Please Look After Mom

The 69-year-old matriarch of a South Korean family, So-nyo Park, is missing. So-nyo arrived in Seoul to visit her children and celebrate her and her husband’s joint birthday but became disoriented in the crowd at Seoul Station. After her husband rushes toward their bus, he discovers after boarding safely that though So-nyo was standing next to him earlier, she hasn’t followed him. The elderly couple lives in the country, and the family worries because So-nyo has never navigated the bustling city without one of her children showing her the way.

It’s been one week since So-nyo’s disappearance. So-nyo’s family (her husband and five children) gathers at the residence of her eldest son, Hyong-chol, to determine a course of action. The family finally decides to make a missing-person flyer and post it throughout the city.

Chi-hon (one of So-nyo’s daughters) narrates the chapter in the second-person singular. Chi-hon is a novelist, so the family tasks her with writing the flyer’s details. As the chapter unfolds, Chi-hon reveals telling information about how the family treated So-nyo. This information comes from family misunderstandings in the present and Chi-hon’s childhood memories. Chi-hon misremembers the date of So-nyo’s birthday and her father must correct her. It turns out that the family celebrates their parents’ birthdays together not because they fall on the same day, but on their father’s birthday. The children stopped visiting their parents in the country at some point, which meant that So-nyo couldn’t give her children the special jams and gifts she once loved making for them. So-nyo took pride in having her family around, but she accepted visiting her children in the city to make things easier for them.

Chi-hon argues with her siblings and father about how the missing-person flyer should look. They disagree on what picture to use, since they only have one picture of their mother, an older photograph where she wears a blue hanbok, or traditional outfit. They argue about the price of the reward until agreeing on five million won—less than five thousand dollars. They also go back and forth about the words Chi-hon should use on the flyer: The family accuses her of sounding either too formal or too childish. Chi-hon eventually gives up arguing with her eldest brother because the family always places so much responsibility on Hyong-chol. She also admits the real reason behind all the bickering: “You all blamed each other for Mom’s going missing, and you all felt wounded” (8). The rest of the chapter contains flashbacks hinting that different family members feel guilt and hurt stemming from the disappearance.

On the way home from Hyong-chol’s, Chi-hon stops at Seoul Station and stands where her mother stood before the disappearance. She remembers a time when they went dress shopping and she was rude to her mother. Chi-hon regrets past decisions, and the narrative switches to an earlier conversation where Chi-hon asked her father why he tried taking the bus to Hyong-chol’s house instead of letting one of the children pick them up. This was the first time the parents arrived in the city without help from one of the children. Chi-hon warned that her parents were making a dangerous choice: “mom can get lost, you know” (13). Her sister-in-law shrugged this comment off, but the narrative reveals that So-nyo has been acting different lately and that the family knew something was wrong with their elderly mother.

In another flashback, Chi-hon remembers reading a letter for her mother as a young girl. So-nyo would always ask Chi-hon to read Hyong-chol’s letters and then write a response. Chi-hon dealt with her mother’s wide range of emotions, especially as each of her brothers left home to begin new lives. They’d write, and Chi-hon took care of the correspondence until she too grew old enough and left home. In the present, Chi-hon wonders why she never understood as a child that her mother couldn’t read or write and so relied on Chi-hon to communicate with her children. When she left home, there was no one to write letters anymore.

The memory about writing letters brings up another memory that causes Chi-hon further regret. Her flashbacks wound her because they reveal that she doesn’t know her mom as well as she thought. One day Chi-hon randomly visited her mother in their hometown of Chongup, but felt like a stranger there. The house was a mess and So-nyo was outside, slumped down by the shed in immense pain. Weak and confused, So-nyo eventually opened her eyes, muttering that she hadn’t cried when her sister died.

The narrative flashes back to So-nyo’s sister’s death from cancer. She had been sick for over a year. Though she used to look after Chi-hon when Chi-hon was younger, Chi-hon had never visited her aunt and didn’t go to her funeral. Hyong-chol, who did go, told Chi-hon later that their mother didn’t cry during the funeral and didn’t go to the burial ground afterwards. As Chi-hon cradled her mother next to the shed, So-nyo admitted that she avoided the burial ground and crying for her sister because crying makes her get headaches and the pain is too intense.

Chi-hon regrets never thinking of her mother as human being while growing up. Her mother usually called Chi-hon “you, girl,” so So-nyo never seemed fond of or attached to any one person. One day, however, So-nyo’s brother arrived after traveling the countryside and So-nyo affectionately called him brother repeatedly and cried while hugging him. This behavior shocked Chi-hon because she never thought of So-nyo as being a sister or daughter, just a mother in an objective sense.

When Chi-hon found her mother lying prostrate near the shed, she helped her back inside. Chi-hon wanted to bring her mother to a hospital in the city, wondering if So-nyo’s other children knew just how bad things were. After sharing a meal together, Chi-hon and her mother walked outside and Chi-hon revealed why she came back home so suddenly. A Braille library reached out to Chi-hon for permission to translate one of her novels. When she accepted, the library asked if she would visit on Braille Day to talk about the novel. However, during Chi-hon’s talk, she felt overwhelmed by how the blind people in attendance seemed to look through her, to see her without seeing her. As she gave her talk, she felt that the people in the audience were far more attentive and tuned in than any of her other listeners: She “[felt] friendship from eyes that had never seen, eyes that seemed to understand and accept any flaw” (33-34). The experience at the Braille library reminded Chi-hon of learning to read, which in turn caused her to think about her mother and prompted her to return home.

Chi-hon also remembers that her mother sold the only piece of jewelry she’d ever seen So-nyo wear, a gold ring, so that Chi-hon could take the entrance exam for middle school.

Later in the Chongup visit, Chi-hon and her mother prepared octopus for breakfast one morning. Chi-hon fed her mother octopus like her mother used to feed her when younger, and she called So-nyo “Mother” for the first time. Preparing and eating the octopus reminded Chi-hon of helping her mother prepare a fish called skate for ancestral rites as a child. The process was grueling, especially in winter when the skate froze before they had to skin it. One night, Chi-hon’s hands were freezing from the task, so So-nyo decided not to skin the fish. This decision shocked So-nyo’s husband and sister-in-law, and whenever something bad happened to the family that year everyone blamed it on the choice not to skin the fish properly for the ancestral rites.

After the octopus breakfast, Chi-hon and So-nyo walked into the mountains. Chi-hon momentarily forgot the path they were on, but then recalled that it once led to her aunt’s house and the village where her mother was born. While walking, So-nyo asked Chi-hon to purchase rose rosary beads for her should Chi-hon ever see them while in the smallest country in the world. Chi-hon then comforted her mother as they stared down into the abandoned village where her mother grew up. While looking down into the village, Chi-hon remembered arguing with her mother about the family dog’s wellbeing. Chi-hon had given her mother money to buy the family dog a larger doghouse. Because her mother took a while to get a house made, Chi-hon hinted that country people are rude and crude. Her mother took offense and hung up on Chi-hon. This shocked Chi-hon: Chi-hon used to always hang up on her mother after getting annoyed, but this was the first time So-nyo hung up on her daughter. Chi-hon later learned that the family dog died. So-nyo heard from a monk that someone in the family would die that year; she believed she was the person, but when the dog suddenly died, So-nyo interpreted that to mean that the dog had taken her place.

So-nyo’s headaches got worse after Chi-hon returned to Seoul. One day she passed out while cooking and almost set the entire house on fire. In the present, Chi-hon recalls her sister, who used to run a pharmacy, asking once whether their mother liked cooking for the family. The sister has three kids now and must cook for the entire family, which prompts her to wonder how their mother must’ve felt. The question startles Chi-hon because the family has always equated So-nyo with cooking duties. “Mom was the kitchen,” she recalls, “and the kitchen was Mom” (55); Chi-hon never wondered if her mother liked cooking constantly for so many people without thanks.

Chi-hon recalls a time when her mother brought puppies to the market to sell and then allowed Chi-hon to choose a book to buy with the profits. So-nyo never bought anything that wasn’t for sustenance, so the book purchase initially caught Chi-hon off guard. She chose Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human for its title despite not knowing anything about the book or the author.

So-nyo eventually agreed to see a doctor with Chi-hon as long as Chi-hon never told Hyong-chol about her headaches. One doctor revealed that So-nyo had had a stroke, so blood had pooled in her brain. He suggested that So-nyo must have been in pain for some time. Even after the blood was drained, So-nyo continued to suffer from pain and headaches.

When Chi-hon finally asked her mother whether she liked cooking for so many people, So-nyo agreed that it was a thankless task but she delighted in seeing her children grow. The hardest times were when there wasn’t enough food and she worried how to feed the family. So-nyo also admitted that she used to get frustrated, breaking jar lids when angry. She jokingly suggested that Chi-hon just break things when she felt angry.

In the present, when Chi-hon takes the missing-person flyer for printing, she compliments the designer’s cotton clothing. He shares that his mother used to make all his clothes because of he has skin condition which means he can only wear soft clothing. Chi-hon wants to know more about his mother, but inadvertently offends the man when asking if his mother liked doing these things for him. The man responds that his mother was of a different generation and therefore of a different mindset than modern women.