Go Well

Hello?

Hyewon-ah.

Eemo? What is it.

Ah ... she passed.

My lawyer aunt is calm over the phone, but my blood clamors in my ears. I shut my eyes. As long as I can remember, Halmoni, my maternal grandmother, swore she was standing at death’s door. We thought she was old 30 years ago. But no matter how much we had all anticipated her dying, the news still shocks.

The funeral’s on Monday, but you need to fly out tomorrow. Remember, you lose a day when you go, so if you can’t get a ticket before then, don’t bother coming.

I’ll find a ticket.

And bring your best coat. It’s freezing in Korea right now.

We hang up. I hear my kids, Emmy and Si, laugh from the bathroom. My husband, Michael, looks at me questioningly.

Halmoni died.

Are you gonna go?

Of course I’m gonna go. I spit my words.

I walk to the bathroom and watch my Korean-Mexican-Italian children brush their teeth at the sink. I get them in their PJs, sit them on my bed. I tell them their Wang Halmoni, literally King Grandma, is dead. Si starts crying thinking his grandma has died.

No, Si—not Halmoni! WANG Halmoni.

Oh.

Si is okay now. Emmy smiles the way young kids sometimes do from nerves. Then her eyes well up. So I gather up my kids.

Do you remember the family nickname for Wang Halmoni? Yoda. Because she was that old, that short, and that wise.

And that green?

No, Si. But pretty bald for a lady. And humans just don’t live to be hundreds of years old. You know, she was probably older than all the trees in our neighborhood. Can you imagine our trees when they were just little saplings? Well, Wang Halmoni was probably already a teenager by then.

They look a little in awe. I seize the moment and tell them I may have to go to Korea for the funeral. They are devastated. We cry and cuddle a little. They go to bed unusually easy. I book a 7:00 a.m. flight and order a cab for 4:30 in the morning.

I look at my watch with a sense of dread: 11:00 p.m. I want to slink under the covers and sleep for ten hours. But my body betrays me. I get the suitcase, start packing like a whirlwind. I throw a load of whites in the wash, pick up toys, cancel appointments, write instructions for Michael. In this way I steel myself for the long trip to the other side of the world, to pay my last respects to Yoda, my Halmoni, great matriarch of my family.

At 4:30 I wake the kids to say goodbye. I kiss my husband, grateful to him. The kids wail as I walk in the dark, down the driveway to the taxi.

Please God don’t leave them motherless forever.

Goodbye, children! Goodbye, husband!

Goodbye, North Carolina.

Hello black coffee, you are too kind.

Hello hordes of other Asians flying to Asia. It’s nice to see you again.

Oh how dark and cozy is our little cinema in the sky. Under this spell, people somehow fall asleep rigid and upright next to perfect strangers, slack-jawed and snoring. Meanwhile, I rattle Airborne chewables in my mouth with a desperate envy. I can’t sleep, but I can’t afford to get sick either.

This is only my fifth trip to Korea, including the time in fourth grade when my family moved from Texas to Seoul for nearly a year. Judging by the severity of teasing by students at Seoul International School, I reckon Southern-raised Korean-American children were uncommon back then. It took me no time to lose the accent. But the Korean kids called us wehgook, foreigner, the entire time we lived there.

Still, I look forward to being in a country where the people look mostly like me. They don’t know, until I speak, that I don’t belong. This time, though, I...