Family Line

By Ella Kim

I spend every Lunar New Year sprawled on my grandmother’s faded linoleum kitchen floor, making kimbap. It’s a methodical process:

Step 1: Chop pickled radish, spinach, and carrots into long, fine strips. My knife skills are mediocre at best, but nevertheless, I fall into a rhythm cutting to the beat of whatever Korean folk song her stereo plays that year: Arirang, Han River. Meanwhile, Halmoni handles the heavy lifting: frying bulgogi and eggs until they hit that sweet spot just before sticking to the pan, then handing them off to me for more slicing. She doesn’t speak much English and I don’t Korean, but we find contentment in the quiet steadiness of our assembly line.

Step 2: Spread white rice atop sheets of seaweed, making sure to coat it evenly so each bite will contain warm, sticky goodness. Grains of rice cling to clothing, between fingers, and in my grandmother’s silvery hair—everywhere but their intended destination. We laugh and her face crinkles as she recounts the days she’d fling rice at her siblings in Korea, back before the war came and tore them apart.

Step 3: Lay the chopped vegetables and meat across the rice-seaweed fixture, and roll into tight cylinders. I fumble with the bamboo mat but she tenderly steadies my hands with hers, two generations becoming one. We chop the roll into colorful, bite-sized coins and snack on the leftover ends where filling protrudes messily over the ends of the wrap.

The ambiguity of my existence as a second-generation Korean-American often leaves me questioning where I truly belong, a foreigner in all places. But maybe that’s okay for the time being: in rolling kimbap, I find release in the fact that I don’t have to decide in order to make something delicious.

Finally, we serve.