Duk Guk (Korean Rice Cake Soup)

Viola Lee

Whenever it is a new year,

my family will travel

to both uncles’ houses,

both my mother’s brother

and my father’s brother,

to celebrate by eating Duk Guk,

how often I have thought of the word

new in new year,

and how much attention

is given to that word,

but with every new year,

the other sibling, old,

goes to sleep in that cold, back room

with all her children’s worn suits, hanging,

and those torn toed, uncobbled soles

of shoes resting on a vacummed

carpeted floor.

Whenever I think of a new year,

my older aunts come to mind

and over the many new years passed,

if there is anything that lasts,

they have taught me

when preparing Duk Guk,

that waste is the opposite of gratitude

and when your body goes through

something as wasteful as war,

everything becomes a resource,

and nothing can ever be replenished.

Every New Year’s, I have savored

every spoonful of Duk Guk

that my aunts on both sides

have made my entire life,

that milky white soup that always

symbolizes a fresh start,

its flat oval rice cakes

that feel like coins shared,

each representing the wealth

to come in the new year,

how often I could see

my mother and my father

watch as family members cook

on an open flame

in each of their villages,

rice fields behind them,

miles and miles

of walking to the market

to purchase eggs to bring back

home to their brothers and sisters.

My parents wondered

when would luck come to them,

when would they be handed

the riches of their new years,

the blessings of their hard earned work.

The eggs in the soup are fried

into a thin omelet

and sliced into strips to garnish,

The roasted dried seaweed sheets

cut into thin slices

and then added in

with scallions,

green and white.

So often my older sisters

or my female cousins

will hand bowls to pass

to other family members,

a physical passing at work,

my aunts will say the names

wondering who will come next,

names of those standing, waiting.

It is often so strange

what war and death do to a body,

two years ago well passed,

the grieving still lasts

and how both aunts have outlasted

their sons, both sons passed

around new years in the same year,

both sons died of a mental illness

that we often choose to leave behind,

my aunt on my mother’s side

now rests in a nursing home,

with my mother’s brother

sleeping alongside her,

and if I were to go to see them now,

my aunt would not remember my name,

her memory is now the steam

above the pot

where my husband and I

cooking this soup

for our son and our daughter, cooking,

on our stove, cooking,

for hours and hours,

cooking, just the way she taught me,

although not the same,

I will never be the same.