Sometimes horribly cruel, sometimes extremely sweet, Grandma’s personality ran the gamut. Some days though, she was just downright strange. Hyahn served a lot of sushi and went through vast quantities of wasabi, or Japanese horseradish. Grandma was mixing a large bowl in the back kitchen when I came through with some dirty dishes. She ordered me to get back and stay out because the wasabi fumes were so strong they would burn my eyes and make me cry. Distancing myself, I asked if her eyes weren’t irritated. Putting down the mixing bowl, she grabbed a clear plastic sack, yanked it over her head and tucked it into her collar around her neck! Standing before me like an astronaut with a plastic bubblehead, she resumed mixing the green paste. “Grandma-don’t!” I yelled, “You are going to suffocate!” Raising the bag like a helmet to sit on her forehead, she told me that every time she mixed wasabi, she had to seek protection under a plastic bag.


I quit work at Hyahn to move to Pittsburgh after working there for three summers and one school year. I was happy to be moving on to begin graduate school, but it felt very odd not to interact with a woman I had seen more than either of my ‘real’ Grandmas. Last week we spoke on the phone for the first time since I had left. “Hello Grandma!”
“Hello sweetheart! Don’t cry sweetheart”
“I won’t Grandma! But I’m coming to visit you at Thanksgiving!”