Author: Karis Lee

They say daughter-in-laws don’t even want to eat spinach because it starts with the same sound as “in laws” in Korean. ( spinach is 시금치 and the first syllable 시 means in laws in Chinese Korean). It’s a strange concept to someone like me, whose in-laws are too nice. My mother-in-law, who was an elementary…

My husband, Jae, retired from his wholesale shrimp business in 2004 at the age of 44. People who don’t know the whole story might say “What a lucky dude!” for retiring early; but I know how much he earned it, and not just because he spent years getting up every morning at 2 am to…

The two instances in which our whole family gathers together are weddings and funerals; with 6 girls and 16 grandchildren, there have been quite a few weddings. As we get older, though, there are also more funerals. It wasn’t until I hosted my mother’s funeral that I realized why it’s typical for a lot of…

I still remember my mom’s nagging– “No more congregating and go to your rooms! It’s way past your bedtime!” We were always busy chatting and didn’t want to go to sleep yet. Such antics are inevitable when you have six girls in the house. As we grew older, though, it became rarer for all six…

All my sisters and I are on the taller side, thanks to my father. He was 5 ’10,” which was considered to be fairly tall in those days, especially for Korea. My mom used to say it was always easy to spot him among a crowd.  I was about the second tallest in my class…

One thing all my sisters have in common, despite the wide age difference, is they’re good cooks. Even though we’re scattered across the US and Korea, we still share new recipes we try in our Kakao “sister chat.” Food and cooking is one of the many ways we bond, though we all have our own…

My family has a special tradition. To us, Christmas is the biggest holiday of the year. This tradition isn’t particularly special in the eyes of the Western world, but celebrating Christmas was pretty rare in Korea when I was a child. We grew up loving Christmas because of my father, who was baptized as an…

“I’m the fourth of six sisters.” People are always surprised when I tell them this. These days, having a household full of girls sounds fun and even enviable; but in my mother’s generation, having all daughters and no sons was almost a sin.  My mother later learned the chance of giving birth to six daughters…

I can still hear my mother calling me in that little alley of Jegi-dong. When I reflect on why I enjoy hosting people as much as I do, I realize this trait traces back to my maternal grandmother. Ironically, I wasn’t fond of her when I was young. It makes me sad to look back…

When the travel ban from the pandemic finally got lifted, the first place my husband and I headed for was Maui. There were tough regulations for us visitors to follow, but it was well worth it. The weather was beautiful, and it felt less crowded than it would have been under normal circumstances.  One of…