In late January afternoon when sunlight is shining through the windows lazily touching upon the wooden floor of my house, I think of my great grandmother who sits by sliding door in her room on sunny days holding a long bamboo smoking pipe. As often she was smoking in her room, I remember the most of her smoking when heart of winter has just passed and warm winter rays started thawing the frozen landscape. She would gaze upon outside puffing her long bamboo smoke pipe sitting on Ondol floor in her room. As shadows from the barn hanging lose in the evening in my house, I think about image of her head gently swaying like a tugboat anchored ashore on rippling effects. Her hair still not turned entirely white yet and her stooped back for so long gives her long enduring life. She picks up her smoking pipe as sliding door made with rice paper vibrates due to sound of a train passing by in distance. She would strike a match as the bulb of match sparks injecting the burning smell into the air, puffs of smoke rises above her white hair, and I would reach above her hair to disturb its movements that swirls like clouds as particles of dust in the air are shown with its vivid color in between the lights emitting through shadows of window panes. As I sit by her, I would then smell the smoke rise above her head as she puffs the bamboo pipe.
My great grandmother was a kind lady. Her innate calm demeanor had calming effects on my soul like the puffs of her smokes coming out from the bamboo pipe. She was when I was born and she had lived a long time since then until I emigrated to the U.S. She and I had lived together under a same roof in a big family; it was a last period in Korea when unit of a family was much larger than now. I had lived with her ever since I was born for seventeen years, I would remember her the most as someone who impacted me the most socially and psychologically.
She had lived through almost one hundred years without proper medical technologies were available. I remember asking her age when she was eight five years old, which make that she was already almost 80 years old when I was born. She was a first and far most old lady all along ever as far as I could remember her. In fact. Her longevity was probably a product of her harsh life working daily in farm and doing chores in her house in poverty. She knew how to do chores from making all different rice cakes, red bean porridge for celebrating winter solstice, making Kimchi in Kimjang season, making soybean and etc.
She passed away several years after I emigrated to the U.S. I had never seen her crying nor seen her outside, but on the day when I left Korea for emigrating to the U.S., she came out
crying. Much of my Great Grandmother's life prior to I was born remain in mystery to me largely for the reason that no one had ever told me much about her life, not even she. Perhaps, nobody had any inquisitive mind about her because her life had been revolving around doing daily chores in the house, day after day and year after year, and nobody found anything special. There probably had not been much things going around with her; nobody got yelled and spanked by her, she didn't even complained about anything to anyone; she was not talketive and always doing chores in the house quietly. However, her presence was large in the house; nobody showed disrespect to her not because not only of Confucian mores but also she spoke loudly by action. For instance, when a relative brought a live chickens, she was the one who carried the mission of doing the chores that nobody would want to do; killing them for them to be cooked. She was just an old grandmother to the generation above me, and the young people in my generation was busy playing and minding their own lives and spent little time talking with her. Even for me, her presence was largely taken for granted when I was growing up in Korea, and I had become to bogged down with myself living in the U.S. thereafter. Her past life would be presumed to had been very simple living in a farming country in North Korea and there might not be much to talk about. However, as I grow older, especially having lived away from the country where we both had lived together for almost four decades under the same roof, I can't relegate her large presence in my life; I cherish the wonderful memories that came from her sphere in my youth. To me, no one else exceeds grandeur of a old person than my great grandmother: her back was stooped bending almost 90 degree angle forward with wrinkled face, which might had caused partly from Osteoporosis in combination with perhaps largely working in farms over three quarter of a century, and yet she was still filled with full of energy working until late in the every evening, and defied the time causing infirmity seemed to have halted, never seem to be growing any older, looking same even ten years after. I have never seen her making anyone laugh, nor I have never seen her smiling or crying, showing a glimpse of what her past life had been like, darkened rugged skin reflective of harsh reality of survival; she probably had to endure poverty throughout of her life. She never smiled, and yet her face was showing glow of peace all the time, perhaps, due to living in countryside always with plants, flowers, beautiful natural things despite all the terrains. She probably had no time to complain and knew life other than what she had to overcome ,which might had formed callousness in emotion that would not surface any traits of her natural mischievous nature that might had in her youth even in twilight of her life. She was not educated and never tried to influence others busy making her own ends meet, but her living transcends far beyond showing her wonderful way of life; taking care of her children and carrying the old tradition of making food, and all the sphere that revolved around her.
Her walking holding a goad bowl in and out of kitchen or to the 장독대 ingrained my my memories as her signature. Her face was wrinkled and darkened with years of hardships, perhaps clamaty of losing her husband when she was so young, and much toils in labor working in countryside in North Korea for much all her life before she moved to South before the Korean War, which were largely unspoken part of her time in life. Presumably, she was born in 1881, before Korea was annexed by Japan, and during the time when the chapter of Choson dynasty was about to be ended. She wasn't a talkitive person at all.
I had seldom seen her talking other than relating to meeting our ends meet, such as food, clothing, living and heating , which would give a glimpse of what her life had been like in those years largely revolved around the sphere of surviving in harsh winters and feeding her children at the time when Korea had been a agricultural land. I've heard that her husband died when she was only in twenties, taken away by a tiger, When she was resting in her room, it was like her a taking a rest at the farm yard after a long backbreaking work that she had taken so many times before, feeling the breeze running through her hair and cooling her off; she would stuff her long bamboo pipe with a few ounces of tabacco and strike a match to light it up. I could see her sitting by sliding doors opened as puffs of smoke coming through in between two sliding doors made with rice paper as I was playing in the front yard. She would gaze me playing and i could see her head lightly swindling in silence. As soon as I got on my feet and about to walk anywhere I want to go, I was often called upon to go down to the convenient store nearby in my neighborhood to fetch a bag of tabacco for her; pungent smell of tabacco stung my nose as I drew the bag wrapped in a brown bag to my nose as I walked uphill leading to the entrance door of my house . I seldom saw her going outside of the house. She lived all her life in a big family. At the time when I was a toddler, there was 10 people living under one roof. The economic condition was not as harsh as perhaps when she was living in North. She haven't had any education to influence others and teach something, but she showed me wonderful tradition of Korea through her cooking and hardworks in the household. She would often ask me what day was a particular day to keep track of the date for a certain thing to be done according to the luner calendar.
Every year, in the beginning of December, I watched Kimchi pots getting buried underground in the front yard as flurries stated popping up from the overcast sky while my uncle was huffing and puffing digging the ground bellowing steam out from his mouth, and watched my great grand mother walking up to it drawing a bowl of Kimchi as a dog housed at the corner of the front yard noticed her coming and started barking to call her attention and then the sound of it turning into a growl in disappointments as she went out of sight going into the kitchen with no regards for him. On the fortnight, as the hallowing wind was blowing in the depth of cold winter, the dog, having not received much of attention from her, would moan sporadically interleaving its sound in the wind, upon which my great grandmother would open the sliding door from her room and peer out making a brief kind statement for him which surprisingly quelled the night.
My grand mother used to get the fire going on the inlet of Ondol outside at the front yard burning woods for heating her room every evening in the winter and some time later, she would gather the embers in a Wahro that made out of clay to be brought into her room for additional heating inside, and we would often gather around the Wahro after dinner and talk with great grandmother. She would toss in a sweet potatoes or chestnuts for a treat. What a bonding experience that it was!!
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