My parents gave up on each other when I was five, and my mom raised me alone. She died just after my high-school graduation. She was at the ceremony, my dad was not, having moved back to Korea long before, to the city of Wanhei, in the province of Mudon where he was born.
My mom was born and raised on the Big Island. Her mother and father had moved from the Midwest to the Island of Hawai‘i when my grandfather took a job with Parker Ranch, serving as what we would now call the CFO. He’d been a banker, but was raised on a farm, as was my grandmother, and when the opportunity to escape the city for a great job opportunity in paradise came up, he jumped at the chance.
My mom and I would go to Kohala as often as we could, and I have fond memories of spending summers and most holidays there. Sometimes I feel I’m more of a Big Islander than a Honolulu native.
My maternal grandparents never talked about my father, so I had to depend only on my mother’s description of him. Hers was brief: “Your father was evil. A Korean devil.”
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Aloha #WriterFriday, I hope you had a good week. Today’s #WritingPrompt is
mom
Use it to inspire a piece of writing, and then post that piece as a comment below. I would love to read it : )
Lanning Lee 