In Japan we slurped decadent tonkotsu ramen, bit cautiously intosteaming takoyaki topped with dancing bonito flakes, and got hammered onwhisky highballs

Maangchi peeled the skin off an Asian pear with the giant knife pulled towardher, just like Mom did when she cut Fuji apples for me after school on a little redcutting board, before eating the leftover fruit from the core. Just like Mom,chopsticks in one hand, scissors in the other, cutting galbi and cold naengmyeonnoodles with a specifically Korean ambidextrous precision. Skillfully stretching outthe meat with her right hand and cutting it into bite-sized pieces with her left,using kitchen scissors like a warrior brandishes a weapon

Every dish I cooked exhumed a memory. Every scent and taste brought meback for a moment to an unravaged home.

As I organizedthe cupboards by the kitchen phone, consolidating loose batteries, tossing oldphotographs of blurry landscapes, setting aside old undeveloped rolls of film, Icame across the green spiral notebook where I had logged all her medications andcalorie counts. Those desperate sums, that hopeful inventory, recording everycoaxed sip and peck in some sad effort to keep pushing through. I ripped the pagesand pulled the metal spiral apart, screaming as I shredded my stupid, uselesscalculations into innumerable pieces.

Someone full. Someone whole. For along time I had tried to belong in America, wanted and wished for it more thananything, but in that moment all I wanted was to be accepted as a Korean by twopeople who refused to claim me. You are not one of us, Kye seemed to say. Andyou will never really understand what it is she needs, no matter how perfect you tryto be.

My mom let out a soft giggle from the passenger seat and we sang quietly therest of the way home. Driving out past the clearing just as the sun went down, thescalloped clouds flushed with a deep orange that made it look like magma

must

. It felt strange to be togetherwithout my mother. The two of us never spent much time alone

Though my mother and I hadn’t parted on good terms, once a month, hugeboxes would arrive, reminders I was never far from her mind.

Many mornings I would just sit outside on campus, smokingcigarettes in the high school parking lot, unable to go inside. I fantasized aboutdying.

By the time I was in highschool, the desire for independence trailing a convoy of insidious hormones hadtransformed me from a child who couldn’t bear to sleep without her mother into ateenager who couldn’t stand her touch

They had seen much of the world andhad tasted what it had to offer. What they lacked in high culture, they made up forby spending their hard-earned money on the finest of delicacies. My childhoodwas rich with flavor—blood sausage, fish intestines, caviar. They loved good food,to make it, to seek it, to share it, and I was an honorary guest at their table.

developed this compulsion to clean as a sort of protection ritual performedwhen I felt even the slightest bit abandoned

White people were always going to the doctor. But when I got hurt, my mom waslivid, as if I had maliciously damaged her property

She remembered if you liked your stews with extra broth,if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes, if you didn’t eat seafood, ifyou had a large appetite. She remembered which banchan side dish you emptiedfirst so the next time you were over it’d be set with a heaping double portion,served alongside the various other preferences that made you, you.—

WHAT I NEVER seem to forget is what my mother ate.

H Mart is the bridge that guides meaway from the memories that haunt me, of chemo head and skeletal bodies andlogging milligrams of hydrocodon

So, when I goto H Mart, I’m not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions fora buck; I’m searching for memories

the constant nagging would annoy me. Woman, let me eat in peace! But,most days, I knew it was the ultimate display of a Korean woman’s tenderness, andI cherished that love. A love I’d do anything to have back.

But I know we are all here for the same reason. We’re allsearching for a piece of home, or a piece of ourselves

If they’reeating to feel connected, to celebrate these people through food.

I wonder how many people at H Mart miss their families

f I’m being honest, there’s a lot of anger. I’m angry at this old Korean woman Idon’t know, that she gets to live and my mother does not, like somehow thisstranger’s survival is at all related to my loss

I couldalways feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals sheprepared for me just the way I liked them.

FOOD WAS HOW my mother expressed her love

kimchi had to be perfectly sour, samgyupsal perfectly crisped; stewshad to be piping hot or they might as well have been inedible

ould wish and claim to have morethan the unjust?

would try to gain the advantage

lass in-justice with wisdom and virtue, and justice with the opposite.

cutpurses

discretion

ublime simplicity.

Would you call one of them vir-tue and the other vice?Certainly.

in-duces the good to take office,

being ambitious they do not care about honour.

money and honour have no attraction forthem; good men do not wish to be openly demanding payment forgoverning and so to get the name of hirelings, nor by secretly help-ing themselves out of the public revenues to get the name of thieves

ambition and avarice are held to be, as indeed theyare, a disgrace?

emuneration

they rule and provide for the interests of their subjectswho are the weaker and not the stronger

confer

but would the artist re-ceive any benefit from his art unless he were paid as well?

good of each art is speciallyconfined to the art?

medicine is the art of receiving pay because aman takes fees when he is engaged in healing?

ustice is theinterest of the stronger, whereas injustice is a man's own profit andinterest.

sure injustice, fearing that they may be the victims of it and not be-cause they shrink from committing it

when aman besides taking away the money of the citizens has made slavesof them, then, instead of these names of reproach, he is termedhappy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of hishaving achieved the consummation of injustice

the advantage of the unjust is more apparent;and my meaning will be most clearly seen if we turn to that highestform of injustice in which the criminal is the happiest of men, andthe sufferers or those who refuse to do injustice are the most miser-able

in private contracts: wherever the unjust is thepartner of the just you will find that, when the partnership is dis-solved, the unjust man has always more and the just less.

justice and the just are in realityanother's good; that is to say, the interest of the ruler and stronger,and the loss of the subject and servant; and injustice the opposite; forthe unjust is lord over the truly simple and just: he is the stronger,and his subjects do what is for his interest, and minister to his happi-ness, which is very far from being their own.

true physician is also a ruler having the human body asa subject, and is not a mere money-maker; that has been admitted?

ac-quiesced.

Nor does the art of horsemanship consider the interests of the art ofhorsemanship, but the interests of the horse; neither do any otherarts care for themselves, for they have no needs; they care only forthat which is the subject of their art?

For every art remainspure and faultless while remaining true -- that is to say, while perfectand unimpaired.

unless their skill fails them, and thenthey cease to be skilled artists.

I call him who is mis-taken the stronger at the time when he is mistaken?

rulers may sometimes commandwhat is not for their own interest, and that for subjects to obey themis justice.

justice not to be for the in-terest of the stronger, when the rulers unintentionally commandthings to be done which are to their own injury.

rulers may be mistaken abouttheir own interest in what they command, and also that to obey themis justice?

not only obedience tothe interest of the stronger but the reverse?

infallible

Do you admit that it is just or subjects to obeytheir rulers?

forms of government differ; there are tyrannies, and thereare democracies, and there are aristocracies?

Money I have none, and therefore I pay in praise,which is all I have

wisdom of Socrates; he re-fuses to teach himself, and goes about learning of others, to whomhe never even says thank you.

I said, how can any one answer who knows,and says that he knows, just nothing; and who, even if he has somefaint notions of his own, is told by a man of authority not to utterthem?

refuseto answer himself, but take and pull to pieces the answer of some oneelse.

no payment! a pleasant notion!I will pay when I have the money, I replied

interdicted

ought he not to say whathe thinks,

some other number which is not the right one?

"for this sort of nonsensewill not do for me" -- then obviously, that is your way of putting thequestion, no one can answer you.

we cannot.

Impossible

doctrine is immoral.

right in doing good to the evil and evilto the good?

he thinks

By friends and enemies do we meanthose who are so really, or only in seeming?

theft and perjury.

That is implied in the argument.

True

just man

Quite the reverse.

Certainly

vine-dresser?

justice is useful when money is useless?

pruning-hook

acquisition

own meritsbut because he was an Athenian

justman most able to do harm to his enemy and good to his friends?

proper thing

who have inherited their fortunes than of those who have ac-quired them;

gone a journey

include that case?

owes to an enemy that which is due or proper tohim -- that is to say, evil.

if the two parties are friends, is not the repayment ofa debt -

friend ought always to do good to afriend and never evil.

look after thesacrifices

offerings due to the gods or debts which he owes tomen

drawing nearerto that other place

they are very bad company, for they can talk aboutnothing but the praises of wealth.

I shall be satisfied if I leave tothese my sons not less but a little more than I received.

disposition

we are old friends,and you will be quite at home with us.

For let me tell you, that the more the pleasuresof the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm ofconversation.

been sacrificing in the court;

May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you tolet us go

theologians, and social scientists

sophomoric, pernicious, and even incoherent.

Relativists

primary determinant of how wealthy you will end up.

they just occupy different moral worldviews.