Abalone, Abalone!

This essay has eluded me. Stopped me dead in my tracks. Initially, I thought it’d be a breezy time of writing about my long time shelling passion and the wonders we’ve discovered here on the shores of South Korea. Easy, right? But then 1, 2, and now 3 weeks have passed by, and I’m wondering why I feel so hung up. Stuck. And then I realized why. The speck of idea sand agitating—rounding, spiraling, and curling into shell shape in my mind—wasn't an essay about shelling at all. It was an homage to motherhood.

It was the first thing I felt I was good at. And that’s probably because my mother declared it so. I can still hear her long ago broadcasts on the beaches of Sanibel Island or the north end of Honeymoon Island: “Look what Jennifer found!” “Another olive!” “Eagle Eyes!” And I was good at it because I was patient. And I was good at it because it was a solitary activity. But mainly, I was good at it because while I scanned the swash lines for the familiar swirl of a Shark’s Eye or the serrated edge of a Scotch Bonnet, I was pretending to be Karana from Island of the Blue Dolphins harvesting red abalones or Ramon from The Black Pearl freediving pearls. So when I found my first abalone shell in South Korea—a common shell here—I felt like I had found something as rare and sacred as The Pearl of Heaven. Fool.

As it turns out, abalone shells are discarded and piled up on the shores of South Korea much like the indigenous oyster middens of Florida. And while South Korea also has the same Neolithic shell mound sites—Dongsam-dong Shell Midden in Busan, for example—our abalone discovery was the result of a more recent anthropological phenomenon: throwing waste from a seafood restaurant’s back door to the shore. But still, my first abalone! I was suddenly eight-years-old again, standing in my mother’s bedroom and spellbound by that univalve. She used a large red abalone shell as a jewelry dish, and I can remember tracing my fingers over its air holes, mirroring my eyes in its mother of pearl, and dreaming of the day I’d find one of my own. My first abalone in South Korea resurrected a childhood dream of finding rare shells in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. So I reached out to my sailor friend, Darrell, and inquired about his Golden Cowrie. I started mentally planning a trip to French Polynesia. I drooled over photos of giant top shells and 9-inch augers. Elizabeth Bishop whispered in my ear at night. Visions of paper nautili danced in my head. What delusions of gastropodic grandeur this simple ear shell had inspired! Though ultimately, my mother had inspired the obsession.

Because shelling is an obsession. Like agate-hunting on Lake Superior or scallop diving in Homosassa, these single-minded activities flood you with intoxicating, yet hare-brained notions of existential revelation: I should have been a geologist! A scallop hunter! A professional sheller! My husband is a rock hound, so he gets it. He looks at a mountain and sees the potential for aquamarine, or red beryl, or sapphire. He looks for quartz veins and glacial striations like a hunter looks for the white flag of a deer. And shelling, much in the same way, is a simple matter of learning how to look. Eventually you memorize shapes and patterns like the torpedoed olive or tessellated cone. The imprinting becomes so strong, in fact, that you may find yourself shelling in people’s homes. A shell’s form spied on a mantel signals like alma mater insignia. The question is always the same: Where did you find that? It’s an obsession that has driven me out to the beach at midnight, wielding only a flashlight, a spring low tide, and the dim hope of discovering a rare junonia--after finding just 6 small shards of one earlier that same day. 

My mother is the only person in our family to have found a junonia. It was some time in the early 80’s at the north end of Honeymoon Island. She found it in a muddy embankment, not on the sandy shoreline. When I’m at her house I marvel at it, turning it over and over again in my hand—visually seized by its creamy color overlaid with spiraling rows of cinnamon squares. I’ve often thought its pattern would make a stunning dress: a strapless Cocktail with a thigh-high slit and a silk slip that peeks out like the shell’s outer lip. Its body whorl hugging hips; its penultimate whorl bolstering breasts. Perhaps I’ll make buttons one day out of my 6 small shards. 

After our great matriarch, Grandma Barnes, shelling was the one thing that drew my mother’s side of the family together. Each sister—and years later even myself—owned a print of The Sanibel Stoop. We all dreamed of finding that coveted Scaphella junonia. We all prayed for big storm stir ups the week before our Sanibel Island vacation. We all read Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers. And we all honored nature’s common wealth, her bounty, as we magnanimously bartered nutmegs for apple murexes with a friendly stranger, yet openly admitted we’d wrestle that same friendly stranger to the ground if we both laid hands on the same junonia, at the same time. It has become, for me, not only a family legacy, but also a way of life. Meditative as prayer, addictive as gambling, and sometimes as intrepid as mining for rubies in India, as you wade out into sharky depths for horse conchs or get caught in a cut at rising tide, forgetting time as you root in a sandy shelf for angel wings.

Through all the highs and lows of my life, shelling has always returned to me like a tide—faithfully, predictably—ever reminding me to be patient while I wait for the miracle. Shelling encourages me to seek goodness, to appreciate spontaneous generosity, and to understand that we cannot control when these gifts will arrive. Shelling, like motherhood, is a long game. You may wait years for revelations to come full circle or for the appreciation to be expressed, even as the memories pile up as high as an oyster mound. Memories forgotten, misremembered, or faded just as shells blanch over time. But good memories, just like my mother’s abalone shell, will always turn back up. 

In graduate school, I once led a lesson on synesthesia. To make my point, I gave each student in the class a shell—a large Shark’s Eye, a perfect Scotch Bonnet, a shiny olive, a smooth cone—and instructed them to describe how their shell smelled, sounded, felt, and tasted in an attempt to encourage a “confusion of the senses.” At the end of the activity, the students reviewed my teaching and gave me feedback. One graduate student’s critique read: Don’t give away your best shells! I nervously laughed and reassured him I would find them again someday, though for a moment I secretly panicked and doubted this. I think of this story as I shell in South Korea. Each time we go out, we find monster-sized Shark’s Eyes and Scotch Bonnets. These are two of my most favorite shells, finally returning home to me. 

Crestone to Corée

Emmylou sings about blue memories stretching hundreds of miles like a cord pulled tight. Hundreds of miles have become thousands for us, and now, in death, what? Light years? Quantum leaps? (How far is an eternity?) The Green River Gorge becomes Crestone becomes quarantine time in South Korea, and I suppose, my “Boulder to Birmingham.”

I don’t know how you died. I’m only notified by your family that you did. So in your honor I scaled a snowy path up to a sandstone stupa—the proper container for a great teacher—in Crestone, Colorado. The receptacle can hold ashes and small bones of a body or religious relics, such as paper scrolls where mantras and bodhisattvas’ names are written. Crestone is believed to be an energy center, a spiritual vortex, like Sedona, or your Asheville, as you once believed. Tibetan prayer flags fluttered in the winter wind that day. A spring cusp sun burned through the clouds. You were everywhere. In South Korea, your gijesa would have been held last month—the anniversary of your death. I think of you as families trim the grasses on their ancestors’ gravesites and bow deeply. 

I call a mutual friend I have been too afraid to call. I don’t want to call her because I know once I do I will crack wide open and my heart will spill over like soured red wine. But when I do, my mouth freezes against the phone: important words marbleize in the back of my throat. In the past when I shattered, I wanted someone to help sweep me up, hug me, and say, “You just needed a little attention.”  Am I too old to throw a tantrum now? A question you would’ve been able to answer. 

In South Korea the burial mounds aren’t faced with stone. I think of separation. I think of The Stone of Unction in The Church of the Holy Sepulchre where Jesus’ body was laid down and prepared for burial. I think of how the Russian pilgrims smeared their hot pink lipstick across its red marble face. They just wanted to kiss God. The closest they would ever come to a body. I remember standing apart, aloof, waiting to be invited first. Perhaps I still am. But in South Korea burial sites are unassuming grassy knolls that can be stumbled upon in the woods. Their religious artifacts are commonplace. Apples, kimchi, and bottles of Soju are left behind like a picnic basket for the afterlife. There is no formal separation between the living and the dead. 

I am failing. I have forgotten everything you taught me. I am not being present. I am not being brave. Instead of learning Hangul, I am re-learning French. Korea becomes Corée, not its native Daehanmingug. I avoid Buddhist temples, though they are bountiful and beautiful. I am afraid to walk in. Again, I am loitering around God like a drunk outside a liquor store. I am sending mixed messages to the multiverse, like your invented mudra of emotional inertia: a person holding up both hands—one beckoning, one halting. Come close, but not too close.

I don't know how you died. Your family only said there would be no service. On the Internet I found a two-sentence obituary published by the National Cremation Society. Your Facebook page was silent. For me, not knowing feels like a missing body. Your obituary felt like a crime. 

At the Wailing Wall in the Old City eight years ago, I tucked a folded prayer into a stone seam. Being very tall, pilgrims passed their notes to me so I could wedge them high on the wall. They would last longer there. On my petition, I listed the names of the most important people in my life: children, parents, and closest friends. My soul mates, my wound mates, my twin flame. Your name is written there. 

DIY Delivery: Part I

I knew it would be a different experience. I knew—22 years later—it would be harder. I knew, at my advanced maternal age, I would be picked and pored over by perinatal specialists with their genetic tests and nuchal translucency ultrasounds. But I never, in a million years, knew I would become a problem patient at the mercy of the South Korean medical system. 

I’m reading Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth for the third time. In fact, by the end of my first month in South Korea, I will have read every Buck book available in PDF online:The Good Earth, Sons, A House Divided, East Wind, West Wind, and The Mother. I imagine the scene where Wang Lung’s wife labors alone—locking herself in their tiny bedroom, pulling out the birthing stool, leaning hard into the packed earth floor. She’d wipe the sweat off her brow, bite into a strip of leather to stifle her screams, and catch her own baby. If it had been a morning delivery--and her second or third child--she might’ve returned to the fields by mid-afternoon. And so our emergency birth plan becomes a running joke as the weeks tick by: the proverbial squatting down in a rice paddy.

The joke has merit. 22 years ago, I delivered my second son in less than four hours. My OB-GYN back then had quipped my third child would probably be delivered in the backseat of a cab. I think of my third child now. Who knew her “back seat of a cab” would mean a birth abroad? In August, the rice fields are a waving green sea and our humor is high. The grasses seem soft, small cabbages crown like baby heads, and fig trees are heavy with fruit. But by late fall—as we move closer to our December due date and I start to worry about a fast delivery—the fields lie fallow, and the barren, brown rows depress me. 

We keep a running list titled, “Funny Things About South Korea.” For example, public trash cans on the street are rare, toilet paper is often on the outside of the toilet stalls (God help you if you forget to grab a handful on the way in and are already well underway before realizing it), and delivery drivers on scooters are near homicidal as they run red lights and side swipe you on the sidewalk. But second to scooter scares, I am most shocked by this one funny thing: any small piece of earth is fair game for a garden. Scallions, leeks, and lettuces sprout up in the most unlikely places—an empty lot next door to a 7-Eleven, the periphery of a trash pile, the blank spaces between old railroad ties. Highway medians, easements . . . even the foundation of an abandoned house is seemingly tilled, turned, and terraced overnight. Nature’s tenacity gives me great comfort though. As my baby unfurls in my womb, I imagine my little girl must have found a tiny patch of healthy tissue to burrow into and grow. And just like sunflowers turning their heads towards sunshine, nature is just doing what nature does best: following its instincts. 

The South Korean medical system’s convenience is a pleasant surprise. Appointments are rarely set. “Just come back,” is always front desk’s answer when I ask about making one. Cost is also surprising. A prenatal appointment runs anywhere between $20-60 and includes any routine blood tests, glucose screens, or ultrasounds. As we have global insurance, we always pay cash up front and submit our receipts later for reimbursement. Initially, we are nervous about the pay up front delivery cost, but hospitals quote us anywhere between $2-5K, depending on natural or caesarean birth (a fraction of the cost in the US). In the states, and even with good insurance, my office co-pays alone were $40, my first trimester perinatal appointments totaled over 10K, and my genetic panels ran 2K. So, at first, we are pleased with our new care. I walk two miles to my doctor appointments and look forward to them. My OB-GYN, Dr. Um, is a tiny man with a smile like the sun coming out. I walk into his office and he cries out, “Jennifer Nance(ee)!” (Koreans always pronounce an extra “ee” sound on words ending in “e.”) Between his broken English and my Papago App Hangul, we discuss my condition of “old age(ee).” He is happy with my progress. From my weight gain to the baby’s development, everything is fine.

Fall turns and Koreans honor their ancestors and equinox with a three-day holiday weekend called Chuseok. Burial mounds are visited and tended. Harvest season is celebrated. Rice wine is drunk. On Monday, a Korean co-worker, Mr. Won, returns bearing gifts for our family: fresh persimmons, dried seaweed, and Asian Pears as big as softballs. Koreans encourage me to eat fresh fruits and vegetables and to look only at beautiful things: an old wives tale that promises a pleasant child. Our baby is now as big as a head of cauliflower and weighs almost 4 pounds in utero. And this is the first time my doctor expresses concern. Despite my reassurance that my previous two children were big babies, that both my husband and I were big babies, that I—standing at almost 6 feet tall—am still a big baby, my doctor shakes his head. He’s concerned about gestational diabetes, shoulder dystocia, and the possible need for a caesarean delivery if the baby exceeds 9 pounds. He says he will try to induce me first at 40 weeks. The limit. I’m due December 8^th, but I have a secret wish this baby will come early on Thanksgiving, my late grandmother’s birthday. So I am not worried. Yet. 

In South Korea 45% of all deliveries are by caesarean section. With the lowest birth rate among OECD countries in the world, this high C-section statistic is due in part to litigation fear, mother preference, and doctor recommendation. Korea’s National Healthcare system has also made vaginal deliveries so cheap that OB-GYNS are encouraging the more profitable surgical delivery just to financially tread water. And because the South Korean medical system is largely paternalistic, a doctor’s directive, “Because I said so,” is usually heeded. Female patients rarely question their doctors, and their husbands—who could speak up for their wives—are rarely allowed in the delivery room, especially for C-sections. These overprescribed C-sections have become, according to an article in the Korean Medical Review, a "cesarean epidemic."  While medically necessary in high-risk pregnancies and complicated deliveries, South Korea has seen an uptick in elective C-section deliveries among young women in their 20s and 30s. This data alarms me. While I know I'm not young, I also know I'm not a high risk patient. My doctors in the US assured me I could attempt a natural delivery if there were no complications, so I'm nervous about being pushed into an unnecessary surgery. However, I'm not reckless. I realize that even though my first two birth experiences were uncomplicated, natural deliveries, they were also lifetimes ago. I know I need to mentally prepare for this scenario; I just don't want it to be a foregone conclusion. Why not give my body a chance first? But when I  propose a birth plan very different from my doctor's, the conversation doesn’t go as planned. 

Thanksgiving passes by like a stranger. We cook the special meal for a mixed gathering of Koreans and servicemen, and while the room is cinnamon warm and friendly, one guest is conspicuously absent. Our baby marches toward her deadline, thickening daily like a cover crop of rye wheat in winter.

South Korea Blues (written during March '20)

Mr. Choo loves Gary Moore. He says this over and over again (his limited English lexicon dense with Blues trivia) as we hike through Lake Oksan preserve with my husband and daughter. My 2-month-old baby bobs against my chest in her carrier, sleeping quietly. Too quietly. I obsessively check on her--adjust her face, watch her nostrils flare, lightly flick her rosebud lips to make sure she's still breathing--when I really should be focused on my footing. The precarious switchbacks twist and turn, until we finally see a sliver of shoreline from our high elevation. This vista makes me sad. Gary Moore makes me sad. The blue water and pine trees smell like Lake Superior. Mr. Choo softly humming "Still Got the Blues" conjures dreams long laid to rest: an ex-fiancé, a home of my own, a violin hanging dusty and dormant in our South Korean apartment. I want to say more about Moore, thinking about his Red Strat, his signature Gibson Les Paul, or the damn sad way he drank himself to death in Spain, but instead, I simply say my favorite song is "The Loner."

My husband tells me our daughter's eyes are blue. The sky is blue. Her Baby Bjorn infant carrier is blue. Her body at birth, seconds old, was bluer than blue. But right now, in the piercing LED lights of our tiny apartment, he reassures me that the pale blue shadows cast under her eyes and across her cheeks are NOT blue. I'm on high alert. Our baby has been diagnosed with two holes in her heart. As we practice watchful waiting to see if they'll close naturally, we are supposed to look for signs of congestive heart failure. Every sneeze and sweaty feed is suspect. I read about cyanosis. Daily, I inspect her lips, earlobes, and finger tips, afraid to discover a purple tinge. These were not the Baby Blues I was expecting.

COVID-19 has chased us into the woods. Little more than an hour away from us in Daegu, thousands of people are ill and the city is in lockdown. We are lucky, and in the days to come--as the world succumbs to the virus--we will realize we are even luckier than most. While having the second highest number of cases (for the moment), we are not ordered to self-isolate. Businesses are slow and schools, churches, and gyms are temporarily closed, but people move freely. They breathe hard through their medical masks as they pass us on the trail. Old men and women reach out for our baby girl, so I pivot quickly, shielding her with my body while holding up my hand to stop curious fingers from lifting her blanket. Koreans are crazy for babies. Having the 8th lowest birth rate in the world, a baby out in public is a minor celebrity. Men babytalk, women "kidnap," and shy children sidle up to you until they're practically sitting in your lap. I'm reminded of an old memory, my first son, 18-months-old, in Lebanon. A strange lady had plucked him out of his father's arms and walked away with him. When she disappeared around a sandstone corner and I asked who she was, my then husband simply replied, "I have no idea, but I'm sure she'll bring him back." COVID-19 doesn't seem to be able to curb our primal instinct to reach out for a baby.

Self-isolation is nothing for a new mother. Since the end of December, I've mostly been home alone during the day. With no car, limited Hangul, and a young infant, my lockdown came early. But I think of the dramatic changes the world is now experiencing as I watch the Louvre shutter, NYC finally go to sleep, and major sports events postpone and cancel. Moore's "Parisienne Walkways" have silenced, New York hasn't been this still and somber since 9/11, and the Olympics haven't been disrupted in such a way since WWII. I think of this time of watchful waiting. In anticipating an illness, every symptom, every small speck on an x-ray becomes a harbinger of catastrophe. A person sneezes in the grocery store now and everyone looks up. A baby gasps for air and both lungs must have collapsed. And as I watch and wait--for the virus to pass, for the holes to close--I know I'll never forget this time when the whole world held its breath and turned blue.