Category: Stories

I enrolled in one English Class at MiraCosta College, California, in the USA, for the first time in my life. My teachers’ name is Donna Fazio DiBenedetto. I just had 2 units, but I feel already, I am learning quite a good quality of English reading and writing class. Last week, we read “In Los Angeles, a Garden Oasis.” Written by Stella Kalinina, and we wrote our essays. 

 “In Los Angeles, a Garden Oasis is “a physical and spiritual recovery zone, a cooperative and multi-cultural zone, and the Garden Oasis connects humans to humans, community, generations, and nature.” While reading, I think hard about where my comfort zone and my soul nourishment oasis are. Here California has community gardens all around, and when we visit the library, we can easily get the information. The below is my assay which I wrote for the class but a little bit modified for my blog. 

So far, my physical and spiritual recovery and conforming zone is in my hometown, where I grew up. To say more specifically, my oasis is my mother’s food, my parents’ garden, and their support. When I need help, I visit them, and I recover physically and spiritually.  

I grew up in a small city named Chuncheon in South Korea. Chuncheon has rivers, ponds, and mountains all around. My parents have a large garden that has fine trees,  flowers, and fruit trees. Almost all the trees are older than me because my dad planted most of them with his dad, my grandfather. I had a rabbit, chickens, and dogs when I was young in the garden. My parents sometimes planted peppers, eggplants, lettuces, and peas. Among my three siblings, I was the best garden lover and helped to remove weeds and shape trees. The garden had chives as well, so I could eat chive pancakes at any time. 

To study after high school, I moved to Seoul, the biggest city in South Korea where my college was located, and I lived around Korea University from 1994 to 2010, before I came to the USA. I am just realizing that I have not stayed at any one place for over 20 years so far. If I live a long time in one place, my comfort zone might change, but at this moment, my comfort zone is still my hometown. When I had to stop studying at college due to tuberculosis sickness, I returned to Chuncheon. One thing that I enjoyed was harvesting peas and removing weeds while listening to music in the garden. At that time, I liked a song of  Squre’s Dream. Another thing I enjoyed was walking outside and riding buses without destinations. When I had my second baby in the USA, I missed my hometown, flowers, and mountains. I missed even the color of the sky that I saw in Korea. Korea has its own plants and flowers such as Jindallae (Korean rosebay), Gaenali (forsythia), and Cosmos (kosmea), and a clean blue sky in autumn like here in California. California has the same type of Cosmos flowers as those found in Korea, but it was hard for me to see Cosmos flowers when I lived in Maryland, Eastern USA. When I heard a music piece named Spring in My Hometown, Gohyang-uibom, I was gloomy, sad and teary. My husband and I wanted to save money and did not often visit Korea. Actually, we had not visited Korea for 7 years straight. When I quit working my second job in the USA, I finally visited Korea with my two daughters, and I regretted that I should have visited my parents more often. None of us can catch or stop time. Our parents will not wait for us forever if we do not visit them. During the COVID pandemics from 2020 to 2021, I stayed in Korea with my second daughter, helping my parents, while still working for a living for my family and them, which was hard but gave me infinite strength. After COVID, my family moved to California from Maryland because my husband and I had new jobs here. However, a job at a small biotech company was not stable, and when the company closed my center, I lost my job. This time, I do not feel weak, but I feel that I have to visit my hometown and see my parents, and others. 

Now, I know my physical and spiritual Oasis is still my parents, my old home where I grew up, but  somehow, I feel I started having another Oasis here in California. I dream of staying at one place, in California for a long time, and feel that my family is another of my Oasis.