I was sitting between my parents on a 15-hour direct flight from Toronto to Seoul.
I was going to Seoul to work on a book project. My Airbnb had enough space for all of us. So when my parents half-jokingly mentioned that they were coming too, I didn't think it was unreasonable. Until the trip approached, that is. Seven weeks? Together?
“I'm nervous about going to my parents,” I repeatedly told my friends. “Manage your expectations,” I was advised.
“Don't forget that I'm going to work,” I told my parents.
“Oh, don't worry,” my father said. “Let's do our thing.”
“Do you think we want to spend all our time with you?” my mother added, laughing.
That was the only thing that calmed me: our shared understanding that in Korea my parents could be as independent as they wanted, without language or cultural barriers.
Korea was his country. They wouldn't need me there like they did in Canada.
I was 10 years old when we immigrated. Immigrant children know that the real culture shock in a new country is the way your parents come to depend on you to navigate the world that once belonged to them. My brothers and I had no choice but to accept the change: we learned a new language, started eating a lot of cheese, and got new English names.
As the plane began to accelerate down the runway, my father smiled widely. “Wow, this is it!” he said. “We're going to Korea.” They had been only a few years before, but I hadn't been back in over 25 years.
We slept, hunched over the tray tables of our economy seats. When we landed, it was pouring rain.
The next morning, in the haze of jet lag, my mother announced that the first thing they wanted to do was visit my paternal grandmother's grave. We had talked about visiting some relatives, but going to Grandma's grave had never come up, and that bothered me. I was just starting out: family obligations took up my time.
“Let's say hello,” my father said.
“You guys go,” I said. “I don't need to go.”
The first week was hard. We were upside down with the time change and I resented his constant parenting. But we soon settled into a routine: we spent the day apart and met for dinner.
During one of those dinners, my parents let it slip that they didn't know how to navigate Seoul's massive transportation system. I didn't understand. If they could speak and read Korean, why couldn't they understand it?
I downloaded Naver Map on my father's phone. “These are all your options for getting there,” I said. “See?”
“Okay, I got it,” my father said.
It wasn't until a few days later that I discovered that I hadn't received it, that he and my mother had been navigating the city in archival memory, taking the bus to addresses and not actual locations.
I showed it to my father again. “This point is you, and this is where you are going. If you turn, the point turns with you.”
The next morning I saw him on the small street outside our Airbnb with his phone in his hand, practicing.
I updated my friends through Instagram stories. “How is the situation among your people?” a friend sent me a message. “LOL, are these my people?” I responded, the “LOL” hiding my irritation. Korea was the country of my parents and the Koreans were their people. But the question persisted. Who were my people?
Two weeks into the trip, my mother declared that they would go to Grandma's grave the next day. “Without you,” she said. She hadn't realized they hadn't left yet. Looking forward to spending a day alone at home, I told them it was a great idea.
But the next day they decided not to go. Grandma's grave is in Paju, near the North Korean border, and the bus route was too complicated. “Maybe it's okay not to go this time,” my mother said to my father over breakfast. “She will understand.” My father nodded. I drank my Nespresso without saying anything.
While my father took a shower, my mother took me aside. “He's not going to tell you, but your dad would really like you to come to Grandma's grave.”
“Because?” I asked. “Remember how we said we were going to do our own things?”
“He wants to show her how well you grew up. “He wants to show you off.”
I laughed, but I was deeply moved. I decided to abandon my work day and accompany them.
“We need flowers,” my father said as we approached the cemetery. We assumed there would be a flower seller near the entrance.
There wasn't.
I gathered some brightly colored wildflowers from the perimeter of the parking lot and tied them with a long piece of grass. It reminded me of my sister and the shamrock necklaces we made when we were little girls.
My parents set about clearing the weeds around the granite tombstone, which had a combination of Hangul and Hanja, on the front and back. “Your name is on the back,” my father said. “Look here?” I looked and there was my Korean name engraved next to those of my brothers and cousins. It felt strange to see our names on the tombstone: all of us, living and dead, connected.
“Take a picture,” my father said as he and my mother flanked the grave. Looking at my parents' faces through the lens of my iPhone, I felt a sudden surge of tenderness.
In the seven weeks we were in Korea, my parents and I managed to see all of our relatives, including my uncle in Chuncheon, the last city we lived in before coming to Canada. My uncle took us back in time to our old apartment. It seemed abandoned. My father and I walked quickly through the apartment complex, trying to reconcile our memories of the past with the present.
Back in Seoul, my mother noticed that the apartment in Chuncheon was the last place Grandma lived. She had forgotten, but as soon as she said it I remembered: Grandma's room was right next to the entrance. Every time she came in after school, she would knock from inside with her cane and ask, “Who is she?”
“It's Sun-kyeong,” he said. She opened the door and I saw her sitting on the floor, her cane directing me toward some kind of task. “Go pick the dandelion leaves outside,” she once said, pointing out the window. I remembered the day I came home from school and no one knocked on the door or asked me who she was. And through the half-open door I saw that her room was empty.
Before we knew it, the trip was over. Back in Toronto, my friends asked me how Korea was. “Amazing,” I responded each time. If they asked me why, I didn't really know how to explain it.
“The food was good?” they asked. But it wasn't that.
“Did you finish the work?” they asked themselves. It wasn't that either.
I didn't know how to tell you that the trip was incredible thanks to my mother and father. That I realized that I was part of them and they were part of me. That we do not belong to languages or countries. That day, when my father and I took a taxi home from a baseball game, I heard the driver say, “Oh, are you a foreigner?” And my father answered: “Yes, from Canada.” And I couldn't stop listening to it.
I didn't know how to tell my friends that when we are in Canada, we are from Korea, and when we are in Korea, we are from Canada. We are always from another place.
One day, near the end of our trip, my parents and I went to Insadong and my father split off to do his own thing. I texted him the location where he should meet me and my mom. Then I called him, just to make sure.
“Do you know how to get here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Don't worry.”
When he found us exactly where he was supposed to be, I felt so proud I had to look away.
My grandmother died just four months before we moved to Canada. We had been accepted for permanent residency but she was too frail to make the trip. My parents didn't know what to do and didn't tell him we were moving.
But she knew it.
“Tell your parents not to forget to take me,” he told me and my siblings over and over again. “Don't forget to take me.”
I hope you know that I won't forget it. That we take it. That maybe the only thing we have is each other.
