My daughter Anne once asked me, “When are you truly happy?”
Happiness is difficult to define, but time certainly flies when you do what you truly love. In that regard, I am happiest when gardening or painting. Preparing to host is similar—time goes by faster because my heart is in it.
My husband had no interest in gardening until we moved to the Hampton house. He actually used to hate when I’d work in the garden because I would often forget to feed him. However, he found enjoyment in the practice when he began to pull out weeds. He likes to clean, so he takes pleasure in watching the ground become weed-free. Sometimes he overdoes it by taking out new seedlings I planted, but it wouldn’t be possible to take care of the garden without his help.
When I am in the garden, I think of a phrase from my father’s essay about his daughters:
“I hope my girls grow up with healthy roots in my garden until the day they are transplanted into another good soil. I need to be a better gardener for them.”
My husband and I have been planting trees and sowing seeds in our raised garden in the backyard. Words can’t describe the joy I feel when I find little purple flowers budding in my garden, from the seeds of a balloon flower I planted years ago. I’m not harvesting a big crop, but the process is still awe inspiring and rewarding. A brand new life springing from dirt is simply amazing to witness. Suddenly, you understand why the Little Prince found a single rose in his garden far more precious than 5,000 roses elsewhere.
Cultivating a friendship is like gardening. You sometimes don’t notice how special someone is until you spend time and give care to that person. In that vein, we like to not only host people at our dinner table but also offer them overnight stays. The more time you spend together, the more connections you build. Fortunately, we’ve been given more than enough for our family to enjoy; maybe because God meant for us to share our abundance with others.
So many people have shared our house and our dinner table that we can’t remember each and every guest who has stayed. On some occasions, we let guests stay even when we are not home ourselves. For us, this practice has often proved worthwhile and led to new friendships, like with Yoonhee.
After we bought an apartment in Paris, my youngest sister, Dangsun, suggested we get together with one of her old friends who had moved to Paris. Her name was Yoonhee, and her husband was the head of the Paris branch of a Korean company. It turns out they’d stayed at our Montclair house years ago; I’d completely forgotten about it, but they remembered our hospitality. Yoonhee returned the favor by inviting us to her place in the suburbs of Paris for a home-cooked meal, and her Southeast Asian cooking was amazing. She said she learned regional cooking while they lived in many of those countries thanks to her husband’s position.
Meeting Yoonhee and her husband was like finding those balloon flowers in my backyard. It’s like scattering seeds in your garden, not expecting anything to come of it. But it is a wonderful feeling when you see a little flower budding totally unexpectedly. They have since returned to Korea permanently, but we still reconnect when we visit Korea.
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