I loved spending time with my grandma ever since I was little. Even the oldest memories I have in Korea, before I moved to the States at the age of 4, are vague snapshots of playing in my grandma's home. She was always there, carrying me on her back wrapped in a blanket, taking me to parks with my cousin, and teaching me how to ride a bike.
When I went to Korea during the summers with my mom (and with my brother after he was born), we would stay at my grandma's place. She lived alone and always welcomed us with open arms. The summer of 2017 was the first time I flew to Korea alone and I got to spend 3 months with my grandma.
My grandma gets up at 5 in the morning to get ready to go to Olympic Park, which is a 5 minute walk away, to play badminton with her friends. They are all in their 70s and 80s, but extremely healthy and active, and enjoy the quiet morning when they can spend time in the company of others. My grandma would always ask me to come with her, but I could never wake up in time and was just too lazy. I didn't know why she wanted to introduce me to her friends so much.
While in my free time, I loved going out and exploring as much of Seoul as I possibly could, I also wanted to spend time with my grandma. I would often ask her to eat out with me in her neighborhood, but she always refused. I thought she would want to go out rather than being stuck in the confined space of her home, but she didn't.
My grandma had a knee problem, which she had surgery on a few years back, and had a limp in her walk. Whenever I walked with her, I would ask her if she was okay. She would grunt that it didn't hurt at all, but at night I would always see her massaging her knees. When we walked, she would always trail behind me, and I would walk on my own pace, turning around once in a while and waiting for her to catch up.
One day, my grandma took a huge bag of unshelled peanuts to the rooftop of the villa (Korean apartment buildings about 5 stories tall). I would always get worried about her walking up those stairs alone and often went up to check on her. It was such a hot day (summers in Korea are extremely humid and sweaty), but my grandma was sitting on top of the stairs with a newspaper open on the floor in front of her, shelling the hundreds and hundreds of peanuts.
Shelling the peanuts for almost an hour with her, I got to talk more than I ever had with my grandma.
I stared at her and the words slipped out of my mouth.
"Are you happy?" I asked her. It seemed like such a simple question, but she couldn't answer. I asked her about her life as a young girl, but she had never had a childhood. She only attended elementary school because she had to stay home, as the only daughter among several children, to help out with house chores. Then as a young adult, younger than my age, she was married off to a man she met for the first time.
She never had the chance to play around with friends, buy clothes and dress up as a teenager, or live a life for herself. Here I was in Korea for three free months, spending so much money buying and eating whatever I wanted. Our generations, our circumstances, our standards of happiness were so different.
After she got married, she had three children and raised them all by herself. My grandfather did not have as much money as her family had thought and he was unable to support my grandma. Without any education, she had to find any possible way to support her precious kids who would become her future.
I couldn't understand that my grandma never had the chance to find her own interests and foster her passions. I kept asking her "What makes you happy? When are you most happy?" because that was the question I was always asking myself. But the fact that I was able to ask myself those questions seemed so privileged. Even though I had a loving family, stable financial circumstances, and the ability to buy excesses, I often felt unhappy and struggled to find meaning in life. However, my grandma never even had the chance to ponder about the meaning in life. Every moment of her life she had to work for her family, for her kids. That was the meaning in her life, the ultimate goal.
"Are you happy now?"
My grandma was silent for a bit. "Seeing you, my family, being successful. That is what makes me happy." My grandma had worked so hard to send her children - my mom and two uncles - to school. Now, my mom lived in the States, my uncle in Japan, and only the other uncle - my grandma's eldest son - stayed in Korea. My grandma rarely got to see her precious grandchildren, but she would break out into the biggest smile getting a simple phone call from them. I had so many small chances to make my grandma happy, yet I was always searching further than I needed to.
My grandma, and most of our grandparents' generation, have so many stories, but no one to tell. They are so used to keeping the hardship to themselves, so used to no one being interested. Perhaps they are hoping not to burden us with their stories from the past, simply satisfied watching us grow and lead our lives. Sometimes, the stories that remain untold have the most powerful voices.