추석

This week people in Korea, and in much of East Asia celebrated a harvest festival. In Korea, they call this holiday Choosuk/Chuseok/Chusuk...추석. It is one of the major holidays of the year, and I suppose the closest American holiday to compare Choosuk with is Thanksgiving.  Families come together, eat 송편, 전, 토란국, 감 and in my family there is usually a  제사, a type of ceremonial thank you to ancestors, involved.

I am always reminded of how far away I am, physically and in some ways, emotionally, from my family during this holiday. Emotionally, meaning I'm not involved in the day to day, so I don't really know what is going on at home in terms of general moods and stresses. And I think these things tell me more about home than my dad's usual laundry list of people he met the past week or family activities.

I have been thinking a lot about this holiday over the years, and only this year as I was pondering over a blog post about 추석, did I finally realize why it is a meaningful holiday for me and why I miss it so much ---yay blogging!

It is the first holiday, and only holiday, that I feel I am fully part of. Growing up in the U.S. - while my siblings and I celebrated Halloween, Valentines Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas at schools and with our friends, our parents were never fully part of those celebrations. Sure, we went to neighbors homes and generous host family homes for Thanksgiving dinners, and lovely, thoughtful organizations--often LDS church based programs donated a Christmas tree or held Christmas events that my family participated in, but none of these holidays ever felt like family events or traditions to me and thereby, never felt like something I fully belonged to. Even if we had a Christmas tree with gifts, the idea of opening up gifts Christmas day, just didn't seem important- probably cause my parents really couldn't have cared less what happened that morning...and well, I don't blame them.We were more like spectators of the event, or willing participants, but there was no obligation, expectation, and no  real sense of ownership, and in a sense no extended family to reconnect with. I think this feeling is very much part of the immigrant story when it comes to American holidays (and politics).  I didn't think too much of it then, but I did wonder why I never felt the way those characters in the holiday family movies seemed to feel.

When we moved to Korea in 1996, we moved in with my paternal grandparents given my dad is the eldest son (and that we had no where to live, though this is never explicitly mentioned), and we quickly became steeped in "traditional"- really old school living with my very very Confucius believing grandparents [more on that another day]. In any case, living with the head of the family, meant hosting family events and being "home" to everyone in the family for Choosuk.

I wish I had pictures...but I don't. But I have random memories, sounds, and smells I remember about Choosuk. My mom would start preparing 3-4 days prior, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, setting up. My dad, brother, grandpa would start cleaning up outside, mowing the lawn and moving fallen leaves away. And my sister and I would clean up the house and help my mom and grandma with any preparations (if they'd let us-- also how gendered are these roles?). Relatives would descend that morning, aunts would divide and conquer- one cooking jeon, another cleaning dishes, another setting tables, another pulling out new banchan, another yelling at the kids, and our reading room would turn into a makeshift food storage area for cooked jeon, waiting to be devoured! It's the feeling of fall, the high sky, the laughter, the hustle and bustle of the kitchen, the cousins awkwardly (at least for me) catching up and being cramped in our messy upstairs room, and the bowing, the incense, the whispers, the kitchen gossip, the smell of jeon, the coziness of soup, and the impressive spread of banchan and of course the picking of persimmon. It's watching my uncles, dad, grandpa talk about anything and everything and me silently laughing at how similar they all look, yet how very different they all are. I think...this is what holidays are, this is what I was missing out on, this is the feeling, the ambiance that they portray in those family Christmas movies with Diane Keaton always playing the mom. And...that's why I miss Choosuk!!! I found that holiday that my entire family belongs to and fully and actively participate in. I hope one day I'll be in Korea for it again, and introduce Chris to it. Maybe he'll feel like its his holiday too.

We have two large towering persimmon trees and every fall, my dad would go up and pick the fruit and we'd help. I asked my brother to send me some pictures of the trees this year (do you see the little orange colored fruits up there?). Last year is the first time I saw the same type of persimmon that we have at home, in the U.S., and I was reminded so deeply and quickly of fall in Korea and of this holiday, of my childhood in Korea, and of course of my family. My coworker has the soft (Hachiya) persimmon trees, and last year gave me a large bag of them, he has no idea how much that meant to me! If I ever own land, this tree is one of the first things I will plant.

Happy Choosuk for those away from home and for those at home!!
Next year goal- create a bit of Choosuk for us in L.A.