Summer Memory

This is a true story shared to me by my student.  I think it’s just too beautiful to be taken for granted and not be written.  So I jotted it down because, for me, it’s one of the extant, wonderful stories I’ve heard in my entire life.  Yes, I’m still amazed in many ways I couldn’t tell you.

I could vividly recall the day when, at the very first time in my life, I fell in love with a thirteen-year-old girl.  Well, maybe it wasn’t love at all but simply a ‘pure fondness of the opposite sex.’  That’s what I call it now.  You see, I was only two years younger than she was.

 

My father was a teacher in Nengwon Elementary School and rented a place where he could live together with his better-half and my two younger sisters, while I studied and lived in Incheon with my grandparents.  I first visited the province of Nengwon in my summer break and that was the time, too, when, for the first time in my life, I laid my eyes on Uysook.  She was already tall at her age with long black hair and had a very white skin like that of the Whites.  That was new to me because, obviously, we are the Yellow people, but she was different, far different from the people who live in the country who have dark skin.  And, yes, she was very beautiful.  She was the daughter of the landlord who owned the house where my family resided then.  And we played the usual stuff children play: hide and seek, the teacher-student situation or sometimes we simulated the doctor/nurse-patient thing.

One day, while we were playing cards in her house, I asked her if she could show me her breasts. Probably a girl in the stage of puberty be asked by a boy to do such a thing would hit an eleven-year-old kid like I was.  But she didn’t.  And it was her leniency and kindness that I admire the most all this time.  “If you come back next year, I’ll show you,” she replied.

I left very early the next morn to catch the bus and I failed to say goodbye to her.  Thirty years have passed now and I still haven’t seen her.  It was not that I didn’t keep my word.  It was just that I wasn’t able to go back because my father told me I had to study hard since my grades were on the rack.   Two summers had come and gone after that incident but still I hadn’t had the chance to return to the province until my family finally moved to Incheon.

Ten years ago, I returned to the place to visit the tomb of my granfather.  Her younger sister was there and I queried where Uysook was.  “She moved to Suwon City right after she tied the knot.”  And that was that.  Of course, I could locate her if I want to, but I stopped myself.  I’m afraid to lose my memory of the thirteen-year-old girl to whom I’ve lost my young heart: tall with long black hair, snow-like skin and the beauty of an angel. 

When I was in the university, I joined an essay writing contest and talked of the time that happened to me when I was still an eleven-year-old kid.  I won the silver medal with my essay entitled, “Summer Memory”.  Sure, I don’t have her photo, but that image of the thirteen-year-old girl would always be instilled in my memory until the day I leave this vale of tears.  Uysook was my first love and she’ll always be a thirteen-year-old girl forever.