Crying In H Mart Quotes
"H Mart is where parachute kids flock to find the brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home."
"H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle 'ethnic' section in regular grocery stores."
"My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary."
"Sometimes my grief feels as though I’ve been left alone in a room with no doors."
"We don’t talk about it. There’s never so much as a knowing look. We sit here in silence, eating our lunch. But I know we are all here for the same reason. We’re all searching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves."
"In the H Mart food court, I find myself again, searching for the first chapter of the story I want to tell about my mother."
"I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them."
"Her perfection was infuriating, her meticulousness a complete enigma."
"I couldn’t comprehend then the depth of her sorrow the way I do now."
"You used to be such a little chickenshit," she said. "You never let me wipe your asshole."
"I was afraid of my mother then, and I watched my parents shyly from afar."
"I didn’t know then the type of effort it can take to simply move."
"I had wound up doing exactly what my mother had warned me not to do."
"I would radiate joy and positivity and it would cure her."
"You want to be a starving musician?" she said. "Then go live like one."
"I thought, Save your tears for when your mother dies."
"I could live without them, I thought to myself with foolish teenage confidence."
"I had glimpsed the life of an artist, and it felt, for a moment, like a path slightly more within reach."
"The world moved on without pause on a pleasant, warm day in May while I stood silent and dumbfounded on the pavement and learned that my mother was now in grave danger of dying."
"I wanted to impress her, to demonstrate how much I’d grown and how I could thrive without her."
"My mother prepared for our reunions in her own way, marinating short rib two days before my arrival."
"The rice alone was a miraculous reunion, the cooker having imbued each kernel with textural autonomy."
"It was as if I possessed a new internal core that gravitated toward her affection, its charge renewed by the time I’d spent away from its field."
"I found myself eager to please her again, savoring the laughter she broke into as I regaled her with stories about confronting adulthood."
"I was ten when he took over his brother’s business and his workload practically doubled."
"What had been a delight as a child fell short of what I needed from a father as an adult."
"I hated myself for not writing to Eunmi every day she was sick, for not calling more, for not comprehending what Nami Emo had endured as a caretaker."
"I would slip my cold feet between my mother’s thighs to warm them. How she’d shiver and whisper that she would always suffer to bring me comfort."
"That the months my mother had been a vessel for me, her organs shifting and cramping together to make room for my existence, and the agony she’d endured upon my exit could be repaid by carrying this pain in her place."
"Oh, Unni," she said, tears in her eyes as the two embraced and Kye brought her back to bed.
"Thank you, Unni," she said. Kye smiled back solemnly.
"I want to wipe your ass," I wanted to say, realizing it was ridiculous.
"What do I even have left to look forward to, Michelle?" she said, welling up as she eyed the wilted white cabbage. "I can’t even eat kimchi."
"Your hair is really growing back," I said, trying to change the subject. "For someone who’s sick you still look very young and beautiful."
"You know your dad should really be the one that’s here."
"Gwaenchanh-a, gwaenchanh-a," she said. It’s okay, it’s okay.
"We can always get divorced if things go sour," I said to him on the phone. "We can be, like, hip young divorced people."
"We’re not going to get a divorce," Peter said.
"What do you mean put my hand on top of the rice and add water until it covers it?"
"Fran was the ultimate Mommy-Mom, the type that scooped Peter up if he got hurt and told him 'That’s beautiful!' when he got her a piece of crap for Christmas."
"How ya doing, hon," she said, enveloping me in a big hug. I could almost feel in the embrace that my concerns had been her concerns, my pain had been her pain.
"They were taking in their property, mulling over the many summers they’d labored on it, the lifetime they’d saved up to reach these years when they were supposed to be able to sit back and begin to really enjoy it together."
"Your mother just grabbed my penis," he said with a laugh. "She just said I’ve still got it."
"I never thought I was going to get married," I said. "But having witnessed for the past six months what it means to keep the promise to be there for someone in sickness and in health, I find myself here, understanding."
"When you were a child, you always used to cling to me. Everywhere we went," my mother whispered, struggling to get the words out. "And now that you’re older, here you are—still clinging to me."
"I've just never met someone like you," as if I were a stranger from another town or an eccentric guest accompanying a mutual friend to a dinner party.
"I know you wish it was me. I wish it was me too."
"It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to."
"There are few things I detest more in this world than an adult man proclaiming himself to be a foodie."
"There was some joy in exchanging your time for cash, blowing it all on the hour before last call, basking in the glory of ordering drinks after serving them all day."
"Excuse me," my father called to the waitress from across the room. "She doesn't like," my father said, pointing to the seafood salad.
"I have no problem returning food on my own," I said, shifting in my seat. "I'm an adult. I don't need someone to put words in my fucking mouth."
"Michelle, if you don't like something, you should say so."
"We had come to Vietnam in search of healing, to emerge closer to each other in our grief, but we returned just as damaged and separate as ever."
"I wasn’t sure if I was crying out of fear that my father would get a DUI and I’d be stuck in Eugene as his personal chauffeur, or if I was simply overwhelmed by the feeling that fate was out to destroy us."
"I filled a roll of contractor bags with her clothing, staging it all upstairs in piles, so my father wouldn’t have to confront the weeklong process."
"Dreams about pigs, the president, or shaking hands with a celebrity were all good-luck dreams—but it was shit in particular, especially if you touched it, that was license to gamble."
"My job was to assist the two main account reps, helping them sell walls to prospective clients."
"I tried therapy. Once a week after work I took the L train to Union Square and attempted to explain what I was feeling."
"If there were a couple of pieces of kimchi left on the plate after a meal, I’d lazily toss them, but now that I’d made it from scratch, I conscientiously returned my uneaten pieces back to my onggi."
"The memories I had stored, I could not let fester."
"Now that she was gone, there was no one left to ask about these things."
"If I could not be with my mother, I would be her."
"I had thought fermentation was controlled death."
"My favorites were the mistakes, ones of my mother that were objectively bad."
"She observed me with unparalleled interest, inexhaustible devotion."
"It was ironic that I, who once longed to resemble my white peers and desperately hoped my Koreanness would go unnoticed, was now absolutely terrified that this stranger in the bathhouse could not see it."
"She was looking for the hint of Koreanness in my face that she couldn’t quite put a finger on."
"Funny enough, I released the album under the moniker Japanese Breakfast, a name I’d come up with years ago, up late one night browsing photographs of neat wooden trays set with perfectly grilled salmon fillets, miso, and white rice."
"It was a gift to have grown so much closer these past few years, despite its root in our shared grief."
"I chased after the Korean characters that seemed highlighted at the breakneck speed of a pinball."
"I wanted to do all I could to help her resuscitate the memory."