#8 A lineage of love language

A perspective from these "middle age" years.

My mom has been visiting and staying with us for the last four weeks. Yes, that’s right… four weeks. To most, this may feel like an impossible time to be hosting their mother in their small house with four young children and a currently WFH husband. For me and my mom, this has been the shortest visit ever clocked, and perhaps the best.

I think last year was the first time I really sensed that the center of gravity was shifting, generationally speaking. In the midst of a lot of challenges related to the pandemic, my mom came to visit and suffered a bad fall that resulted in a shattered heel bone. I suddenly realized that I’m the grown up now, even when I have my parents around. When I host my mom in a country that is foreign to her, it is my responsibility to keep her safe and to make the experience enjoyable for her, for me, as well as my family.

That shift is perhaps a central marker of… (sigh) “middle age”. I’m sure there are other indicators, but it felt like a pretty strong leading indicator to me. And so now I sit at our dining room table, in an eerily quiet house, the room that my mom vacated this morning still made up for her, and I see a new perspective. In this middle stage, I sit with my parents on one side and my children on the other. I am the connective tissue between them. And I see my mom’s visits as an incredible opportunity for my kids to absorb the unique love language of their Halmi.

My mom’s love languages

In the last four weeks, my mom has worked tirelessly to pour love into us the best/only way she really knows how. Her predominant love language is to feed us, sometimes literally by hand. Our fridge is stocked to the brim with Korean food she has made from scratch. Her kimchi fridge has been completely refreshed with new banchan (yes, that’s right, she has her own kimchi fridge that lives in our basement that is hers that she had delivered and installed last year). Almost everyday she made fresh Korean potato pancakes (감자전) for the kids after school and it was the first thing my daughter asked for when she got off the bus today. Sorry sweetie, Halmi left — not today.

Thursday night Bibimbop.

Her second love language is to gift us things to stay warm. Perhaps because she grew up post-War when she didn’t have reliable heat, she is constantly anxious about the cold, year round. That is why nearly every comforter and blanket in our house (that is not a product of koko’s nest) was a gift from her. That is why I have bags and bags of gifted socks in my closet (she is obsessed with keeping our feet warm). That is why she came here with a suitcase full of outerwear from the Arc’teryx Outlet in North Vancouver that honestly made me wonder if she had robbed them clean. That is why all four of our kids now have new shoes, new jackets, and new outfits to last the whole year.

Her third love language is simply being there. She always has been… especially whenever I hinted that I needed her, and even when I insisted that I didn’t. And ever since I got pregnant the first time around, she made it be known that she lost her mother when she was pregnant with me and really felt the loss of not having her mother when she herself was a young mother. She made this known so that I would appreciate having her around, and also to explain why it’s important to her that she is around.

I realize I’ve taken some liberties here with the term “love language” that was originally spelled out by Gary Chapman about romantic love. But I think the concept is just as relevant when it comes to parent-child relationships, and really helpful in thinking about building a life of relationships that are generous and mutually fulfilling.

A parent’s mark

When we think holistically about what we’re building in this one precious life, we cannot discount where we came from — what we have inherited from our own parents and parent figures. Last week I wrote about different ways we inherit views about motherhood and work from our own mothers, and it was fascinating to hear from so many of you, on- and offline, about how it applies in your own life. It has buttressed my belief that when we speak of lineage, it should account for more than our bloodline; we are the product of traditions, experiences, traumas, and yes, even love languages, that have formulated who we are and what we pass on to the next generation.

Now that I’m an adult (though I still feel like I’m just trying it on for size), I can appreciate my mom’s love languages and accommodate them a bit more generously. Her need to express her love in these unique ways is more important than whether or not I am hungry for it, literally and figuratively. I can also identify her needs — her buckets that need filling — because she needs a little bit of reciprocation, too.

And there is no doubt that I have inherited a lot of the same love languages that I now present vis-à-vis my kids. I feed them constantly and my greatest joy is watching them eat. (When our AI can analyze my video clips on my camera roll, it will find that 85% of them are close-ups of my children chewing, occasionally falling asleep while chewing.) I am always worried they will be cold. (I mean, I started a blanket business.) And I have designed my life and career so that I can be around. I also have my own love language that I built myself: I knit things for them, especially warm, cozy things… so they don’t get cold.

My kids don’t know it yet, but some day, when they’re older and living amongst their peers, they’ll have that moment when they realize that their friends’ parents don’t nag them to wear warm socks, and that their friends’ parents aren’t constantly asking if they’ve been eating enough. When their worlds expand, they’ll realize that these expressions of love are unique to me — to us. They will see that they are the product of this unique love language that has been passed down from me, and from Halmi.

My hope is that they will embrace it and make room for it when building their own lives… And maybe, just maybe, they will let me stay with them for a few weeks when I’m old and grey so I can feed them and spoil their kids rotten in my own way.

You can see more of my knitting and cooking and all the rest on Instagram @sy.seoyun. Follow me there and say hi!