Signs From the Past

White Lily Children’s Day House (formerly the White Lily Orphanage) in Daegu, Korea; photo (c) Sang-Shil Kim, taken August 2004

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My old orphanage is no longer an orphanage. It is a daycare center. So these days, the people who bring their children through the iron gates come back and pick them up at the end of the day.

I went back for the first time in a few years ago, LB in tow, and a Korean nun who spoke fairly fluent English gave us a tour of the buildings and grounds. It was a sunny, hot August day, and our tour included a snack of fresh fruit from the fig trees that are grown on the grounds.

At the end of the tour, our guide walked us down the driveway and to the property entrance. She gestured to a green metal sign, left over from the orphanage days, that was set in a brick wall just outside the iron gates. It read “Sisters of St. Paul’s Convent, White Lily Orphanage” in English on top, with the Korean translation underneath.

“You were left right here,” she told me, pointing to the ground beneath the sign.

I don’t think that I had ever in my adult life wanted to roll around on blazing hot pavement before, but at that moment it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to want to do. Anything to try and forge a tangible connection with whoever had brought me there. But of course I didn’t.

Instead, I mumbled something to LB, who was holding our camera, about taking a picture of the sign.

“Oh yes, good idea – we should each stand on either side of it,” our guide responded, and I soon found myself not embracing the piece of road that I had so wanted to claim, but rather, standing to one side of a very cheerful Korean nun. LB was about to snap the picture when the sister interrupted, “Wait, let’s hold hands!”

I did not want to hold hands.

But hold hands I did, and I even mustered a fairly normal smile. This was the picture that I cropped both of us out of as best I could and posted on the page of this blog with the Korean characters. Although you could only see a few inches of our shirt sleeves (her gray habit, my navy-blue t-shirt) in the corners, I knew that we were there. Smiling broadly.

Last night, I dug around a little bit until I found the picture of the sign that I took after our guide had left us, and I updated my page with that photo instead.

No sleeves, no reminders of false happiness: