Home Sweet Home

This needs explaining.

First, the top line reads "Jediyah" if you don't know how to read Korean. Second, "Eemo" means aunt-on-the-maternal-side. Third, I had plenty of reason to worry.

One of the great stories in my family history is that my mother once found that a pot of her soup had gone bad. She had been heating it up to serve to my father and me, when she noticed rice floating in the broth. That was strange, because she hadn't put any rice in the soup yet. But it turned out to be ok, because it wasn't rice, it was maggots.

But it was already heating, and I was running late for school. So she scooped out the squirmy little fuckers and gave the soup an extra long boil. And then she watched me eat.

She served another bowl to my father after I left, but a crisis of conscience made her confess everything to him. He disgustedly dumped his bowl into the sink, and they never spoke of it to each other again.

I didn't find out about it until years later, when my sister gleefully told me the secret ingredient in my mother's special soup.

So when I saw this note the other day, I took a couple of minutes to decide just how hungry I really was.

It was delicious.