Mother-in-law's forearm

"Look at Mom’s arms. They’re more than twice the size of yours."

My husband said this without thinking when he saw his mother, who came from LA, rolling up her sleeves and helping with the housework. My mother-in-law looked at my thin arms and shyly covered her mouth with her rough, turtle-like hands.

She is from Hamhung, in North Korea. Since my father-in-law went abroad when he was young, she raised five children alone while caring for her mother-in-law. Life was very hard for her. When she applied for a U.S. visa, her fingerprints didn’t come out clearly. The staff even told her to stop hand-washing clothes for a while and come back later. That was in the early 1970s, when she had no washing machine.

As soon as she enters our home, she goes to the kitchen and starts cleaning every pot and pan.

“Look at this. The more you scrub stainless steel, the shinier it gets. Back then, we used to fix holes in aluminum pots and keep using them.”

She holds up a sparkling pot and smiles brightly.

Unlike me—who only cleans the spots people can see or where I sit—

she says, “The corners must be clean for the whole house to feel clean.”

She takes an old brush and scrubs out dust from every corner.

She puts bleach on the toilet, the bathtub, and the sink, waits, then wipes everything until it shines.

She goes to the market, buys flounders, salts them, and prepares fermented fish with radish and millet rice. When it rains, she collects rainwater to wash white laundry. Her work never seems to end.

“You must use rainwater and beat the laundry with a stick to make it truly white,” she says.

She looks for a laundry stick, but of course, we don’t have one.

She says, “It’s nice that it rains often in New York. Rainwater makes your car shine too.”

She looks out the window, holding back the urge to go outside and wash the car in the rain.

She saw our small kitchen and bought us a frying pan, a kettle, and even a microwave. After working hard all week at her son’s house, it’s time for her to return to LA. Before she left, I wanted to give her a break, so I took her to Central Park. She didn’t sit and rest on the bench. Instead, she looked around for wild herbs called naengi (shepherd’s purse).

“Let’s put these in doenjang-jjigae (soybean stew) for dinner,” she said.

When neighbors tried to greet her, she would cover her mouth with one hand and say, “No English,” while holding my hand tightly with the other. At some point, we started holding hands every time we stepped out of the house. Even after all the hard work at our place, she still wants to come again. Maybe… she just wants to hold my hand.