To my children
I had a friend. I have forgotten his name. I still remember him, but I wonder whether he ever thought about me.
When I was young, we did not have an air conditioner. Even the electric fan was expensive. I spent lots of time at my grandparents’. I used to put a chair in front of the house and cooled myself there watching people passing by.
My friend was living with his mother. My grandparents’ house was in a city and close to the bar district. It was more than a bar. They had women serving and drinking with the customers. His mother worked at one of these bars. She put up heavy make-up and went to work in the afternoon and won’t be home until very late at night.
He and I had one common thing. We both survived polio. The difference was while I could not walk at all and he was able to walk awkwardly with clutches.
I don’t remember who approached first. We became friends and he used to come over after his mother went to work.
A while after, he stopped coming to see me. Instead, he was following the other kids. One day, my grandmother gave him a rice cake and asked him why he stopped playing with me. Wiping powder from the rice cake off around his mouth and not meeting my eyes, he said his mother told him not to play with me.
Since he was able to walk, he should play with the normal kids, not me, the crippled.
I never got to play with him again. For next forty years,I thought she was very cold and ruthless woman.
While I was writing for the weekly paper for Korean disabled, I slowly changed my mind. She did not hate me. She only wanted her son to learn to live with the world, normal people.
He must be in his sixties now. I wonder how he is doing now. I miss him.