The Valley of Tadpoles (pt. 1)

Ignore everything else in your life for a second. Close your eyes and imagine this:

You. You are five years old. Your pockets are always awake with fingers and used tissues. You were raised in a city in southern California often likened to paradise, but sometimes your heart calls over the Pacific Ocean to a place called Seoul where your roots are firmly planted into glass towers and concrete walkways.

Home is where the heart is, they say.

You are still five. There is a man that you’ve only met twice that also has sleepless pockets, but his are filled with jolly ranchers and sometimes they stick together so you end up getting two or three candies when he only meant to give you one. Your parents love this man. So do your uncles and aunts and cousins. Your grandparents think of this man as another son.

He has just passed away.

To celebrate this man’s life, you and your Mom and Dad and brother hop on a plane back to Korea, where home sometimes is. It’s a thirteen hour plane ride and you’ve long outgrown the novelty of flight, but your Dad always speaks to you of the significance of sacrifice, so you struggle on. After you take your seat, you order a pineapple juice from the pretty stewardess and hope that you brought enough batteries for your Gameboy.

Incheon International Airport is as much a brag of Korean wealth as it is a gathering of commuters. You stand in the passenger loading zone with your family, clutching onto a vinyl backpack that reminds you of your pockets, but bigger. A sleek, black Hyundai pulls up with two men inside. The older fellow in the back is your grandfather; his hair is gray and marvelous, but he doesn’t know how to smile. The man driving the car is grandfather’s personal chauffeur. You’ve seen and spoken with this man dozens of times but you can never recall his name so you try not to look him in the eye. It occurs to you that you don’t know your grandfather’s name either. You just call him “grandfather.”

Anyway…

They whisk you away. Towards home. There is a famous stretch of highway near the airport that is lined on either side by countless street lights. You watch these passing lights closely, wondering if they will ever end. When you turn your eyes back into the car, you continue to see the lights reflecting off of Dad’s glasses and the windshield. When the lights do eventually stop, you’re preoccupied with the seat heaters and so you fail to notice.

An hour on the road begins to turn into awe and brighter lights as you enter the city of Seoul. It is dark out. Gradually, the towers and stores become more and more recognizable until you are driving up a familiar hill and wondering whether or not grandma made your favorite stew for dinner. One more turn.

The car comes to a stop.

Your grandparents live atop a hill in Seoul’s busiest district. As you step outside, you can hear the hustle and bustle of the people as they navigate the alleys and bars and convenience stores. Eventually, their incessant droning will find its way into the background and you will fail to notice the noise altogether. For now, however, your head aches.

You ring the doorbell. Someone from inside the house clicks a button on a panel that unlocks the gate, letting you into the garden. The grass hasn’t been cut in a long time, and the swing set in the corner has rusted to dangerous levels. The mysterious, abstract sculpture next to the swing set is still there and you try to make a mental note to ask your parents what that’s all about when the time is right. Next to the statue, grandfather has placed a small dish with a pile of seeds in hopes of attracting some birds.

These days, the stone steps leading to the front door are whiter than they are grey. As you walk up these steps, eyes glued to the floor, grandma opens up the front door and begins to shuffle over with a smile.

She takes you in her arms. She smells like mothballs and you see that the weird bump on her foot is still there and smiling at you. You smile back. You aren’t in some garden anymore, nor are you in Seoul.

“Welcome home,” she says with a thick accent.