By Pak Jong-hee
A gentle breeze brushes past, carrying a scent that feels like an old memory. This pungent, slightly fishy aroma that fills my nostrils is the breath of mugwort, rising in clusters as it leans against the spring sunlight. In a corner of the park, on a sun-drenched mound, I see a woman crouched low, picking mugwort. Each time a tender shoot—hardly larger than a baby’s fingertip —is placed in her basket, a warmth like the earth’s own body temperature quietly spreads to my feet.
The woman speaks to me in an excited voice, saying the sky is flawlessly clear today. Looking up, I see that the hue of the sky is indeed different from before. Where the achromatic winter has retreated, has the delicate texture of the pale green grass ever been this vivid? Yet, the brighter the world becomes, the more Spring has always been a precarious guest to me. It is as if I can hear the moans of living things breaking through the stubborn ice of winter.
Spring never arrives for free. The backs of the new shoots tearing through the frozen earth are hunched, and the gestures of the trees squeezing out every drop of their essence to bloom are nothing short of desperate. Whenever I see petals trembling under the lash of a late-frost gale, my heart grows anxious, thinking that such brilliance might actually be a final, frantic struggle bartered for death.
This sense of peril stems from the duality of Spring. On the surface, a hymn of vitality seems to resound, but beneath it, withered grasses and ancient trees—baring their gaunt skeletons—lie scattered like the wreckage of winter. Upon that threshold where warmth and cold intersect, fragile lives cross the boundary between life and death several times a day. To me, Spring has always been a season of pity. Like the late-winter cold that strikes just when you think you’ve arrived, it resembles the seasons of trial that visited me without warning at every turning point in my life.
Spring was just beginning to show its face even at the place where my mother left this world. Perhaps because the void of loss was so deep, I suffered from a severe, aching malaise every Spring. Living with a dry cough throughout the winter, I could only manage to stand up again when the cherry blossoms burst into pink buds, as if tearing their own bodies open. To me, Spring was not a season of vitality but a cold current that I had to swim against with my whole body, year after year.
Looking back, my childhood was also a succession of chilly Springs where I couldn’t even take a single clean breath. Time spent in a village beside a cement factory. Every morning when we opened the door, a thick layer of dust, white as snow, had settled in the yard. The lids of the clay jars, polished to a shine by my mother’s hands, would soon hold their breath under a shroud of gray powder, which would harden like stone after a few days.
Dusting off the particles that settled on each other’s hair was our family’s simplest and warmest kindness in those days. Yet, the fine powder that seeped through that kindness was quietly taking root deep within my mother’s lungs. As a child, I did not know. I did not realize that those hours spent living beneath the factory chimneys were gnawing away at my mother’s breath.
The dry cough that began in her forties became chronic, eventually pinning her to a hospital bed under the name ‘pulmonary edema.’ By the time the environmental lawsuits began, Mother had already passed away. All that remained for me was a Spring illness that resembled her cough and a single scar in my heart that flared up every change of season.
I quietly watch the fingertips of the woman picking mugwort. I try to imagine how long those tender shoots must have endured before pushing up through the hard earth. The vitality of mugwort, erupting through frozen ground, is by no means docile. It is a force of struggle, ultimately heaving the very crust of the earth upward. Like the mugwort that perfects its fragrance even while swaying in the biting wind, perhaps our lives only gain a subtle radiance after passing through the tunnels of ordeal.
The woman suddenly holds out a bag of mugwort toward me as I stand still. With a soft smile, she tells me that if I boil a bowl of soup with some soybean paste, it will be better than any medicine. That smile is as gentle yet sturdy as the pale green shoots that rose after steadfastly enduring all manner of cold.
Returning home with the bag, I fill the kitchen sink with water. As I wash the mugwort several times, bits of dirt and dried leaves float up, and the clear water soon turns a faint green. Dissolving soybean paste in a pot and adding a handful of mugwort, a pungent aroma slowly rises amidst the savory scent. The moment a spoonful of soup enters my mouth, a bitter yet sweet taste lingers on the tip of my tongue.
A sense I had long forgotten awakens. Amidst the rising steam, the memory of sitting on the edge of the wooden porch as a child, blowing on the mugwort soup my mother had boiled for me, comes vividly back to life. Back then, not knowing what this fragrance had endured to rise, I probably just rejoiced that spring had come.
Silently, I set down my spoon and wrap both hands around the bowl where the warmth remains. Then, I step outside again. The wind brushing against my skin is still spicy and cold. But now I know. One must endure this precarious wind for flowers to bloom, and only after passing through this cold does the mugwort truly complete its fragrance.
I lower my mask for a moment and breathe in the air deeply. Leaning my heart into the pungent breath of Spring that seeps deep into my lungs, I whisper softly:
“Do not be ill. If spring must come after all, shouldn’t you cross this season safely?”
If I am still in pain, then this radiant Spring is ultimately nothing more than a season of pain. Today, the green shoots swaying in the breeze appear exceptionally clear. Each of those pale green textures is swaying quietly, yet firmly, as if remembering the freezing seasons they have passed through. Standing before that vitality, I reverently inhale all the pain and endurance dwelling within this fragrance of Spring and this breath of green.
Centre of the Web 