Everyone Loves Sweet Old Grandmas

Unless they’re rich, powerful, and of sound mind

My great-grandmother sold socks at a market after the Korean War. She was a widow and had mouths to feed. Long story short, her desperation to survive paved the way for her to provide and then thrive. By the time her son got married and his wife had my dad, great gran had invested and reinvested in herself to scale her business from selling socks to domestic wool production.

And the post-war boom made her a bonafide industrialist with a “big hand.” She made her fortune, and it was “enough,” my mom would say, “so your children’s children would never have to work.” The 1997 Asian financial crisis had different ideas but that’s a story for another time.

My life, in contrast, was a far cry. Work? What was that? That fun thing alternative “career women” do during the day in their pretty skirt suits? If I could choose, I’d want to be an entertainer. I’d want to act or sing and dance like the people on TV.

“No,” my mom would say, “that’s hard labor. You’re not going to make a living off your body.”

I listened, but was confused. My body? What was wrong with that? My cute little hands, feet, and this little tummy that pokes out when I eat too much for lunch? What the fuck mom, this is the vehicle through which my soul expresses itself on earth — why would you want to shame the embodiment of my creative spirit?

Why was I taking piano lessons then? How many times would I have to pound away Do, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, and repeat the pattern to scale the octaves, while cradling fragile, imaginary eggs in my hands? And why was I swallowing a raw one (don’t do this) and learning how to sing?

For the most part, these lessons were for appearance's sake and not a career path. Probably insurance too, in case my personality did not evolve to be particularly charming and my looks came up wanting, I would still be able to endure social life, at minimum, by being entertaining.

I can surmise my great grandmother knew nothing but hard work and war and if she could not turn back time, she would make sure her bloodline would know nothing but leisure and peace. A form of revenge that so many parents with difficult lives plot, “No, not my child,” or in the case of my great grandmother, “not my children’s children’s children either.”

She spoke little (was it the dentures?) and I guess she didn’t need to. The world seemed to shift to her liking when necessary. At dinnertime, my mom would lead the cooks, preparing enough side dishes to blanket the large mahogany fold-out table to her liking. My dad, abandoned by his mother and having lost his father to a “hunting accident,” loved my great-grandmother to pieces.

Whatever my great-gran wanted, she got.

Not a fan of modern toilets? She still used a chamber pot.

She wants to build a monastery? Done. Nuns are visiting the house to celebrate.

She wants to save the tiny piece of leftover meat? It better fucking be there three days later when she asks for it.

She may sound like a pain, but that’s not true. She was just a human being with preferences.

Would she have mattered to people around her if she had a smaller purse? Probably not, at least not to the extent she did with a big one.

Anyway, I bring this up because I know how insufferable affluence is but I also marvel at how much we cheer on the underdog, that is until she wins, grows old enough to enjoy it, at least a little, dies rich, powerful, and leaves enough for the kiddos too.

And we forget that this is the sort of rich she really was: