My mother's hands are deep in cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, as she sifts through water, salt, and vegetable. Beneath her nails are saffron flakes of red pepper powder. My mother wears an apron; under it her stomach is full and round. The apron is blue with red borders. I remember she bought it one day at Woodward's on sale.
I sit at the kitchen table beneath a peach-painted ceiling and a chandelier with oversized plastic teardrops. Every now then I get up and walk over to the counter, peer into the yellow tub, watch, pretend to watch, and then sit down again. Across from me, the little knick-knacks my mother loves so much-ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown -- are arranged carefully upon the window sill.
My mother's hands are thin-skinned, pale, spotted and freckled with age and sun. The nails are thick, almost yellow. A few strands of hair, not quite black, fall over her forehead and her mouth is slightly open, the tip of her tongue just visible between her teeth as she lifts and mixes the cabbage leaves. "Are you paying attention？" she wants to know, and I nod at ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown.
Kim chee is pickled cabbage. Friends always ask me for bottles of the stuff: Mama Kim's special recipe, they tease. I pass this on the my mother and she grumbles and laughs, embarrassed, pleased.
My mother's hands lie in my lap and I touch them carefully, life them like small, live animals, fit them into the plans of my own hands, turn them over and think of crab-hunting as a child and a trail of overturned, shell-encrusted sea rocks.
Once I told my mother that I would like to photograph her hands, and she peered down at them, lifted her hands up to her face suspiciously as if seeing them for the first time. "My hands？ she asked, and I went and fetched some skin lotion from the bathroom. Her hands were too dry.
I had her sit on the couch in the living-room. The couch was floral-patterned and she sat in the centre of it, awkward, distracted. I took the pictures, head-to-tee shots, some of her hands alone. They lay limply in her lap. She held one hand with the other. She didn't know what else to do with them. I took the pictures. Every ten minutes or so she got up and walked to the kitchen, checked the oven, the various pots. My father walked by once, and joked, "How about my hands？"
The cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember. A winter's sun floats in through the window, plays weakly with the plastic tear-drops, falls down onto the kitchen table, onto my own hands. I suppose they will soon look like hers.
I get up, restless, lean over the counter, try to concentrate. Every year for the last five years or so I have asked my mother to teach me how to pickle cabbage. Every year I have watched her hands, seen the aprons change, the stomach grow more round -- the cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember.
I take the rolls of film to a friend who knows something about photography. He develops them and is impressed. He sees a small Asian woman, smiling hesitantly into a camera, lost among the flowers of living-room couches. She is tired and stiff. My friend doesn't even notice her hands. He calls the photos "real", I call them "disappointing".
The kim chee is just made so it is not quite ripe, but we eat a little of it at dinner, anyway. My father tells me his story about villagers who ran away during the war, as the bombs came down, with earthenware kim ehee pots in their arms. It is favourite, not quite-ripe kim thee story.
When the winter sunlight comes through the kitchen window, tear-refracted onto my own hands. I stop writing and put down my pen. My mother asks, "What are you writing？" And I tell her that I am writing about kim chee. She laughs, "You don't even know

A. My mother's band.
B. Pickled cabbage.
C. Kim chee.
D. My mother.