The Taste of Hands 

There’s a Korean word my halmoni(grandma) always used when she cooked for me: son-mat. Quite literally translating to “the taste of hand”. It describes that indefinable quality and the unique greatness of the flavor of food that is made by hand, the love you can actually taste. She’d say it while stirring jjigae(soup) or folding mandu(dumplings), her weathered, wrinkly hands moving with almost a practiced certainty. 

I thought this term only applied to food, but as I got older, I realized it meant so much more. 

Being Korean American, I’ve existed between two worlds; never quite enough of one thing, too much of the other. But I grew up mostly on the Korean side, in a home where halmoni’s presence shaped everything. I would wake up to the smell of freshly cooked rice and the sound of her chopping vegetables for miyeok-guk (seawood soup) at six in the morning. I’d stumble into the kitchen, half asleep, and she’d already have banchan (side dishes) laid out from the night before. Pickled radish, seasoned spinach, kimchi she’d made with her own hands weeks earlier. She never bought pre-made anything. My friends ate chicken nuggets from boxes while I had homemade japchae(stir-fried noodles) in my lunchbox, the glass noodles still slightly warm, each vegetable cut with care.

She’d hum old Korean songs while she worked, songs I didn’t really know the words to but somehow felt in my heart anyways. 

Her garage was a museum of things she refused to throw away. Jars of buttons, spools of thread in the rainbow, scraps of fabric organized in a way only she understood. She’d take the jeans I ripped while playing handball on the concrete and patch them with floral cloth, turning them into deliberate design. When our kitchen table wobbled, she didn’t call anyone. She just disappeared into the garage and emerged with God knows what and a solution. She’d say in her accented English, “Don’t worry, I got it”, and wave her hand around dismissively. 

When I was younger, I didn’t think much of these small acts. Of course halmoni made me food. Of course halmoni fixed things. That’s just what she did. Of course halmoni spent hours hand stitching a quilt when a store bought blanket would have been easier. I took it for granted, the way children take everything for granted, assuming the world will always be exactly as it is. 

But I now understand what I didn’t see then. Every repaired shelf, every mended shirt, every meal made with her old hands has son-mat. Each one carried the weight of her hands, her time, her choice to care when she could have simply just moved on. Every dumpling folded was a time she could have spent resting. Every stitch in a quilt was her own choice to create something with love. It all has son-mat. The miyeok-guk she made me every birthday wasn’t just soup, it was a tradition carried across a whole ocean, a way of saying “I’m grateful you were born” in a language so much deeper than words. 

I was so lucky. 

Thankfulness, I’m learning, isn’t just about recognizing the grand gestures. It’s about being able to see those small acts for what they really are; acts of love that someone chose to give over and over and over again, without expecting anything in return. What would my halmoni have expected in return from a 5 year old me? 

And once you start to see it, really see it, it changes everything. You notice the way your friend remembers the smallest detail about your life you told her weeks ago, the way a teacher takes extra, extra time to explain something just for you, the way someone calls to check in on a random Tuesday. These aren’t obligations, but choices. Small things that mean so much. These moments accumulate into something bigger than themselves; they become the backbone of how we love each other, the taste that still lingers long after the moment has passed.

I’ve finally learned what my halmoni knew all along: little acts aren’t so little. They’re everything. They’re son-mat, the irreplaceable taste of someone’s hands, someone’s heart, someone’s choice to show up and do things in the quiet ways that matter most.