To home

Jongno Street in Seoul is overflowing with waves of people. Only when I am good at surfacing can I squeeze in an empty niche. If I let go, I might be swept away by people and thrown away somewhere I don't know.

On a sultry summer night, I walked through Jongno Street, trying to get somewhere. Before I knew it, it was time for the busy walkers to disappear one by one. I also had to go home. I stood at the bus stop and waited for the bus home. But what a surprise! I suddenly couldn't think of the bus number to go home.

I asked people for the bus number to Itaewon, but no one knew it.  I called home on a hard-found public phone. I couldn't think of the back number after I dialed four digits. The nervousness of not being able to go back home was creeping in. Indeed do I have a home to go back? I woke up in a panic of fear.

When I was young, there was a dim room next to kitchen. There were a lot of unused things piled up there. I sometimes sneaked into the room to find missing items or read books.

"Tell grandpa to have dinner." my mother would wake me up from sleep, setting the table. How did she know I was there so well?

The grandfather, dressed in a yellow silk jacket with a large orange amber button, was holding a long smoking pipe. I said, "have a dinner," and he gave a big cough and beat the long smoking pipe to a brass ashtray.

With the loud sound of iron the family stopped their work and gathered around the table. The table set up with seaweed and fishes, and fresh radish soup. When my grandfather spooned the soup with spoon, the family also picked up the spoon as promised.

In the evening, I thought I were going to a house full of the smell of soup with my mother looking for me, but a dream!

I know a junior who lived in New York for more than a decade left for Korea. He used to say, "I have not had dreams the New York scene appearing." I'm just like him. My life in New York is longer than my life in Seoul, but I still searching for my Seoul home in my dreams.

In my dreams, I am a lonely single who is not married, or a 16-year-old girl wandering around looking for my mother. My husband is a man whom I've seen a lot. My children appear as neighbors or cousins. How long will my childhood memories act like masters without giving me a chance to remember when I became an adult?

The plane disappeared into the clouds appear and grow smaller ‘Isn’t it a flight to Seoul?’ Why do I think it’s a plane to Korea? I think that plane will take me to my mom's place for dinner. To meet my mother, who has been dead 25 years ago?