Walk me home

The time is 4:58pm in Daegu, South Korea as I sit in front of my computer in my apartment after a long day.  I have recently left school. 

Even more recently than that I have walked down through the main gate only to be intercepted by a stooped and wizen grandmother, your typical elderly Korean ajuma: black parachute pants spotted pink, loose fitting synthetic track jacket (also pink), and wrap around visor (purple billed, pink brimmed, with twinkling silver starburts) around a grey perm.  She grabs my arm  and begins, I assume, to tell me her life story. 

In at least a dozen different moments, all of them well before this one, I have been lectured on the importance on showing all possible respect to the elderly in Korean society.  The relationship between the young and the old is so important here for propriety, that Koreans uses the West's relative lack there of to explain why we need to fill the holes in our hearts with pets.

Only a bit more recently than when she first latched onto me, she leads me down the street.  She raises my forarm to her mouth with both hands, presses it to her lips and lays down a flourish of kisses.  "Mwahmwahmwahmwahmwahmwah," she says into my arm.  I stop us and try to tell her that I  need to go.  She responds by pull pulling at my shoulders and puckering her lips.  Just very recently I have learned how to handle this situation better, but in this moment I do not have the applicable life experience, and in the moment I do not stand up straight and draw the line for this old woman, but allow my back to bend.  She is planting kisses on my lips now, "mwahmwahmwahmwahmwah."  Very soon after this begins I gently recoil, still somehow afraid of hurting her feelings.  Her eyes are glass and her smile is crooked.  She does not understand me in Korean, she does not understand me in English, but I believe she understands that she's just gotten away with something.  Where her teeth should be there are little bits of gray, like tiny pebbles poking through her gums.

More recently than that I walk down the street with her along side the school.  A pack of boys passes and askes me what was happening.  "I don't know", I say.  She and they speak.  Unable to understand her, the bow to her very politely and hurry away.  One of my teachers drives past.  "Do you know what's going on here?" she asks through her open window.  "I have no idea," I tell her.  She speaks to the old woman.  She does not know what she is saying.  "I think she has dementia," she says, pointing to her head.  "You can just leave whenever."

I am glad someone says this.  I am glad I haven't been selected by the principal's mother.  But it was quite a while ago before this that I decided I would see these sort of situations through.  It's in large part due to that decision that I more recently found myself in a small shop that I often frequent for sandwhiches still in Her care.  She attempts to buy us coffee, but they have no coffee.  She pours the last of the cup of water I served myself on the floor, digs out a litre of plum juice from her dense purse and pours me two cups.  The rest she chuggs from the carton.  Girls from my school ask me if I know what's going on.  I say no.  There is real compassion in their eyes, but they cringe away when the old woman turns her attention on to them.  "What did she say?" I ask them.  "I don't know," one of the girls tells me, then, "that we were pretty."  The old ajuma comes back to me.  Standing while I sit, we are at eye level.  She tries for more kisses but luckily I had recently aquired some life experience in this area.  I stone wall her.  I point at the time on my phone, I allow her a small peck on the cheek.   We are leaving.  I expect the girls to laugh but they don't.  They have grandmothers.  I hope this is a display of solidarity.

Very recently I waved at the old ajuma over my shoulder as she stood and waved at me with both hands, cackling in what is safe to say nearly unintelligable Korean.  Although, at 5:52 in the evening in Daegu, South Korea, it's getting less recent all the time.


*If any grammar enthusiasts want to work through even a few of the dozens of tense mistakes I've made in here I'd be grateful.