The First Page
After her grandmother passed away, all that was left to Yuna was a single worn recipe notebook.
The corners of the cover had frayed soft and round, and the pages within had turned yellow with the years. Grease stains had soaked through here and there, and on some pages the letters had blurred where broth had splashed. Her grandmother's handwriting was large and round. Like the writing of a child still learning to spell, it was somehow clumsy and dear at the same time.
Yuna kept the notebook deep in a kitchen drawer. She did not have the heart to open it. The moment she did, it felt, the fact that her grandmother was truly gone would become something she could touch with her hands.
It was her grandmother who had raised her. In her childhood, when both her parents were busy with work, Yuna always went to her grandmother's house after school. Her grandmother's kitchen was always warm, always had something simmering, always smelled good. For Yuna, the word "home" meant her grandmother's kitchen.
After her grandmother was gone, Yuna's kitchen had grown cold. She no longer cooked. She had no strength to simmer or stir. She got by, meal after meal, on delivery food and instant packages.
And so half a year went by.
One rainy Sunday, Yuna's heart sank for no reason she could name. Outside the window, the rain fell steadily, and the room was dim. She opened the refrigerator, but nothing looked good. She turned on a delivery app, then turned it off again. It felt as though no matter what she ate, the hunger would not leave her. And then, all at once, the notebook in the drawer came to mind.
Yuna took it out. She stroked the cover for a long while. And then, slowly, she opened the first page.
There, in neat handwriting, was written:
"Cabbage soybean-paste soup. For a rainy day, when the heart feels cold."
Yuna laughed. When the heart feels cold. How like her grandmother. And come to think of it, it really was a day when her heart felt cold somewhere inside.
Cabbage Soybean-Paste Soup
Yuna went out and bought the ingredients as the recipe instructed. Half a head of napa cabbage, two spoonfuls of soybean paste, a handful of dried anchovies, one stalk of green onion. Nothing remarkable.
The last line of the recipe read:
"Lower the heat, and go slowly. Boil it in a hurry and the flavor runs away."
Yuna lowered the heat just as it said. Steam rose slowly from the pot. The soybean paste dissolved, and a savory smell filled the kitchen.
And then something strange happened.
In that smell rising with the steam, a very old scene suddenly came back to Yuna. She must have been about seven. It was a rainy day, and she was sitting on a little stool in her grandmother's kitchen. Her grandmother was making soybean-paste soup. It was a day Yuna had come home sullen after quarreling with a friend at school. Her grandmother asked her nothing at all; she simply made the soup.
"When your stomach grows warm, your heart loosens along with it."
The words her grandmother had spoken that day came back vividly within the steam. Yuna had forgotten them entirely. And yet the smell had brought the forgotten memory back whole.
Yuna lifted a spoonful of soup to her mouth. In that instant, tears welled up. It was not because of the taste. It was because it was, precisely, exactly, the taste of that day.
Yuna sat at the table and ate the soup slowly. With each spoonful, her stomach grew warm. And truly, just as her grandmother had said, her heart loosened little by little. Something that had been frozen cold for half a year melted slowly into that one bowl of soup with its rising steam.
That night, Yuna slept deeply for the first time in a long while.
The Second Page
From that day on, Yuna began opening one page of the notebook each week.
The second page read: "Banquet noodles. When a lonely person comes to call."
Yuna tilted her head. A lonely person coming to call? Who would be coming? But that very evening, a guest truly arrived. It was a cousin she had long since lost touch with. She had quit her job and drifted aimlessly through the countryside, she said, until all at once she thought of Yuna.
"Why did you suddenly think of me?"
"I don't know. I just... wanted a warm bowl of noodles."
A shiver ran over Yuna's skin. And then she opened the notebook and made the banquet noodles.
In a clear broth simmered from anchovies and kelp, she laid stir-fried strips of squash and carrot, and over the top she scattered thin ribbons of fried egg. Her cousin took one chopstickful and then was silent for a long while. Then she spoke quietly.
"This taste... it's exactly like the noodles Grandmother used to make when we were little."
The two of them sat across from each other, eating noodles and telling stories of the old days. Playing together in the yard of their grandmother's house as children, lying on the wooden platform eating watermelon in summer, their grandmother seating the two granddaughters on her lap and telling old tales. Forgotten memories unspooled one by one like strands of noodle.
"You know," her cousin said, sipping the broth, "the truth is, things have been hard for me lately. It felt like everything had fallen apart. But eating these noodles today... somehow, I feel like I can start again."
Without a word, Yuna served more noodles into her cousin's bowl. Words were not needed. A single warm bowl of noodles was reaching deeper than any words of comfort.
When she left, her cousin's face was much lighter than before. At the front door, her cousin held Yuna in a tight embrace and said, "Thank you. I'll come again." From those words, the shadow that had hung over her when she first arrived was gone.
The Third Page
The third page read: "Red-bean porridge. On the longest night of the year."
Yuna looked at the calendar. As it happened, the winter solstice was near. Once again a shiver ran over her, but this time the feeling was less of fear than of wonder and warmth.
Yuna boiled the red beans. She simmered them soft, pressed them through a sieve, and rolled little rice-flour dumplings to drop in. The kitchen filled with a sweet, nutty smell. Listening to the porridge bubbling away, Yuna recalled yet another memory.
In her childhood, every solstice, her grandmother had made red-bean porridge. And she would count the little dumplings into the bowl, one for each of Yuna's years. "When you finish all of these, you grow a year older," her grandmother would say. At those words, little Yuna had eaten every dumpling without leaving a single one.
As she rolled the dumplings, without realizing it, Yuna was counting them. The feel of the glutinous rice flour on her fingertips called up her grandmother's kitchen, just as it had been.
Not Magic
At first Yuna thought it was magic.
When she opened a recipe, strangely enough, the person or the situation that needed that dish would appear. On the day she opened the page marked "for an upset stomach," her own stomach really was heavy and ill at ease; on the day she opened the page marked "for a day of good news," a small word of acceptance really did arrive. When she opened the page marked "for a rainy day," rain fell outside the window without fail.
For a while Yuna turned these strange coincidences over in her mind. Had her grandmother worked some kind of magic? Was there some power dwelling in the notebook? Night after night, Yuna kept the notebook by her pillow and traced those round letters with her fingertips.
But as time went on, Yuna came to see it differently.
Perhaps it was not magic, but something her grandmother had learned over the course of a whole lifetime, set down in that notebook. That the human heart turns and returns like the seasons. That on a rainy day everyone feels a little cold, that a lonely person is always somewhere, that joy and sorrow come by turns. Her grandmother had known all this through food.
The recipes were not merely ways of making dishes. They were ways of tending to the human heart. That on some days one needs a warm broth, on some days a spicy jolt, and on some days simply to sit across from someone and eat the same food. Her grandmother had known.
And Yuna realized one more thing. Perhaps it was not that strange coincidences had occurred, but that Yuna herself had changed. Through opening the notebook and making the dishes, Yuna had at last begun to look around her. She saw her lonely cousin, she saw the old man next door who lived alone, she came to notice the days when her own heart felt cold. The magic was not in the notebook; it was in the heart that thought of someone while making the food.
The Empty Pages
By the time Yuna had opened about half the notebook, she realized one thing.
The back half of the notebook was empty. They were blank pages, with nothing written on them at all.
At first Yuna thought her grandmother simply had not gotten around to filling them. But on the first of the blank pages, in that round handwriting of hers, a single short line was written.
"From here on, it is your turn."
Yuna gazed at that sentence for a long time. A corner of her chest grew warm.
Her grandmother had known. That one day she would leave. And that Yuna would have to carry the notebook on. The recipes were not a finished inheritance, but a promise to be written together.
The First Entry
Yuna picked up a pen.
She agonized for a long while over what to write. Then she remembered hearing, a few days earlier, that the old man next door was living alone. He had lost his wife not long ago, she had heard. Whenever they passed in the hallway, that lonely figure seen from behind had stayed on her mind.
Slowly, Yuna wrote on the blank page:
"Pumpkin porridge. For one who has been left alone."
And she bought a pumpkin and made the porridge. She simmered an old pumpkin until it was soft, mashed it fine, and stirred in glutinous rice flour until it thickened. A sweet, gentle smell filled the kitchen. In that smell, once more, Yuna felt her grandmother. Her grandmother had not gone. She still lived in this smell, in these fingertips, in this heart.
Yuna ladled the porridge into a bowl and knocked on the door next door.
The door opened, and there was the old man's startled face. Yuna held out the bowl and said:
"I thought your heart might feel cold. When your stomach grows warm, your heart loosens along with it."
The old man's eyes slowly reddened. Those were the very words her grandmother had spoken to Yuna. Without realizing it, Yuna had passed them on. Memory flowed that way, along with the food, to the next person.
"Thank you, miss." The old man received the bowl with a trembling hand. "Since my wife passed... this is the first time anyone has brought me something warm."
A few days later, the old man returned the bowl, washed clean. On top of it lay a small note. "Thank you, I enjoyed it. Next time, let me treat you to a cup of tea." Yuna gazed at that note for a long time. A single bowl of food was laying a bridge between one person and another.
The Pages That Followed
After that, Yuna's notebook gathered new entries, one page at a time.
"Seaweed soup. For someone's birthday."
"Kimchi stew. For a night you want to talk with a friend until dawn."
"Cinnamon punch. When you want to settle the heart into calm."
On each page, along with the name of the dish, the heart of that day was written. Yuna no longer merely followed the recipes. She filled the notebook with the taste of her own hands, with her own stories.
And strangely, each time Yuna wrote a new page, someone who needed that dish would appear without fail. On the day she wrote seaweed soup, word came of a friend's birthday; on the day she wrote kimchi stew, an old friend called to say let us have a drink.
By now Yuna no longer debated whether it was magic. What mattered lay elsewhere. That while making a dish, one comes to think of someone, and that the heart called up in this way somehow reaches the other person. That was enough.
Yuna's kitchen had grown warm again. In that place, cold and frozen for half a year, now something simmered every day, and a good smell drifted through, just as her grandmother's kitchen had in her childhood.
A Small Guest
One spring day, a small guest came to call on Yuna.
It was Soeun, the eight-year-old granddaughter of the old man next door. Soeun came to stay with her grandfather every school vacation, and before long she had taken to dropping by Yuna's kitchen as well. Sitting on a stool and watching Yuna cook was something Soeun loved, she said.
"Big sister, what is that notebook?"
Soeun pointed to the worn notebook on the table. With a smile, Yuna opened it to show her.
"This was left to me by my grandmother. There are recipes written in it... but not just dishes. There are ways of making the heart written in it, too."
Yuna sat Soeun beside her and they made rice cakes together. A small hand and a large hand smoothed the dough side by side. Crooked little rice cakes took shape under Soeun's clumsy fingertips, but to Yuna they looked more lovely than any other. Suddenly she remembered her grandmother's hand, holding her own small hand.
Memory flowed that way, from one kitchen to the next, from one hand to the next.
The Last Scene
Many years went by.
By now Yuna's notebook was filled far past the halfway mark. Her grandmother's handwriting and Yuna's own lay side by side within a single book. The round writing and the careful writing. The taste of two pairs of hands, the time of two lives, met that way within one notebook.
Now and then Yuna thought to herself, that one day, when all the empty pages of this notebook were filled, it would become someone else's turn. Perhaps Soeun's, perhaps someone she had not yet met. The recipes were a promise carried on, that way, without end.
One rainy Sunday, Yuna stood in the kitchen and made cabbage soybean-paste soup. Just as on that first day she had opened the notebook.
Steam rose slowly. In that smell, Yuna heard her grandmother's voice. She heard it, surely.
"Lower the heat, and go slowly. Boil it in a hurry and the flavor runs away."
Yuna smiled and lowered the heat. And she murmured softly:
"Yes, Grandmother. I'll go slowly."
The kitchen was full of warm steam. Outside the window the rain fell, but Yuna's heart no longer felt cold.
A Note from the Author
Food holds a curious power.
A certain smell can carry us, in an instant, decades back in time. The smell of kimchi stew calls up a mother's kitchen; the smell of baking bread brings back some particular alley. Scientists explain that this is because the sense of smell is closely linked to the regions of the brain that handle memory and emotion. But even without knowing that explanation, we already know it in our bodies, that food does not merely fill the stomach but fills the memory and the heart.
In this story, the grandmother's recipes work like "magic" perhaps not because it is real magic, but because I have exaggerated, just a little, the warm power that food possesses by nature. When we cook for someone, we naturally come to think of that person. That very feeling may be the oldest magic of all.
I hope you, too, have a recipe like that. A single page that calls someone to mind the moment you open it, and warms your heart while you make it.
현재 단락 (1/91)
After her grandmother passed away, all that was left to Yuna was a single worn recipe notebook.