Author's Note
1.
sudden tears
2.
What does a baby need?
3.
If you were a puppy
4.
Things that disappeared in tolerance
5.
Two parallel universes of love
6.
Quiet World
7.
Get scolded without getting hurt
8.
On the way to Grandma's
9.
Five Words of Love
10.
A bonus, huh?
11.
Children grow up in the gaps between their parents.
12.
The illusion of the best
13.
Half of it is grandmother
14.
Am I easy?
15.
grateful indifference
16.
The two faces of expectation and encouragement
17.
My beautiful grandmother
Recommendation

Shim Yun-kyung, author of "My Beautiful Garden" and "Snow," writes her first essay in 20 years.

Novelist Sim Yun-kyung, who has received enthusiastic support and encouragement from readers for works such as “My Beautiful Garden” and “Snow,” has published an essay after 20 years of writing.
The author's first book, "My Beautiful Garden," which won the Hankyoreh Literary Award in 2002, is still greatly loved by readers even though it has been 20 years since its publication.
Fortunately, there is no mention of Dong-gu's grandmother or father in the author's first essay, "My Beautiful Grandmother."
In reality, the grandmother is someone who gave the author such great love that he wanted to emulate her until his death and wanted to gift it to his readers.
In "Seol-i," which mercilessly exposes the duplicity and hypocrisy of parents' love for their children in our time, the author constantly ponders what constitutes a good environment for a child to grow up in and the true meaning of love.
In "Love Runs," the main character Kim Hye-na and her family, who run wild, show the true face of adults who never become adults.
Also, in 『Eternal Legacy』, the faith shown by Haedong's aunt and Jinhyeong's family was another axis that drove the work forward.


Author Shim Yun-kyung's style and subject matter are unpredictably new in each work she writes, but one of the themes that permeates her world has always been family and love.
In “My Beautiful Grandmother,” the author looks back on his childhood with his grandmother.
In that look back, there is the time of ups and downs of raising a child.
While raising her children, the author studied and refined her role as a parent through numerous books and lectures, realizing that the love her grandmother gave her was more profound than the teachings of any parenting sage.
And now, the great love left behind by the grandmother is transferred through the author's characteristically precise analysis and vivid restoration.


Grandma's Five Words, Grandma's Legacy

The author ambitiously embarked on the path of motherhood, giving her baby the cute nickname 'Honey', but the daily life of a clumsy new mother is a series of 'kicking the blanket'.
Of course, it's a big laugh button for the readers.
The 'Strong Legs Korea-Japan War' brought about by the Korean blood that seeks out smart children, the secret to parenting learned while playing with a puppy when exhausted from taking care of a difficult child, the image of a mother anxiously bringing her child home for fear of being late and her relaxed adolescent child, the scene where they bicker over the dishes and then calm it down with a pointless joke like "Do I look like water?" and then explode alone, are all exactly like us.
As a caregiver who is heavily involved in the growth of young creatures, the author naturally thinks of her grandmother at every critical juncture she encounters.
When I was losing patience with a child who was very shy and threw tantrums, I remembered my own unusual childhood and the tolerance of my grandmother who silently supported me.
The image of my grandmother, who was my roommate and psychological safety net until I was twenty.
In the author's memory, the grandmother exists as a 'silent person'.


Eighty percent of what my grandmother said in her life could be summarized in just twelve words.
'Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.'
In standard Korean, it would be 'Okay, no, okay, I don't know, what should I do?'
(Page 101)

This plain, simple everyday language is filled with wisdom, depth, empathy, and understanding that we need to embrace right now.
The author explains, with appropriate examples, the circumstances under which the grandmother said these words and why we need these words now.
While raising her teenage child, Sim Yun-gyeong realized that excessive use of language can be toxic, and she tried to practice the five words of her grandmother, who was a minimalist in language.


Let go of the illusion of best

“Children grow up in the gaps of their parents.”
This is author Shim Yun-kyung's favorite educational maxim, and she proves it through her own experience.
When I was a student preparing for college entrance exams, my mother threw away all the books I liked and filled me with workbooks, telling me to study. However, I discovered Park Kyung-ni's "Land" that had been left in a corner and read all 30 volumes of it. This experience became the decisive moment in my becoming a novelist.
Thanks to the education and love of her mother, who practiced the saying, “Flogging a running horse,” the author lived a life that everyone envied. However, one day in her forties, the author was overcome by the feeling that everything was falling apart, even in her stable life.
In their listlessness, they escape into mobile games and even end up suffering from dyslexia.
The symptoms that Dong-gu experienced in the novel appeared in him.
As a writer who always looks at her own situation through a third-party lens and analyzes her problems, Sim Yun-kyung objectively looks at her own wounds.
And instead of blaming yourself, you focus on taking care of your cats and plants and doing things that make you smile.
He completely understands the struggles of a child going through college entrance exams, as this period is exactly like adolescence.


During my period of depression and dyslexia, my thoughts on 'doing my best and working hard' also changed.
He has finally put aside the strict and demanding standards he used to apply, as he has personally experienced them.
'What he can do now is the best he can do, and it is precious in itself', 'He is not laughing while playing a game on his phone because he is pathetic and thoughtless, but he is trying his best to love himself', 'He may miss out on important things in the meantime, but life is long and other opportunities will come'.
The work born from this is 『Seol-i』.

Half like a grandmother, Be the Grandma

If my grandmother had seen this struggle of author Shim Yun-gyeong, she would have definitely said, “That’s a bummer.”
The author realizes that the grandmother who comforted and encouraged him as a child, regardless of his achievements, no longer exists.


It was the day I realized the huge empty hole that Honey didn't have a grandmother to live with.
Children absolutely need someone who believes in them and values ​​them.
In the past, such beings lived together, but now they do not live together.
If there's something my daughter absolutely needs, I have to be that person.
I'm Honey's mom, but I realized that I have to be half a grandmother.
(Page 162)

Even today, grandparents are infinitely affectionate towards their grandchildren, but they rarely live together in the same house.
The author now strives to become a mother like her grandmother.
And it tells the story of a daughter who, like her grandmother, knew other people's wounds but did not hurt them, but pretended not to know them, and showed indifferent understanding, and of good adults who helped her shake off her fears with easy comfort instead of excessive expectations and encouragement.
In her recommendation, author Yoon Go-eun states, "Whenever I read Sim Yun-gyeong's novels, I wondered what kind of time the story that shook me had passed through, and I realized that at the center of it all was a grandmother."
This lovely essay reminds us that the best way to love in an age without grandmothers is to give small peace without the recipient even realizing it, to comfort and console oneself daily, and to fill one's existence with a silent smile.

So I laughed like a grandmother.
I smiled, desperately hoping that I could smile like my grandmother.
(Pages 208-209)