Illustration by Alex Chen
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I stepped off a 17-hour flight with my four-and-a-half-month-old son, and Korea felt unfamiliar. A few years earlier, I had come here as a wife, filled with the excitement of marriage. My husband and I had planned a traditional Korean wedding in my hometown, followed by a honeymoon in Gyeongju. It has been eight years since I moved to Canada to build a life with my husband, the person with whom I feel the greatest comfort. This time, however, was different. I returned as a mother. Korea was no longer simply the country of my childhood. It had become the beginning of my son’s story, the place where his roots quietly began.
On the plane, I held him for hours, putting him to sleep, nursing him and changing him in the small airplane bathroom. It was exhausting. Four suitcases, a travel crib and baby essentials made the journey feel even heavier. Yet beneath the fatigue, I felt a deep sense of joy and responsibility settling within me. Although we had seen our families during our wedding in 2021, they had not yet met my son. We came to introduce him to my relatives: to my grandmother, my aunts and, in a different way, my mother, who passed away suddenly 18 years ago when I was in high school. Her absence left a quiet emptiness that has never fully faded.
On the train to Ulsan, my heart seemed to arrive before I did. When we stepped onto the platform, my stepmother and stepsister welcomed us warmly, taking our heavy luggage without hesitation. In Korea, a baby’s 100th day is celebrated to give thanks for health and to wish for a long life. My stepmother and stepsister had made the journey to Canada for this milestone, cooking miyeokguk, a nourishing seaweed soup that I ate for days. Now, reunited once more in Korea, they took us out for galbijjim, braised beef short ribs, and their care dissolved any distance time apart might have created.
After visiting my hometown, we travelled to see my maternal grandmother and aunts in Tongyeong. The salty scent of the sea greeted us first. My aunts, once fixed in my memory as unchanged, now had gentle lines and gray hair. Still, their first instinct was to care for my son, their movements familiar and tender. Watching them, I felt my mother’s presence in that simple act. When I last visited Korea, my grandmother had been strong and lively. Now, after a stroke, she was bedridden in a nursing hospital. I had prepared myself for the possibility that she might not recognize me. But when she saw us, something flickered in her eyes. When she heard that I had become a mother, she nodded gently.
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My mother loved quiet, peaceful spaces, so my father placed her ashes in a columbarium beside a temple near our hometown. Surrounded by trees and colourful lanterns carrying wishes for peace, the place felt calm rather than heavy. Still, standing before her, my heart was full. My husband held our son and he gently reached out and tapped the glass. In that moment, I thought of my mother holding me, feeding me and loving me in ways I am only now beginning to understand. Since becoming a mother, her love no longer feels distant but immediate and real. In caring for my son, I find myself meeting her, not only in memory, but in repetition. Through him, I was discovering the shape of her love.
Before returning to Canada, our family gathered to celebrate my son’s six-month milestone. The table was filled with traditional dishes, seasonal vegetables, grilled fish, galbijjim and more. It was a feast. My son took his first bite of pumpkin porridge with quiet curiosity. The room filled with laughter and the easy chaos only family can create. Watching him surrounded by generations, I felt a sense of wholeness I had not felt in years.
Leaving Korea was bittersweet. My husband had to return to work, and after years of building our life in Canada, I could not stay as long as I wished. As the plane lifted into the sky, I felt the familiar ache of departure. Even though we cannot be together often, we remain connected with our family through love, through food and through the quiet understanding that we will meet again.
I’ve come to understand that the place I came from and the place I live in are both my home. Wherever life takes us, I carry one quiet hope. That someday our family will find our way back to one another.
Noeul Kang lives in Ottawa.