For almost 4 years my family lived in Seoul in Sung-book Gu (???) during my elementary school years. My (mathernal) grandparents lived not too far from us. I think it was about 20 minutes by walking distance.
Few things I recall about my grandparents, I wanted to write them here more for my own sake than others so I can remember about them. My grandfather was a busy man so I don’t remember much about him at all other than he was a collector of all sorts, including Korean art. I think I have some of that gene as I love collecting things.
Unfortunately, things about my grandfather ends there. It’s my grandmother (????) that I remember more of. She had a … vibrant spirit about her. She was always very straightforward and told things as she saw them.
One, she loved wrestling. In my youth days, there was one Korean short wrestler by the name of Kim Il (? ?) who was infamous for head butting his opponents. She would always watch him play and would love seeing his head butting. I obviously didn’t think much of it at the time, being about 10 years old at that time but it has strangely become a fond memory of her. Weird? I think once time goes by, any memories one retains of the person stays.
Another thing I recall is how she loved to cook. ? (ssook) is a rather common plant as the picture above shows and is known as Asteraceae. This was a very common plant that was everywhere, at least while I was a kid, in Korea. I remember grandma would ask us to go out with her and pick these by the bag-fulls! What did she do with them? Why, make rice cakes (?) of course! ?? (pronounced ssook-dduk) would come out rather dark green in color and didn’t taste very good. Well, to be honest, it tasted terrible!
However, I’d pay million bucks to go back in time to about picking ? with her and I’d gladly eat all the ?? that she would give if I could… I guess I feel nostalgic and miss her. I sure hope she’s making me plenty of ?? up in heaven… I bet she’s picking them up in heaven right about now… See you soon grandma.