HA-RA-BO-GEE — What We Hold

By Keira

A photo of a man and a woman side-by-side on a beach

"Often when I try to connect with my Korean heritage, I experience a push and pull of my desire to know this part of myself, shame for having denied it in the past, and feeling that my efforts to connect to it are contrived."

Keira: My harabogee asked, “Do you want to know my story?”

When he said this, it brought on a familiar feeling of guilt. A reminder of my own insecurity in my Koreanness, my uncertainty about how much of it I am allowed to claim, or how much of it I am allowed to hold. Often when I try to connect with my Korean heritage, I experience a push and pull of my desire to know this part of myself, shame for having denied it in the past, and feeling that my efforts to connect to it are contrived. My halmone's death, in part, has contributed to my difficulty connecting to my Koreanness. As I got older, I wanted to know more about her and about my Korean heritage, but assumed she was something that would be too painful for my mother or grandfather to talk about.

Helen translating for Woo Sung: I thought she was pretty and sweet and outgoing, and I could tell that she liked me. You know, we spent some time together and decided we were going to get to know each other and to see each other. She was living in Seoul and I was stationed in another city, so we had to communicate through mail.

I was on leave in Seoul and I was at a restaurant, and this woman followed me into the restaurant, approached me, and said, “I thought you were somebody I knew. You look exactly like somebody that I know.”

We were writing to each other, and she said we should get together for a weekend in Seoul, so I got special leave. We were on a date, and we went to this place called Namsan Mountain that has a beautiful overlook, and she brought up that we wanted to date with the intention of getting married, and I agreed.

We got married at her parents' home church, and it was a young deacon who had just become a minister, and it was the first wedding that he had officiated.

Keira: I anticipated a serious and somber atmosphere in which my harabogee was on the brink of tears, struggling to remember my halmone. This wasn't the case at all. The interview was a unique and exciting blend of language and differing accounts of the same stories layered over one another. I was getting to know my halmone and my harabogee that I've grown up with taking care of me, but have never really gotten to know beyond them being my grandparents. In many ways, hearing my grandfather has helped me answer the question that came to mind first when starting What We Hold: how much am I allowed to hold? And my answer is, all of it.