behind the towering cylinders of nuts, dates, fruits, and rice cakes that would be wheeled out again the next day for the next
hwanggap
party.
“Friends.” He leaned across the podium as soon as the emcee fell silent. The gaudy silk screen of swooping cranes and lotus flowers made his eyes blacker. He paused, lifting his head slowly as if fatigued, and I wondered if this time he wouldn’t be able to perform. Then he began.
“What it means to be back after all these years away. Some of you I haven’t been privileged to see for twenty years, but none of you have forgotten Seoul’s prodigal son. No matter how far I strayed, the good Lord does not forsake His children; He did not let me know the darkness of being a sheep without a shepherd for longer than I can bear.” His voice broke, and his hands swept across his eyes, but he continued. He outstretched his hands and embraced the audience. “Jesus laid down his life for the sheep, so that we, the blind, would not be exiled from the Lord.”
“Yaesu,” someone said, calling out the name of Jesus.
“Oh, Juyeo,” someone said even louder.
“Yaesu-nim,” someone said, louder still.
“But even Jesus prayed into the night. Like Jesus who knew what it meant to suffer, our hearts must muse and our spirits must inquire, until the miracle happens.”
He looked confusedly at the audience, as if he had forgotten that he was not at church, and that they were not his congregation. Then he recovered and said, “Now, it is another miracle to see somany decades of lives, so many generations here facing me, a miracle made true by God.”
He spoke of the time our family had spent overseas, my mother’s death, and especially the ministry that he said had saved him and made him better than he was. Finally he gestured to us.
“My busy daughters are married and working in America, but there they are, my son and his new mother.”
When we stood and bowed, he beamed. New Mother’s face lit up like a votive candle. From looking at them, you wouldn’t think that each believed their life ruined by the other.
He began to pray, his voice thundering in the quiet hall. It was a voice that as a kid I used to mistake for God’s. The entire chandeliered hall rang as his voice led us to the promised land, and for the length of that prayer, even skeptics must have believed. But when I opened my eyes, the certainty in his voice didn’t match his face. His eyes were shut, his face tight and seeking, as if he had lost his way. I didn’t want to see my father like this. I didn’t look again.
When the prayer ended, he made his way down the hall, greeting women in ruffled blouses and men in gray-checked suits with his hands clasped around theirs; he anointed with his touch the heads of children scrambling between their mothers’ skirts and the tablecloth; he kissed the wasted cheeks of women who had been wheeled out from nursing homes; he embraced the people whom he had reunited with in the past six months in Seoul: CEOs, factory workers, gang members, professional
pansori
singers in horsehair hats, a dizzy number of church people. He forgot no one. But when he sat between New Mother and me, our dwindled family, he seemed to shrink.
Middle-aged women in pastel suits pushed around the buffet tables heavy with sweet fried pork; salted mackerel; chunks of beef soaked in soy sauce and honey, and garnished with gingko nuts; crispy tofu; cold jellyfish salad; abalone porridge; raw fish and squirming baby squid; a dozen fermented vegetables and wild roots. Older women with hands like cigarette paper stroked my cheek.
“He’s a goldfish copy of his mother,” they said.
Each time, I made my greeting and darted away.
A silver-haired man in a plaid suit and oxfords said, “I think of your mother all the time.”
But I wasn’t ready to talk to strangers about my mother. I wasn’t about to tell them how her hair had grown in coarse and gray, how I had circled the block several
hwanggap
party.
“Friends.” He leaned across the podium as soon as the emcee fell silent. The gaudy silk screen of swooping cranes and lotus flowers made his eyes blacker. He paused, lifting his head slowly as if fatigued, and I wondered if this time he wouldn’t be able to perform. Then he began.
“What it means to be back after all these years away. Some of you I haven’t been privileged to see for twenty years, but none of you have forgotten Seoul’s prodigal son. No matter how far I strayed, the good Lord does not forsake His children; He did not let me know the darkness of being a sheep without a shepherd for longer than I can bear.” His voice broke, and his hands swept across his eyes, but he continued. He outstretched his hands and embraced the audience. “Jesus laid down his life for the sheep, so that we, the blind, would not be exiled from the Lord.”
“Yaesu,” someone said, calling out the name of Jesus.
“Oh, Juyeo,” someone said even louder.
“Yaesu-nim,” someone said, louder still.
“But even Jesus prayed into the night. Like Jesus who knew what it meant to suffer, our hearts must muse and our spirits must inquire, until the miracle happens.”
He looked confusedly at the audience, as if he had forgotten that he was not at church, and that they were not his congregation. Then he recovered and said, “Now, it is another miracle to see somany decades of lives, so many generations here facing me, a miracle made true by God.”
He spoke of the time our family had spent overseas, my mother’s death, and especially the ministry that he said had saved him and made him better than he was. Finally he gestured to us.
“My busy daughters are married and working in America, but there they are, my son and his new mother.”
When we stood and bowed, he beamed. New Mother’s face lit up like a votive candle. From looking at them, you wouldn’t think that each believed their life ruined by the other.
He began to pray, his voice thundering in the quiet hall. It was a voice that as a kid I used to mistake for God’s. The entire chandeliered hall rang as his voice led us to the promised land, and for the length of that prayer, even skeptics must have believed. But when I opened my eyes, the certainty in his voice didn’t match his face. His eyes were shut, his face tight and seeking, as if he had lost his way. I didn’t want to see my father like this. I didn’t look again.
When the prayer ended, he made his way down the hall, greeting women in ruffled blouses and men in gray-checked suits with his hands clasped around theirs; he anointed with his touch the heads of children scrambling between their mothers’ skirts and the tablecloth; he kissed the wasted cheeks of women who had been wheeled out from nursing homes; he embraced the people whom he had reunited with in the past six months in Seoul: CEOs, factory workers, gang members, professional
pansori
singers in horsehair hats, a dizzy number of church people. He forgot no one. But when he sat between New Mother and me, our dwindled family, he seemed to shrink.
Middle-aged women in pastel suits pushed around the buffet tables heavy with sweet fried pork; salted mackerel; chunks of beef soaked in soy sauce and honey, and garnished with gingko nuts; crispy tofu; cold jellyfish salad; abalone porridge; raw fish and squirming baby squid; a dozen fermented vegetables and wild roots. Older women with hands like cigarette paper stroked my cheek.
“He’s a goldfish copy of his mother,” they said.
Each time, I made my greeting and darted away.
A silver-haired man in a plaid suit and oxfords said, “I think of your mother all the time.”
But I wasn’t ready to talk to strangers about my mother. I wasn’t about to tell them how her hair had grown in coarse and gray, how I had circled the block several
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