By PAK Jong Hee
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Inside the fresh green leaves, the ingredients sit quietly, curled up. The pumpkin leaves and cabbage, steamed until tender in a boiling pot, hold their contents firmly, their cheeks slightly bulging. From the outside, there is no way to know exactly what lies within those leaves, but there is a heavy certainty that they have willingly accepted everything. Not a single grain of white rice spills out; everything keeps its place in silence, leaning kindly against one another.
Wrapping a ssam (leaf wrap) is a more delicate ritual than one might think. Depending on which leaf one spreads on the palm and what is placed upon it, the weight and flavor of that single bite change entirely. When the depth of flavor is added by mixing salty soybean paste with spicy chili paste and topping it with a thin slice of garlic, the disparate, unfamiliar ingredients finally find their place, creating an exquisite harmony. Things that might taste coarse or plain when chewed separately come together to fill each other’s voids, highlighting one another’s strengths to craft a new flavor. In this way, a ssam rounds off the jagged edges of each ingredient, tucking them inside to form a solid, whole shape on the outside.
Gimbap is no different. The black dried seaweed (gim) embraces the inner ingredients tightly, never revealing them until the very end. The sharp sourness of the pickled radish, the subtle earthiness of spinach, and even the awkward flavors of leftover side dishes from a holiday—the seaweed silently enfolds them all. It does not question what has entered its embrace; it simply maintains a calm, neat cylindrical form.
My mother made gimbap as if it were her destiny. Whenever there were leftovers from the feast-like meals she prepared for holidays or birthdays, her final grand meal was always gimbap. While the outward appearance was the same every time, the inner ingredients changed with the seasons and occasions. After the holidays, it was filled with leftover japchae and pan-fried delicacies; on birthdays, it held beef and thick egg rolls; on other days, it was packed with various wild greens like water dropwort and thistle.
Before rolling the gimbap, Mother would always crisp the seaweed once more over the frying pan. That meticulous touch, meant to erase any trace of the seaweed’s characteristic fishy scent so her children would not notice, was a silent sincerity—a love that filled the space from invisible places.
My mother’s gimbap was not only special to our family. During my school days, on picnic days, my lunchbox was undoubtedly the most popular among my friends. In front of the gimbap my mother had rolled so skillfully and heartily, my friends would push aside their own lunchboxes. They would huddle around and reach their chopsticks busily toward my container, often leaving me staring at an empty box after having eaten only a few pieces myself. Yet, as I watched my friends marvel and devour it in the blink of an eye, I felt a sense of pride rather than disappointment, even in my young heart.
Inside that delicious gimbap that captured my friends’ palates were actually ingredients with very strong personalities. There were shredded red carrots with a deep earthy scent, and water dropwort with a piercing aroma. Having a weak stomach and a sensitive sense of smell since childhood, I could usually hardly eat foods with strong scents. I would not even point my chopsticks at carrots, water dropwort, or fishy anchovies. Curiously, however, those finicky ingredients became gentle once they entered the gimbap.
Those intense aromas, which usually stood out, never felt out of place. This was because the savory sesame oil seeped between the rice grains and ingredients, breaking down the boundaries of flavor, while the soft, thick egg strips kindly embraced the tough scents of the other ingredients. The process where clashing smells and strong tastes met the gentle mediators of sesame oil and eggs to become rounded and blended—it was a perfect reflection of my mother’s arduous life, raising six siblings who were all so very different.
Though we were born from the same womb, our colors and temperaments were remarkably distinct. My eldest brother, the firstborn, matured early and heavily, weighed down by the responsibility of looking after his younger siblings. Like the thick egg roll that holds the center of the gimbap steady, he silently endured his own weight and served as a reliable shield for us. On the other hand, the youngest was as fresh and free-spirited as water dropwort, tending to go in any direction. The youngest’s stubbornness in seeking freedom and the bickering voices of us siblings in between expanded precariously, like the inside of a thick, uncut roll of gimbap.
In the midst of that fierce difference, to ensure her children did not scar one another, Mother had to become the black seaweed, giving her entire body to hold us together. Just as she applied savory sesame oil to prevent the stubborn carrots and unruly water dropwort from clashing, Mother moved busily between this child and that, becoming a smooth lubricant. She trimmed our coarse hearts with warm, coaxing words and, like sticky grains of rice, patiently glued our jagged edges together.
Always anxious that one of us might go astray or be isolated and hurt among the siblings, she nurtured us with constant care. Even in the exhaustion of feeding and clothing six mouths until her hands and feet were blistered, she never treated a single child with neglect, pulling us all equally into the wide folds of her skirt. The reason that a thick, heavy roll of gimbap—our six siblings—could maintain the shape of a complete family without bursting or scattering was entirely thanks to my mother’s tough and devoted embrace, which endured all the tension and weight from the outside.
Ssam and gimbap do not boastfully reveal their contents. Even if one does not say what is inside, the moment you take a large bite, all the sincerity and harmony layered within are fully conveyed to the tip of the tongue. My mother’s heart is the same. Even without loudly proclaiming her love, and even without trying to show her bent back and calloused hands, I now know that the warmth she created by looking after and comforting us from within has already become the most solid foundation of our lives.
The quiet embrace of ssam and gimbap, which rounded and enveloped so many differences and jagged parts… Thanks to that abundance, we were able to grow up taking sweet, thoughtless bites of something as savory as sesame oil and as soft as eggs, without directly facing the bitter and harsh tastes of the world. Today, I find myself missing my mother’s firm yet warm touch that was pressed into each of those bites, and I find myself sighing with a lump in my throat. And I, too, wish to quietly unfold a wide leaf and offer this touching, tender comfort to someone else who is weary of the world.
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