• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In the dimly lit room, the flickering lamplight danced smokily against the walls. The winter moon gleamed and cast a faint square of light on the floor. It brought the memory of prison and how I had clung to hope because of my mother’s visits, her loving encouragement delivered in a folded paper at the bottom of my rice bowl. As I waited for Calvin in this silent sitting room, I saw that I had also kept faith in a certain reunion with my husband, this man who might hear me, understand me, know me. I had believed that being with him again would one day bring to light some larger reason, some just cause, that would explain the suffering we had witnessed and lived through.

It seemed I had waited long enough, for there he was, not forty steps away, talking about the reformation of our nation with my father and younger brother. Korea, too, had waited long for the liberation that had ended many hardships and had also brought new questions and challenges. I thought of how quickly the people had struck down the Shinto torii and opened wide the doors of churches and temples, the men I’d seen being released from Seodaemun Prison, who fell sobbing to kiss the dirt road, the jubilation that met the first American soldiers parading through the streets, the pride of the old shopkeepers to speak freely in Korean, the spontaneous fires in the squares fueled by the hated identification papers with our required Japanese names. In shared oppression, the people of this beloved land had grown strongly united in their hope for freedom and, like my father’s books buried in the unreachable secret pantry of the lost Gaeseong house, had harbored their Korean identity through all those years of waiting.

I thought of my own identity, and now saw that my father, by not naming me, had unwittingly accorded me enormous freedom. In the cemetery with Dongsaeng when I was newly betrothed, I remembered how he’d despaired, saying, “My life planned for all this before I was born.” Unlike my brother, my identity had been less encumbered. Without having to confine my dreams to the destiny outlined in one’s name and the expectations bestowed during one’s naming, I was left free to embrace the natural turns of my character and to determine my own future, drawing from the deepest well of unnamed possibilities. Yes, I was the calligrapher’s daughter, the daughter of the woman from Nah-jin, and I had grown to embody the singularity of my name, Najin.

I remembered Emperor Sunjong, Empress Yun and Princess Deokhye, and how they had to the extent possible maintained their responsibilities of royal blood amid compounding difficulties and death, until the gates of the last palace had clanged shut behind them. I thought of Imo’s generosity and devotion to duty, the constancy of my mother’s great faith in Jesus and the intensity of my father’s insistence on tradition. Along with their never-spoken love of family and country, these were the ways they had held on to hope. As for me, I realized it wasn’t the answers I was seeking all those years that mattered as much as the act of seeking itself. It was incredible, this human capacity for learning, for hope, for love, that persisted like the box of light in my cell, the waters that flowed in my dream. It was beyond my understanding. Tears came as I surrendered to this wonderment of being.

During our first private time together by the willows near the pond, Calvin had said, “And what do you think is the answer to your question?” It wasn’t for him to forgive or reject my struggle of faith, but for me to accept it, to embrace it rather than deny or pretend. There were discussions we’d have about God’s plan and the price of salvation through Jesus, but I was here at this moment, asking, and that was what was true. Who better than a minister-husband to explore this with? “Keep your mind open,” Teacher Yee had said. “Keep your heart open,” my mother had said.

I heard my husband remove his coat and shoes at the makeshift door. I stood to close the window and to look at him