Love Served on a Plate

Her words came on plates. Whenever I would visit her, she would always have plates of food waiting for me. That was our way of communicating. She put her love into my favorite dish that will never fail to make me warm on the inside. But this only happened once every few years. With halmeoni (grandmother)* living in Korea and me here in the states, it makes it difficult for her to send plates of food to me. She would send letters when I was younger. But to be completely honest, I have never been able to read a card from her on my own. Never. But that was because I couldn't. We lived in two different languages. She'd call occasionally, which was always awkward for the both of us. I tried to make sentences that probably didn't make sense, and she did her best to understand them because she still doesn't know anything in English except "I love you very much." That was apart of our little ritual at the end of our phone calls. She'd say "I love you very very much" with the most Korean accent you can imagine, and I'd laugh awkwardly because I really wasn't sure how to respond. You might be wondering why I didn't just say it back, and I wonder about that too. For some reason, both English and Korean just feel wrong when I talk to her. I wouldn't be able to use any of those languages to tell her how I feel.

Halmeoni stayed with us in October for a few weeks before my sister's wedding. As soon as she arrived from the airport she immediately asked my mom if she had bought the ingredients she asked her to buy. My mom obviously got frustrated. Here is this 87 year old lady who just did 15+ hours of traveling basically asking to start cooking, but that didn't stop her. She was determined to have a plate of food in front of me within the next hour minutes. That was kind of how it went for the few weeks she was here. When I was about to leave for school she'd always ask if I had enough breakfast, and when I got home she'd have a meal waiting for me completely disregarding the fact that I had lunch only a few hours before. Then during dinner she'd finally sit down with us after preparing an ungodly amount of food just to get up again and bring back more plates of food that was still on the stove.

I always felt bad when she made something for me that I didn't like. Of course I'd eat it, I'm not heartless, but it was because I wanted to show love in the only way that felt right. She'd always get so hurt when I didn't eat what she made because in a sense, it meant that I didn't accept her love. There were times when I definitely did not want to eat, but I also didn't want to see her rejected, even if that meant gaining 10 pounds during her stay. Between English and Korean will always be food, because that's just how we've always communicated. Maybe when I see her again, I'll try cooking for her to return the love she has consistently given me. The love will always be there even if we only get to show it three times a day.

*It feels wrong calling her grandma because I've always called her halmeoni