Cecilia Chung

Halabuji

The strings of the steamed sweet potato sit in between my teeth, and I stew for a moment in the memory. The memory of my grandpa, my halabuji, with crinkly eyes and boyish humor, holding up a warm sweet potato and offering it for me to eat. It’s better than ice cream, he says.

There were no strings of sweet potato on the last few days with him at our makeshift home hospice. There were strings of things—plastic things—that went in and out and down and back. He was a little boy, he smiles, when he walked in the winters of Korea with a warm sweet potato in his hands, in his pockets, warming him up with the excitement of eating it. It’s better than ice cream, he says to himself.

He shares this with me when I’m small and when I get lost in his stories of being 19 during the Korean War, nothing to eat and confusion and bombs and soldiers from the same side of no sides barreling in with guns and questioning for traitors. But the traitors are all brothers and sisters so there is no one to catch—no one but the idea of a villain. He can’t talk too much about this time, and so he swallows his bite of sweet potato and breezily changes the subject, and I’m halfway through mine and begging with my eyes for him to go on.

It's better than ice cream. I agree with him now as I eat it alone and taste the salt from my tears. I feel the warmth of it in my hands, and I am my grandfather, a little boy, an old man, a soul I miss and grieve—this sweet potato tastes better than ice cream.

Cecilia Chung is a Korean American writer and educator who is inspired by storytelling.

Photo by staff