At sixty-nine she wrote one word: father
The road to school was closed to her for being poor, and for being a daughter. Decades after the father she had resented all her life died, she took a pencil for the first time at sixty-nine, in a literacy class at the Daejeon Lifelong Learning Center. At the top of the page Gi-hwa Park wrote the word father. The resentment was gone; only the longing she had never spoken ran down the page with her tears.
My father, who never stood at a school gate because we were poor, kept in my chest all my life. At sixty-nine I held a pencil for the first time, and writing father in my notebook, tears poured out and the letters blurred.
— Gi-hwa Park (69, Daejeon Lifelong Learning Center)
TODAY’S PRACTICE
Do not carry a grudge against a parent for decades. What is left in the end is longing you never spoke.
SOURCE
National Literacy Education Center · 2017 National Adult Literacy Poetry Exhibition, Grand Prize · Gi-hwa Park, Daejeon Lifelong Learning Center
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