TWO WORLDS AS ONE

After a dizzying and incredibly enriching time with our adult children in Malaysia, we flew to Korea with our son and his wife. We knew we would be terribly depressed after such a sweet time. Being with Michael and Gloria helped ease our emotional touchdown to reality and physical landing in Korea. After knowing that we would only have less than three full days together, we hyped ourselves that we would hit the ground running.

Looking back, one of the greatest gifts was the opportunity for our children and their spouses to witness our life in action both in Malaysia and Korea—why we had to move to Asia. Rather than being a concocted imagination, even if the best ones at that, they bore witness to our home away from home, our surroundings, our mundane life, and more importantly, the communities, both proximate and virtual, we belong to. They met our Malaysia “team”/community for a durian party. As this is the tail end of the season, they served expensive Musang King durians, one of the best kinds. Regrettably, none of our children took a fancy to the durians. Some valiantly tried a few more bites but their faces told different stories, making the durian lovers laugh out loud.

Back to Korea. Since we had shared much about Yangpyeong with our children over the years, the four of us made a point to spend a day in Yangpyeong. We took them around to see our “old” neighborhood, and walked the same path along the river and ripening rice fields which my wife and I walked countless times. With an unseasonably warm breeze on our faces, we were quickly surrounded by tall and slim fluorescent Cosmos flowers, bowing rice stock on one side, and lazy and full river on the other side. Our conversations flowed like the river, slow, intentional, and warm, embracing a reminiscence of the past and a musing into the future. 

A day earlier, I contacted Chef Lee to see whether we could see her. Sure enough, she was excited to see us and our son and daughter-in-law. She had also called Master Baker Kwak and alerted him that we were at the bakery. Master Baker Kwak zipped over as soon as he got the call. I did not know that he would be in town. Later, I found out that he just spent three months visiting bakeries all over Spain and Portugal, exchanging artisanal bread making. As he showed up flexing his impressive calf and bicep muscles, my son’s eyes widened to see a man who was 10 years older than his dad, looking like a full back. One of his next goals in life is to participate in a senior body-building competition next year, I was told. If he was not already by this point, he surely became one of my inspirations at that time. Conversations were delightfully mundane, real, and filled with zest and hope for life. Chef Lee invited us to a potluck party on October 31 with her friends and artists.

Afterward, Michael and Gloria understood why we called Yangpyeong our home away from home. What existed as two different and separate worlds of our lives collided and meshed in harmony and glory into one. THIS, to me, was the best gift for my wife and I, of our children visiting both in Malaysia and Korea.

In addition, they realized that nature, friends, simplicity of life with all the modern amenities, great food, etc all played their role in grounding us. We can see better and hear better. Our lungs, hearts, and minds thank us. Our soul is at rest and ready to engage the world. I was elated that Michael and Gloria got a peek at our souls.