Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

Food was how my mother expressed her love.

Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it.

we re-create the dish that couldn’t be made without our journey.

when I go to H Mart, I’m not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions for a buck; I’m searching for memories. I’m collecting the evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn’t die when they

wasn’t until years later, after I left for college, that I began to understand what it meant to make a home and just how much I had taken mine for granted.

I envied and feared my mother’s ability to keep matters private, as every secret I tried to hold close ate away at me. She possessed a rare talent for keeping secrets, even from us.

Unlike my mother, he saved no 10 percent.

Even as she was dying, my mother offered me solace, her instinct to nurture overwhelming any personal fear she might have felt but kept expertly hidden.

There was no embarrassment left, just survival, everything action and reaction.

Christianity was a language she understood. Religion was a comfort and in that moment I was grateful it was there for her.

For a moment I felt useful, happy that after all the years the two of them had looked after me, I could do this one small thing for them.

My mother had struggled to understand me just as I struggled to understand her.

The feelings she wanted me to never forget.