Father and anchovy sauce

My mother and father.

My father liked anchovy sauce.

To my father, it was a taste of his home.

He had a special attachment to his hometown.

There is a favorite song that he always sang after having a drink.

"I miss my hometown but I can't go..."

I thought that my father must have left behind many beautiful things and memories in his hometown.

The father's homesickness was passed on to his children, and we learned early that hometown is a place that is always missed.

Sokcho, where I lived since I was four, was my hometown.

Spring, buried in the white snow at the top of Seorak mountain, does not become green even in March, making me impatient.

I dug young mugworts with fluffy hairs in a field, and the cold air surrounds me.

The new mugwort that is quietly hiding in the brushwood gives me a thrill,

as if I am peeking at the breasts of a young girl.

In summer, I played with my friends under the fluttering acacia blossoms,

and in winter, we sled on the frozen streams.

I hear the laughter of my childhood friends float like rainbow balloons.

---

It was summer vacation in sixth grade, at Yeongju station, when we were returning to Sokcho after spending the summer with Grandma in my father’s hometown.

The train came into the station with a long whistle and puff of coal smoke.

The people standing on the platform suddenly started running in the same direction as the train.

My brother and I had to run too.

We had to get at least one seat so that we could take turns sitting on the train.

While we ran through the crowd, I heard a loud crash. My brother called out to me from behind.

I turned around and saw the bottle of anchovy sauce was broken, and glass scattered on the ground.

The smell of fermented anchovy sauce was strong on the platform of the station and the smell took me to the stories my father used to tell me… the green pine trees on the small ridge across the river in his neighborhood, the familiar dirt road where he used to go to meet his friends, and the sharing a glass of sweet rice wine.

I wished I could bottle up that broken glass and the anchovy sauce to take it to my father. I thought if he ate it, his homesickness would be cured.

The train blew its whistle and started to depart.

---

My father is lying on the mountain behind his hometown, overlooking the sea of his hometown.

Across the railroad tracks is where my father was born, grew up and lived until he moved to Sokcho.

If my father were still alive, I would ask him to sing me that song about his childhood.

Now, my father has become my song of homesickness.

"I miss my hometown, but I can't go.”

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Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms." John 14:1~2a.