Korean novel “Please Look After Mom” leaves a question to ponder; what do I really know about the person I call mom?
“Please Look After Mom” is the work of a popular South Korean novelist, Kyung-Sook Shin. It sold more than a million copies in South Korea, and bagged a Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011. The novel was told in alternating perspectives. Her use of second-person point of view depicts each narrator’s thoughts as an internal dialog.
The story starts with an elderly and illiterate woman named Park So Nyo. She got separated from her husband in the central train station in Seoul and goes missing. So Nyo’s four adult children start to distribute fliers and roam the city to search for her. Consequently, it had dawned on them the regret that none of them went to the train station in the first place to meet their old parents.
The eldest daughter, Chi Hon, was assigned to write what they will include in the fliers of their missing mother. She starts off writing her mother’s birthday, but she argues to herself if she was born in 1938 or 1936. She then realized how little she knows about her mother.
Chi Hon and the rest of the family began to retrace their memories and regrets on the woman they thought they knew, the woman that’s been constantly there, yet they had all forgotten about.
“That woman disappeared, bit by bit, having forgotten the joy of being born and her childhood and dreams…The woman whose life was marred with sacrifice until the day she went missing. You compare yourself with Mom, but Mom was an entire world unto herself.”
Kyung Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
We know our moms as moms, the person who brought us into this world. Aside from that, have we ever thought of our moms as so much more than the first person we expect to give us our needs? Reading this novel brings me along in the journey of looking back to what I know about my own mother. Who is mom before me? Who is mom until today?
Mom needs someone too
I grew up thinking my mom’s purpose is to love us, to always be strong, to have everything prepared when we go to school or if my dad goes to work. So sometimes we get disappointed when she complains and acts the complete opposite of loving.
“You realize that you habitually thought of Mom when something in your life was not going well, because when you thought of her it was as though something got back on track, and you felt re-energized.”
Kyung Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
One day my mother got a fever and a headache. Although she’d been taking prescribed medicines, she still complained about every little thing she felt. I remember feeling annoyed, thinking she was just overreacting. I would tell her, “Don’t dwell on the discomfort too much, it’s also a battle in the mind.” She would cry saying, “you all think I am just overreacting”.
We thought, she can get through this just like all the other times, and besides it’s not severe. I suddenly realized why she is acting like that, my mom signals to us that she needs some care too.
We’re always in need of her, but it rarely crosses my mind that sometimes she’s also as confused as I am with her role in life. That she also needs someone.
Mom has dreams for herself too
“…I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven’t forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? Why did I never give a thought to Mom’s dreams?”
Kyung Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
There are times I talk with my mom. She would tell me about her past dreams and memories of her youth. In one of my conversations with my mother, I found out that she was a fashion design student. That was a big dream that I never knew about, perhaps because it never came true.
Now that I’m in the journey of carving my path as an adult, I get excited and nervous whenever asked about my plans for the next two years. All the plans I want to do and accomplish would line up.
Then a thought would hit me, how could I move on so fast with my life and not even glance back to her? In return, I always just assumed that mom will understand if I forget. Even when she sacrificed that past for me to have my future, I would think “it’s for us anyway, that my dreams are her dreams too.”
Although, just like the eldest daughter, Chi-hon, I become aware that both a past and an inner life of my mom existed. She is first of all a woman and she is a lot.
Mom, I’ll look after you
In Chi Hon’s search for their mother, she found something else, her story. She found a new appreciation of her in the expense of losing her.
“Only after Mom went missing did you realize that her stories were piled inside you, in endless stacks. Mom’s everyday life used to go on in a repeating loop, without a break. Her everyday words, which you didn’t think deeply about and sometimes dismissed as useless when she was with you, awoke in your heart, creating tidal waves.”
Kyung Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
This novel became so popular despite the mixed reviews, with some saying it’s melodramatic, and difficult to read. I think the universal theme of regret and losing what we love struck a chord to many. It’s a book that calls people to action that we should remember our mothers now before it’s too late.
There are many ways we can acknowledge our mothers, a simple remembering means a lot especially when she sees her children growing right before her eyes and she has to slowly let go.
Let’s not leave her behind, you don’t know how big of a deal it is to always be involved with the lives of the ones you loved. Just like the old saying goes, you never know what you have until it’s gone.
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