Swimming in the Bomb Crater
Mr. Kim says I’m 100% Korean now that I’ve had Saengson-al-tang, or fish-egg soup. Whenever I visit his and his wife’s Teriyaki restaurant, I update them on my latest meal at a Korean restaurant I also frequent. Mr. Kim always laughs, shakes his head and smiles big, surprised that I’ve ventured into dining territory that many Americans apparently won’t even consider. Not even his son likes Saengson-al-tang, he says.
He tells me I should dye my hair black, learn more Korean and move to Seoul. Says I would fit right in. Mrs. Kim tells me how healthy Korean food is and gives me free dumplings and seaweed paper for my rice.
I’m thinking about the Kim’s today because it’s the first day of Chusok, the Korean thanksgiving holiday. Every year at this time the highways in Korea are nearly impassable as families travel to their hometowns to be with family and graves of ancestors for memorials. Special food is prepared and ceremonies are held, both in homes and graveside.
This also happens to be the anniversary of my father’s death in Vietnam. September 17, 1967. In a place called the Ho Bo Woods, near the Cu Chi tunnels. I was negative one-month old that day, still sloshing around inside my mother, just waiting to see what the noisy world had to offer. I wasn’t hearing anything at the time, my ears muffled by my tiny water world.
There was so much to not hear. Like nightly news my mother and grandparents watched with its body counts and smoky footage of soldiers and ordnance. The humming engine of my mother’s Volkswagen Bug that had slipped off an icy road into a ditch, still running because the key had been broken off in the ignition by my mom’s knee. The knock at the door or my aunt screaming for my mother when she looked out the window and saw a man in uniform at the door. They stood there, not opening the door for a long time.
But I didn’t stay deaf and unaware. I was born. I grew up.
Mr. Kim grew up just after the Korean War. He remembers playing with his friends in hills that were battlefields just a few years earlier. They discovered artifacts. Knives, ammunition. Bones.
He also remembers visiting a beach in Inchon, where bombs fell in an early battle when the Americans countered a North Korean invasion. This left craters into which the ocean spilled over, creating waterfront swimming holes. As recreational pools go, these weren’t the safest. The depth was unpredictable. Mr. Kim found one that turned out to be safe and spent his beach time in it, his own personal bomb crater.
My childhood swims were always at crowded concrete pools or a lake with catfish as large as divers. I suppose it’s likely that explosions were responsible for my lake, too, since it’s manmade. But traces of war were only as close as the television, the broadcasts that were a bloody, shrapnel-nicked thread running through my youth and adulthood. I carry with me a forever montage of guns and diplomacy flashing behind a spinning “In The News” globe.
There I was, trying to float while thousands before me had mastered it post-mortem. I held my nose as we all held our breath, with our eyes on the sky and minds on missile silos in the Midwest. I mustered the courage to step off the high dive as the Soviets hit the ground in Afghanistan.
I grew older and my mindset changed from “war happens” to “war hurts,” then finally “what the hell are all these bombs about?” After about ten years of paying more attention than before, it was clear that it’s all personal. Very personal. I’ve come to realize everybody I know has in some way been touched by war. Whatever age, wherever. So many losses. Some births.
Now I’m all grown up. I’m older than my father ever was. And unless I meet a fate that involves disease or hungry giant catfish, I will watch other children grow older than their mothers and fathers. So many more reasons to drive home on Chusok, shaking our heads without smiles.
It’s late in the afternoon now. Before long, the Kim’s will close their restaurant and drive home, or to church maybe for a Chusok dinner. Traffic should be much easier in Nashville than Seoul now.
Soon I’ll go to a poetry reading where I’ll probably read a rambling piece partially inspired by my father. The theme for tonight is “Yesterday.”
Now a helicopter is passing over the house. Think of all the pools and lakes you can see from up there. So many places to swim, but I don’t. There are new bomb craters, too, but they’re not filling up with water. Oil and blood rise in them. That’s hard to swim in.
Maybe I’ll try to get some teriyaki chicken before the restaurant closes. I might also pick up some kimchee to go – the Kim’s have a stash – and drive to the local Vietnam wall.
Mr. Kim says I’m 100% Korean now that I’ve had Saengson-al-tang, or fish-egg soup. Whenever I visit his and his wife’s Teriyaki restaurant, I update them on my latest meal at a Korean restaurant I also frequent. Mr. Kim always laughs, shakes his head and smiles big, surprised that I’ve ventured into dining territory that many Americans apparently won’t even consider. Not even his son likes Saengson-al-tang, he says.
He tells me I should dye my hair black, learn more Korean and move to Seoul. Says I would fit right in. Mrs. Kim tells me how healthy Korean food is and gives me free dumplings and seaweed paper for my rice.
I’m thinking about the Kim’s today because it’s the first day of Chusok, the Korean thanksgiving holiday. Every year at this time the highways in Korea are nearly impassable as families travel to their hometowns to be with family and graves of ancestors for memorials. Special food is prepared and ceremonies are held, both in homes and graveside.
This also happens to be the anniversary of my father’s death in Vietnam. September 17, 1967. In a place called the Ho Bo Woods, near the Cu Chi tunnels. I was negative one-month old that day, still sloshing around inside my mother, just waiting to see what the noisy world had to offer. I wasn’t hearing anything at the time, my ears muffled by my tiny water world.
There was so much to not hear. Like nightly news my mother and grandparents watched with its body counts and smoky footage of soldiers and ordnance. The humming engine of my mother’s Volkswagen Bug that had slipped off an icy road into a ditch, still running because the key had been broken off in the ignition by my mom’s knee. The knock at the door or my aunt screaming for my mother when she looked out the window and saw a man in uniform at the door. They stood there, not opening the door for a long time.
But I didn’t stay deaf and unaware. I was born. I grew up.
Mr. Kim grew up just after the Korean War. He remembers playing with his friends in hills that were battlefields just a few years earlier. They discovered artifacts. Knives, ammunition. Bones.
He also remembers visiting a beach in Inchon, where bombs fell in an early battle when the Americans countered a North Korean invasion. This left craters into which the ocean spilled over, creating waterfront swimming holes. As recreational pools go, these weren’t the safest. The depth was unpredictable. Mr. Kim found one that turned out to be safe and spent his beach time in it, his own personal bomb crater.
My childhood swims were always at crowded concrete pools or a lake with catfish as large as divers. I suppose it’s likely that explosions were responsible for my lake, too, since it’s manmade. But traces of war were only as close as the television, the broadcasts that were a bloody, shrapnel-nicked thread running through my youth and adulthood. I carry with me a forever montage of guns and diplomacy flashing behind a spinning “In The News” globe.
There I was, trying to float while thousands before me had mastered it post-mortem. I held my nose as we all held our breath, with our eyes on the sky and minds on missile silos in the Midwest. I mustered the courage to step off the high dive as the Soviets hit the ground in Afghanistan.
I grew older and my mindset changed from “war happens” to “war hurts,” then finally “what the hell are all these bombs about?” After about ten years of paying more attention than before, it was clear that it’s all personal. Very personal. I’ve come to realize everybody I know has in some way been touched by war. Whatever age, wherever. So many losses. Some births.
Now I’m all grown up. I’m older than my father ever was. And unless I meet a fate that involves disease or hungry giant catfish, I will watch other children grow older than their mothers and fathers. So many more reasons to drive home on Chusok, shaking our heads without smiles.
It’s late in the afternoon now. Before long, the Kim’s will close their restaurant and drive home, or to church maybe for a Chusok dinner. Traffic should be much easier in Nashville than Seoul now.
Soon I’ll go to a poetry reading where I’ll probably read a rambling piece partially inspired by my father. The theme for tonight is “Yesterday.”
Now a helicopter is passing over the house. Think of all the pools and lakes you can see from up there. So many places to swim, but I don’t. There are new bomb craters, too, but they’re not filling up with water. Oil and blood rise in them. That’s hard to swim in.
Maybe I’ll try to get some teriyaki chicken before the restaurant closes. I might also pick up some kimchee to go – the Kim’s have a stash – and drive to the local Vietnam wall.
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