Grandparents

I did not know my grandparents well.

This wasn’t because of a lack of desire. Perhaps I was a bit indifferent. My parents, as strange as it may sound, were not super interested in us having a close relationship with them, as they haven’t really been for any member of our family, for some reason.

So for a short period of time my dad’s mom and dad lived in Atlanta. It seemed ok. They got their own apartment not far from us. I was not involved in the politics of why they were even there. Much later it was discovered there was some falling out between my dad and his older brother. But this was not news, as my father was falling into and out of favor with all of his siblings.

I remember that we would visit them and sometimes they would visit us. Nobody in either party except my father could really drive so it was a lot of chauffeuring on his part. I remember their apartment being sparse. Maybe there was a bed? I am not even sure, though in my mind they slept on the floor with thick, faux mink Korean blankets.

My father was the spit and image of his father. My grandfather was unusually tall – perhaps even 5 foot 5 inches, which was even a shrunken version of what he must have been when he was younger. His hair line receded, but not into anything unattractive. He seemed like the more docile of the pair. I remember that his house clothes consisted of a white wife beater and long shorts. He had emphysema but still enjoyed smoking. He was not one to wear joy on his face, yet I do not remember he looking particularly sad either. I suppose he lived a hard life, living through the Korean War, having to relocate his family from and to Seoul again. Yet his face was a picture of pleasant resignation.

My grandmother had the spitfire personality that she passed along to my father. The spitfire part I learned from my parents later-- she was nothing but mellow to her granddaughters in her seventies. When I saw her in her place in Atlanta, she was maybe four foot nine. Her posture was horrendous and she walked with a cane but was hunched over, making her appear even smaller. God had made her breasts disproportionately large for her petite size, probably causing her back problems her whole life. There were lines on her face that were deeply etched grooves. I used to tell my mother that she had the face of a raisin. Her face wore every heartbreak and disappointment like a ring inside a tree stump.

Min and my Korean was not good, but we could say hello and bow and talk about how good the food was and how well we slept the night before. Usually my parents did most of the talking. If we were left alone with our grandparents there was a lot of idle smiling and looking at each other and nodding of our heads. But usually we would just sit on the floor and skewer fruit that my mother carefully selected and cut with toothpick swords and eat raisins and dried cuttlefish and just listen to my parents talk to each other and my dad’s parents in Korean. There was little acknowledgment of Min or I, but that was ok. We were used to that being around my parents and their friends.