Seaweed soup

As I talked with her, I learned that she was an active school parent. She also served as former president of Sunny Hills High School's Korean Parent Support Group in 1991. In 1992, she received an award from the Orange County Human Relations Commission for promoting cultural awareness and dialogue. The recognition suddenly seemed painfully ironic. About two months after the killing, Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno ordered Mrs. Kim's son, then 17, to be tried as an adult. He was convicted and sentenced to state prison for 25 years to life.

I can't remember how many times Mrs. Kim and I spoke to each other after the sentencing. But our lives crisscrossed again a year later: My son Tommy, then just 16, collapsed and died while playing basketball at school. His sudden death hit the local news -- on TV and in print. The Los Angeles Times ran three stories: "Teen-Ager Collapses During Gym Class, Dies," "Heart Failure in Youth Likely Is Congenital" and "Friends Recall Boy's Zest for Life." As soon as Mrs. Kim learned of Tommy's death, she drove to our home. She walked into our living room with a five-gallon jar of seaweed soup -- known in Korean as miyok-kuk. "Here," she said, "this is for you. It will give you strength during these dark days."

The only other time anyone had given me miyok-kuk was during the happiest days of my life -- right after the birth of my older son, David. A different Mrs. Kim made me the same soup 20 years earlier, in Bergenfield, N.J. And she told me, "Here, this is for you. It will give you strength in the days ahead." Koreans believe that new mothers are better able to lactate when the nutrients of miyok-kuk compensate for blood lost during childbirth. And sure enough, when the first Mrs. Kim gave me a pot of seaweed soup, I produced milk like Elsie the Cow.

Seaweed after the birth of one son; seaweed after the death of another. In both cases, the Mrs. Kims prepared Korean comfort food -- savory nutrients originating from the Land of Morning Calm -- in a gesture of shared motherhood.

There were few Korean traditions or customs I actually turned to during my earliest years of grief, but the miyok-kuk soothed my tender stomach. Only later did I learn that the soup, aside from providing healthy doses of calcium, iodine and other minerals, also had a role in appeasing the supernatural. In the olden days, after bathing a newborn, Korean women prepared a samshinsang -- an altar for the three divine Shaman beings. They boiled white rice and brown seaweed soup, and brought these gifts to the altar. The samshinsang was supposed to stay in a corner of the mother's bedroom, near her head, conveying gratitude to the three gods, who represent the Shaman concept of magic that influences fertility from conception to birth.

Six years after the imprisonment of her son and the death of mine, Mrs. Kim called me out of the blue. As it turned out, she suffered from extreme depression about her son's imprisonment. We talked about him for most of the conversation. "He's doing better," she said. "But I can't visit him as often because he's been transferred to San Diego." I told her: "I'm sure he knows that you love him." And then she apologized. "I'm so sorry. I called to make you feel better. And here, you've given me comfort instead."

Mrs. Kim sounded terribly weak, like a first-time mother after childbirth -- fragile from the loss of too much blood. I wanted to make her a pot of homemade miyok-kuk, filled with dark green ribbons of nutrients to invoke the powers of more forgiving shamans. I wanted to hand over the brew and say, "Mrs. Kim, this miyok-kuk is for you. It will give you strength for the years ahead."

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