The long way home

The weather is cloudy and bitingly cold. From time to time the sun breaks the thin clouds making the gray sky silver with light. The rays catching the country dust particles and making white steamers comg down through the car window.

We're driving from my dad's new home in Pusan-- at the waterfront on the 10th floor of a 31-floor concrete apartment building with a partial view of the most beautiful bridge in a city of bridges-- to his hometown. My brother, my dad, and I in my dad's shiny, black, new car. I think it's the most expensive domestically made car available. My brother and my dad talk the whole way I'm sitting in the back dividing my time between the LCD screen that tells me what street we're on and the window that shows me the view. I'm thinking about everyone who ever meant anything to me the feelings don't come back; it seems the feelings are trapped in past.

Three hours of driving brought us to a hosptial where his favorite cousin laid in bed for the the 40th day in a row after he fell several feet while working on the new subway construction in Gwangju. He was in good spirits and made jokes non-stop. He asked us what we had planned for the night as if he was asking to see if he would be interested in tagging along. I was a bit surprised considering he was wearing a large, heavy plastic brace around his torso. He wanted to come eat dinner with us and so he did. He even drank a fair amount of soju. My dad's friend dropped him back off at the hospital and the rest of us went to my second oldest uncle's house. His wife and their daugther were there. There aren't too many families left that live in a house anymore, but they do. In the morning we drove my aunt to the corner store she and my uncle own. It's a tiny store that sells soju, cigarettes, ice cream, soft drinks, and tons of other junk food. My dad says they make only $100 a day. They let us drink and eat whatever we want. I just take a pack of candy and gum. My aunt, who runs a restuarant on a quiet street, arrives on a bus. We all pile into the car and head out to a Buddhist temple in the mountains. As a child my dad went to this temple many, many times on school field trips. The figures at the gate of the temple complex used to scare him, he tells us. Ever the obsessive photographers my brother and I whip out our Lomo cameras to snap photos. There's absolutely no one at the temple so we spend a decent amount of time there posing for photographs in front of the intricately painted buildings. It's cold and cloudy but there's no wind and the view is subtly beautiful.

Afterwards we take perilously narrow gravel and dirt roads up hills, alongside rivers, and through thick bamboo to reach a tiny cluster of buildings. It's where my dad went to the school only the school building isn't there anymore. My aunt and uncle are loudly recalling where everything used to be. The garden on the corner, so and so's house on the beside the school... We don't get out of the car though. We still have a long drive to where my dad spent 15 years of his life.

The windy, bumpy, narrow country road makes me nervous but there's no coming down the road toward us. I haven't seen a single soul anywhere yet.

My aunt, uncle, and dad start loudly remembering and my brother and I get the I-walked-a-hour-through-the-snow-in-barefeet-to-get-to-school story only this isn't at all an exaggeration. From the looks of it must be an understatement. Some parts of the road have washed away into the river which only has a little trickle of water and is surrounded by prickly, dry, leafless trees. The road must get very little traffic now as the branches of the trees are scratching the sides of my dad's, now, dust covered car. He doesn't seem to care about that nor that the gravel is scraping the underside of the car. He hasn't seen the house he grew up in over 25 years.

Along the way we pass by the homes of my aunt, where she had her two children away from hospitals and doctors. She mentions where my dad's best friend, to this day, lived and where they play.

Finally my aunt says, "That's the garden" and points to a small field where several white and black goats are now grazing. The car continues around that former garden and up a steep hill finally arriving at grouping of three old, country homes.

It looks like a scene out of a movie. It's a wreck. The house is a delapidated shack made with dirt and covered in newspaper. The door is made from rice paper. The kitchen is completely dark and the ceiling is pitch black with soot. And it finally sinks in that my dad and his family grew up in mind-boggling conditions. No running water, no electricity, no heating or cooling, just a roof over their heads and mats to sleep on. They never grew up hungry but they ate bowls of barley instead of more expensive rice and they only ate meat once or twice a year.

An old woman is standing outside and her little grandaughter is playing with piece of paper wrapped around a stick. She turns the stick to make the paper slide down and flips it over to watch it slide down again. My aunt inquires about a man who she knows still lives there. He comes down and they chat for a while. He is one of the few who still remain there. When my dad's family lived there, there were 11 other families in that small area too.

My brother is too shocked to take pictures. He's not at all his chatty self. Later he starts sobbing. I can't explain it but I think you might know what he was feeling.

Seeing the tiny house made of mud and paper where my dad lived with his mother, father, and six siblings and then coming back to his new large, fancy, high tech apartment where it's just him and his girlfriend is just remarkable. It's hard to believe, really. I saw it and I can barely believable it.