywhere but each second we’re talking is a small bandaid on a void of silence. We talk about TV shows for a little but the conversation doesn’t hold long. My mom and aunt wrap up and are getting ready to leave when 할머니 asks them to stay a while. Uncle 윤구 aggressively says that everyone has busy days tomorrow so we’ll stay for ten minu- no five more minut- five and a half more minutes. That seems to be enough for her.
Everyone gathers around for the continuing silence, mostly avoiding eye contact with each other. Halfway through 할머니’s allotted time, 은이 누나 breaks the tension. “Uncle 윤구, you’re really balding, huh?” Formed as a question, but spoken like an assertion, the dichotomy of familial reverence shown to 할머니 versus an otherwise disrespectful jab stunned everyone listening. The silence is broken with my mom and aunt covering their open mouths and gasp. The room erupts with stifled laughter. My uncle is appalled and takes a moment to process. “Yeah, I guess I am.” My lip is quivering from holding back my smile. 현이, my other cousin, explodes out in a full-grinning laugh. The tension has fully dissipated now and everyone is laughing.
As if she just understood the absurdity of her own question, 은이 누나 begins to justify it with a story about how her boyfriend is also starting to bald a little and that her curiosity is genuine in nature - as if deprecating her own boyfriend makes her remark any more valid.
This is quickly followed by rapid-fire questions about his hair grafts, the family’s faulty genetics, and why he got it. My mom and aunt are getting into the bit now, adding their own jabs. Giving him half-baked roundabout compliments about his hairline before he says in a deadpan: “how do I even live like this.” This neatly caps the conversation while everyone is still amused.
A perfectly phrased question that allowed everyone to dance around an otherwise sensitive topic. For just a few brief moments, it seemed like all the pain faded away. No more repressed vitriol. As if I were a kid again, I felt like the sun was shining again through the panes in that closet room, saturating the apartment with a warm and safe ambience.
Uncle 윤구 ends it by smirking at 은이누나 and nonchalantly saying, “any other burning, uncomfortable questions you have? I’m here to answer anything you can throw at me.”
My oldest uncle interrupts, clearly annoyed with all the noise, and says, “isn’t it time you all left?” Reality sets in again and the other siblings immediately suppress the energy that seeped out a moment ago. We all quickly give a solemn agreement and get up to leave.
Waving off 할머니 from beyond her doorway, I looked past her into the apartment for a second and imagined what it might’ve looked like when I was younger. I would be running in and out of that closet with my cousins, smiling and laughing carelessly. Shielded from generational horrors that our parents had endured and continue to struggle with, our felicity is a direct result of a cycle of sorts having been broken. Our parents are not our grandparents and because of that, we are not our parents. I’m sure my childhood trip spent in Korea was just as beautiful as I had romanticized, but perhaps only because of their continual sacrifice that had allowed it to be.
For the rest of the trip, I felt indebted to that kindness. The kindness that my aunts and uncles have continued to show me, in the form of taking a genuine interest in what kind of person I’ve become. The kindness that uncle 윤구 has continued to show all of us, such that 은이 누나 felt comfortable making a pointed joke at him. Returning to Korea, I felt anxious, unsure whether I would leave disappointed, unable to truly connect with my family. But over time, I’ve come to realize that my heritage isn’t tied to a specific place or bloodline, nor is it fully about traditions or customs. It’s the context of my mom’s life—the sentiments I couldn’t understand as a child—that has brought me more closure than my studies of the language or culture ever could. Her reasoning and the unique idiosyncrasies I once found puzzling have become much clearer to me. And now, the traits she passed down to me feel as though they hold a distinct, meaningful purpose; I’ll always be connected to my heritage in this way.
After the elevator doors closed, I casually pat uncle 윤구 on the back and said “수고했어요!” (tl: “You did well!”), in a broken attempt to show my appreciation. My cousins and my aunt explode with laughter and he gives me a wry smile. “You know, that’s something you say to someone who’s under you (on the social hierarchy).” My cheeks flush, now understanding I unintentionally made him my junior in conversation. My uncle and mom start chuckling and I find myself joining in soon after. I find myself relaxed again even before we’re out of the elevator.
EN:
I wrote the first draft of this essay the night the story takes place, almost a year ago. It’s taken some time to turn it into something comprehensible and although there are still edits I hope to make, I wanted to share it in it’s current state. I removed most of the Korean but left a few bits here and there, mostly in the form of names.
I’m in the process of translating this essay to Korean, in hopes that I can share it with my family (and penpal) one day.
Thanks for reading.
Tangentially related. I feel estranged during family reunions. To my parents they are meeting siblings that they endured immigrating to America with. For my sister, they're meeting cousins that they hung out with during weekly Sunday family dinners. And for my extended family's pov, I'm always going to be the baby that is doted upon. "Oh you've gotten so big." "I remember when you were like this!" "Remember the cute little outfits 😍" and it all comes through a filter of rough accented English or a blistering speed Cantonese fired off like a revolver in a spaghetti western.
But from my pov, they're essentially strangers. People I don't have much of a connection with apart from dna. And I'm sure they take genuine interest in how I've been, but there's a disconnect that can't be mended during a 2 hour conversation every 2-3 years. Especially when half of the time will be spent rehashing the same story over again.
There's always an anxiety with trying to kindle those relationships because I don't know where to begin. I have to put in the energy to foster it as if they're someone brand new. Granted with a little more affordances and leniency because they'll look at me with a little more graciousness than a pure stranger. But it's still the same where I'm starting at 0 but they're starting at 100.
You do really well conveying the tension and dissipation in the conversations with your extended family. I remember when I was in Korea there would be awkward or tense moments sometimes with the family I stayed with, but I always had trouble discerning how much of it was specifically because of the family or me or just Korean culture in general. Once, we were in the car and the two brothers and the mom got in this huge argument that I didn't fully understand, making for a tense situation. After a couple minutes silence, the mom's way of trying to break the tension was asking me, "Do you ever get in arguments with your family?", which struck me as an incredibly awkward thing to ask. People like your 누나 definitely have a gift to be able to ease that kind of tension, especially a generational one like you describe.