Before the sun has crested the
peach-fuzz profile of the far hills, the owner is up, building a fire. The rest
is silence, so different from the bus-ridden existence of our city down the
coast. It took three buses, a subway, a twenty-minute hike up a mountain and a
merciful car owner to get us all the way out here with our various Thanksgiving
accoutrements. Real Thanksgiving was spent in mid-week isolation—each of us
fenced in by metal and wall, holed up in our cell-like apartments after a day
of work.
When the weekend rolled around, an
early Saturday morning and the arduous trek away from modern life in a Korean
city was a gift. Forget “thankful;” I was rejoicing. Tile-roofed homes nestled
between curving roads and homey gardens of rice and greens, wood smoke and shoes
slipped off on the stones below the deck. Through the sliding door, turkeys
were cleaned and stuffed, potatoes were mashed, greens were casseroled, pies
baked. We talked, we lazed, we went for walks and in the evening, dinner was
served with laughter and the usual slice of appreciation.
There was no football on the
television we didn’t have, or an afternoon nap with my mom and beagle snoring
softly in the lazy-boy like there might have been back home in Indiana. The
stuffing was plain old Stove Top and the gravy a little congealed. The turkeys
were small, uncarved by my dad’s skilled hands, tidbits stolen by me and my
older sister as we strolled through the tiled kitchen. There were no familiar
family squabbles. We didn’t turn on It’s
a Wonderful Life after the last piece of pie was eaten, and there were no
plans to get the Christmas tree up the following day—only three buses, a
subway, a twenty-minute hike, and our cell-like apartments jammed into cement
waiting for us.
But how can that matter when you
wake up to the cold shadow of the moon and the warm snickering of a steady
sunrise? How can that matter when inside the floor is warm and the outside air
delicious on the door with in its icy breath? Tell me, how can it when the “we”
that wakes up with you, packs together, bundles themselves into coats and
gloves and waits for the bus with you is your family too?
We sat in the middle of nowhere
together. The sun rose and the chill happily stayed, my heart aching for the
joy of something the sun couldn’t bring, nor the chill explain—something
wrapping me up in cords of mountains and clouds and waves of gratitude for a
Thanksgiving spent far away at home.
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| Our hanok |
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| Making the stuffing. The boys did most of the work. I believe the girls were drinking hot cocoa in the next room at this point. |
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| Thanksgiving spread |
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| Carrying an oven across the country like a champ. |
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