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photo credit: Tasha Burgoyne<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n When God formed my limbs, shaped my eyes and decided to give\u00a0me my mother\u2019s dark, thick hair, through her: he fed me kimchi.<\/p>\n Aside from being a non-negotiable side dish to every meal at\u00a0our dinner table, kimchi accompanied the stories I grew up hearing.\u00a0The first time my imagination held a picture of my mom as a girl, was when she told me about the time she climbed out of a\u00a0window at night to sneak out and fell into a kimchi jar outside that was\u00a0almost as big as she was. It was the\u00a0kimchi that gave her away and told her secrets.<\/p>\n I have stood by my mom a million times watching her soak\u00a0cabbage in sea salt and water, later covering the soaked and rinsed pieces with\u00a0crushed red pepper and other secret ingredients, only to have her finally shove\u00a0a fresh piece into mine or my sister\u2019s mouth for approval and applause.\u00a0I know the sounds her kimchi makes as it\u2019s being shoved and crowded into big jars like people on the subway in Tokyo.\u00a0My sister and I have seen her give kimchi\u00a0the starring role in soups and fried rice and after-school snacks.\u00a0It has been the object of comparison among my\u00a0mom and other Korean women.\u00a0\u201cHow was her\u00a0kimchi?\u201d she would ask, waiting for us to remind her that hers is indeed, better. My mom\u2019s kimchi has always been requested by Koreans and\u00a0non-Koreans alike.\u00a0And I have always\u00a0believed in the best, completely biased way, that hers is the very best there\u00a0is.<\/p>\n Confession: kimchi has\u00a0always been one thing that proved I was not Korean enough.<\/strong><\/p>\n As a young girl I thought it was too spicy.\u00a0To the utter dismay of my mother\u2019s global palate,\u00a0I was the world\u2019s most finicky eater. My\u00a0Caucasian half felt like a blinding light I couldn\u2019t cover at meal time.\u00a0My mom had to \u201cwash\u201d my kimchi for me so I\u00a0could eat it without sweating like my meal was an Olympic sport.\u00a0And on the occasion that she didn\u2019t wash it,\u00a0I drank cup after cup of water in-between eating a few tiny pieces, until my\u00a0belly bulged with discomfort.<\/p>\n Even though she never\u00a0said it, I wondered if she was sad that the Korean fire in my belly was\u00a0constantly being put out by the gallons of water I drank to tame it.<\/strong><\/p>\n After a number of years, I could eat kimchi without it being\u00a0washed, but the feeling of not enough lingered.\u00a0I only ate kimchi when my mom made it for me.\u00a0So, whenever she and my Dad would visit, she\u00a0would make a large batch to last me through a good number of cravings. When it would run out, I would think about\u00a0making my own, only to decide against it.\u00a0What if I couldn\u2019t do it?\u00a0Surely, something would go wrong and I would\u00a0forget something major; the result would be the taste of the kind of kimchi you\u00a0can buy at expensive organic grocery stores where the kimchi is void of stories\u00a0and full of marketing.<\/p>\n Last Sunday, I made it all by myself, for the first time.\u00a0And for the first time in my life, I am\u00a0beginning to feel comfortable in my mixed shoes.\u00a0I suppose I\u2019ve realized that even though the\u00a0shoes don\u2019t match, they both fit: perfectly.<\/p>\n As I turned the cabbage pieces over, giving the drier ones a\u00a0turn at soaking in the salty water, I did it without thinking. I had no recipe to keep pulling up on my\u00a0phone, and no paper recipe nearby. The\u00a0recipe was a life spent watching and listening to my mom.\u00a0There was something therapeutic in getting my\u00a0hands messy and watching the cabbage transform.\u00a0I was making kimchi; the way my mom did. The white cabbage turned reddish orange as the crushed red pepper fell into place: the light and dark, the\u00a0mild and feisty, the not enough and the too much, the mixing of it all turning it into one. My hands instinctively\u00a0folded, chopped and mixed: wrapping stories and memories around the pieces,\u00a0claiming the moment as marker.<\/p>\n The true\u00a0stories are within me and I am enough.<\/strong>\u00a0I am exactly the mix of what I\u00a0should be: a girl made woman, making Kimchi, ready to pass the God-given tastes\u00a0and stories onto my own children, as they search for and claim their identity.<\/p>\n This article was originally posted at<\/em> tashajun.com.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Tasha Burgoyne is a dreamer, a Hapa girl, wife to Matt and mama to three little warriors: two wild boys and one little lady. A coffee-drinker, story-lover and kimchi-eater, she was made to walk where cultures collide, from dirt roads to carefully placed cobblestone streets. Find more of her writing at