The Year of 1989

It was the winter of 1989. I was in the first year of elementary school. In the winter of 1989, so, I was an elementary school student. By that time, I possessed my own private spot in the tall white three-story house which my grandfather had built 30 years ago. My grandparents’ bed room, the living room, and the kitchen used be all on the second floor. And there are cold wooden stairs which turn once in the middle, until now. My parents’ bed room was placed on the third floor and I spent loads of time there. Because my whole family –grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, three little aunts, two uncles, my baby brother and I- lived all together, the tall white three-story house was not at all big enough. Consequently, to small youthful me, it was nonsense to expect my perfect private space in that house. So, I designated this open secret area, right under the small window at the top end of the wooden stairs which connected the second and third floor, as my private spot; nobody cared about it and it actually was officially a secret. I brought this little portable foldable ‘The Good Lord and His Sheep’ table to my private spot whenever I was ‘free’ and did my small work like drawing or reading quietly. That spot was always filled with the bright sun light and it was the specific spot of the house where people, like family, passed by pretty often but never stays at for longer than a few seconds. It was quite calm and peaceful, generally.
It was one of the troublesome winter vacation assignments to keep a journal everyday during the break. I learned the Korean character at the age of 6 by keeping the pictorial journal with my mother. Every evening my mother asked me what I had done during the day while mother was at school. I usually tried to tell her as many things happened as possible so mother had to make me choose the most memorable event of the day. And she wrote down a story within 5 to 6 sentences below my colorful drawing. By the time she came back home from school, usually it was nearly the sunset. It was after I entered the elementary school when I actually started writing my diary in my sentences without sharing the bundle of my daily stories with my mother. I honestly enjoyed the lone time of contemplation picking the most memorable even of the day without somebody else’s pressure. So, it was not a burden to me to keep a diary. I wrote my journal at my bright and quiet private place. I sometimes was writing my journal in the morning mainly because I had to write it when some sort of inspiration whispered to me and also the morning time was the brightest and quietest time of the day.
It was the last day of the year of 1989. I believed years also rotate as the seasons do. I did not have a clue to get to acknowledge that the numbers of the years are the simply numbers which people number. In the morning of that day, when one of my little aunts told me that tomorrow eventually is the first day of 1990, I asked her then when the year of 1989 comes back. She said that it does not come back. I could not believe her. I asked my mother. My mother told me that the year of 1989 was the year which leaves us and the new year of 1990 was waiting for us. I asked my uncle if it was all true that the year of 1989 shall not come back ever. He explained that the year of 1989 comes to the world for only once and it simply cannot exist ever again in the world. In the tremendous shock, I asked again my mother, slowly, doing my best to make my question as clearly as possible and restraining the irresistible sadness secretly, whether it truly was impossible to have the year of 1989 back. My mother answered slowly and sincerely that ‘time’ does not come back once it leaves. I did not let anyone know as usual that I came back to hide at my private place and there, I wrote down as ‘good-bye the year of 1989’ in bold letters on a piece of paper. And I sank in the great sadness. For the first time since I came out to the world, I realized that there are things that I cannot have more than once and not everything comes back as rotating fairly like the seasons. Years later, I also could accept the fact that I grow and become an adult one day but never can be a child again. I was slow in a way; I answered them that I wanted to be a rabbit when I grew up if somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I continued to do this until I first met this boy in my class who wanted to be a fire fighter at the age of 7.
Grasping the glimpse of the rules of the ‘time’ and the testing inquiry about the future dream at the age of 7, I cognized the concept that time flows towards the unknown world of infinity and never looks back. That day, the last day of the year of 1989, I could not free myself from that great shock all day. It finally became the fact that yesterday, today, and tomorrow exists, and yesterday is unreachable forever once you leave it. My initial conception of time as counting down to Christmas day as ‘three more nights, two more night’ tumbled down to the immaturity zone. The year of 1989 was taking off, just like that, while I was going through the sense of a deep pity for the helplessness we all have to face. The next stop was that to cognize the loss of somebody. Then I learned how to ‘be’ sad. The world is nothing but a huge ball of sadness, if it really is true that everything in the world exists once but has to leave at some point for the infinity. I thought that the air was unbearably pungent since it was only full of people’s sadness and all their lives accumulated in the bottomless sadness.
It took me another long long time to cognize the fact that the lost time and the lost ones exist in me wholly and soundly. The past time, the past people and their love remain in the blood of the present; we breathe in the sadness and the lung filters out the sadness through the love of memories – just like the trees of the forest of truth.
All present once used to be the future but all present is the past. All is present but none is present. All time happens to be past. ‘I in the present’ is ‘apodictically’ the ‘I in the past’, and my love, passion, and my people all will be gone as time. But none will be gone. My mother, my uncle, and my little aunt all were right. I have been waiting carefully and secretly, but, yes all, the year of 1989 did not return yet. Moreover, it has been ages since I lost the ‘good-bye 1989’ paper. However, I also have gained a pinch of an acquaintance with the sadness; how it, the sadness over the things that leave but never return, liberates the ones of the world and just leaves them to live ‘a life’.



photo taken in the year of 1979 in Seosan in Korea, my mother with the white mourning ribbon over her mother's death on her hair, and one of her students
26 Jan 2003 and 13 Nov 2006 Angel Hye-young Kim