On a day off, which I don’t usually have, I was busy doing all the house chores that had piled up and didn’t even notice my phone was ringing.
I checked my phone later and found there was a missed call from my mom.
“You called me?”
“Yes, did I wake you up? Did you get up?”
“Of course! Look at the time!”
My mom felt bad that I had been working part time for a few years to help with my children’s education fees. She said that her neighbor gave her some big and nice radishes and so she made diced radish kimchi for me and sent it. She asked me to call her to let her know when it arrived.
“You didn’t have to do that, Mom. I’m almost fifty. I can make it myself. Don’t worry about me too much.”
“You are busy working. And you are not a good cook. That’s why . . .”
The next day, the package arrived. I could see my mom’s name and her address back in my hometown between the tapes she put all over the box. It felt strange.
‘The place where my mom lives! Yes, it was where I lived, too. We lived there together.’
I missed my hometown to tears, thinking of my mom who was there all alone, missing her children. Inside the box, there were a couple of side dishes as well as the diced radish kimchi and perilla oil. I could feel her love in all the side dishes she put in plastic bags, tied with rubber bands, and taped all around to make sure that they stay inside the bags.
One day, weeks after the Lunar New Year’s Day, my mom told me that she sent some rice. My mom, who has four daughters and one son, even knew when I, her second child, ran out of rice.
I remembered my mom telling me to look for her gift in the rice, so I stirred around the rice. Then I felt something in it. It was a plastic bag. I opened the bag and saw two pretty envelopes with her two granddaughters’ names on them. I thought they had letters inside, but when I opened them, I saw 10,000 won in each envelope. Being curious, I called my mom.
“Haha, that’s your kids’ pocket money. I sent it because I didn’t get to see them during the holiday. I hope they will like it. I wanted to give them more, but you know, I have eleven grandchildren. I put a little more for your older sister’s kids. I did it because your older sister did a lot of work, being the eldest, so don’t feel upset. Okay?”
“Of course I don’t, Mom. I’m glad you did that. Actually, we’re okay, so you can skip my kids.”
“No way! I love every grandchild of mine. If you give something to one child, you feel uncomfortable because of the other child, and if you do something for the other child, you feel bad for this child, you know. I’m going to do this until I die. So do not say anything but, ‘Thank you.’ That’s all you need to say. Okay?”
It was Mom’s love that flows to the child and even to the child’s child without stopping.
Soon it’s going to be my mom’s seventy-seventh birthday. My sisters and I decided to have a nice three-day vacation with her for her birthday.
My mom sounds excited these days. Now that her house is all empty after her children all moved out, I guess she is just excited to have her children come to see her. Whenever I call her, she asks me how we are doing, and she asks me again and again if we can come for sure. I can’t wait for the day to go to my hometown where my mom is, and where my childhood memories with my older sister and younger siblings are. I also look forward to the day when I will be with Heavenly Father and Mother, and my spiritual brothers and sisters, forever in the heavenly home.