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Identity Is Our Operating System - Part 2
By Tom Kagy | 10 Jul, 2025
Chapter 2 of The Summerset shows how Grandparents can be the unsung heroes of our identity formation.
Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom. Over the years, I've come to start believing that grandparents are the unsung heroes in our identity formation. Of course, they represent the human embodiment of our ancestral culture. So they are important for our cultural identity.
But more importantly, I think they embody some of the deepest, most important human qualities. Things like patience, adoration, tolerance, an infinite degree of acceptance and indulgence.
And these are traits that we don't really have opportunity to pick up from other sources. Yes, from our parents to an extent, but parents are torn between the desire to indulge and their desire to discipline. So they tend to pull the trigger a little quicker than grandparents and often deny their children the opportunity to experience that absolute indulgence that strengthens a person's belief in oneself.
I had mentioned earlier that identity, is our operating system. And grandparents have a deep impact on our operating systems. I'm going to read Chapter Two of The Summerset which contains issues that went into the formation of my identity.
This chapter follows where Robert Taratelli, the main character, enters his old bedroom and sees his grandmother's body in her coffin.
The Summerset, Chapter 2.
Even then her face was full of wrinkles and her body was stooped. But still, she carried me about on her back. I was four and too old to be carried, as my mother and father were always reminding Grandma. But their appeals touched her no more than the spring breeze that lifted a few strands of her gray hair. At the time, we didn't have on-base housing, and the Korean neighbors loved to stop and touch the cute American baby.
While Ma and Papa were at work the two of us ate the Korean lunch that Grandma cooked to my order. If the kimchi was a little too hot, she rinsed it before placing it in my mouth. If I got bored while eating and wandered to another room to watch television or read a comic book, she followed me with the food, waiting patiently for my mouth to open. When my parents complained that she was spoiling me rotten,
Grandma endured silently until they had finished, then replied, "Do you expect me to let him starve?"
"Good God!" said Papa. "Tell that old lady the kid's not a cripple. He'll eat by himself if he gets hungry enough. He can't always have someone following him around with a pair of damn chopsticks. When Ma translated, Grandma shook her head as if to say, What will become of the poor boy when I'm not around anymore?
She was all that stood between me and the indifferent world. For dinner, Ma coaxed me to eat with Papa at the Western-style dining table so he wouldn't feel like the lone American in the house. She ate with Grandma at the tiny Korean table at our feet because she couldn't eat the bland American dishes.
Papa always made fun of Korean food.
"Geez," he would say, his face twisted with horror, pointing down at some fiery-looking dish. "How can you people eat that stuff? No wonder so many of the KNs at the office have ulcers. No wonder!" He turned to me to bear witness, and I gave a hypocritical chuckle. Reassured of our culinary camaraderie, Papa continued, "Why can't you people eat some wholesome food, like Bob and I?"
And the next day I ate my Korean lunch. When I started school, I had to eat at the cafeteria and could join Papa in poking fun with a clearer conscience. When a schoolmate asked if I ate kimchi, I responded with a leery expression. " tried it, but it stinks," I said.
"But your mom's Korean, ain't she?" Persisted the boy. "You ought to be able to eat that stuff real good. And I'll bet you can speak Korean pretty good, too."
"I speak a little, the simple stuff." Why couldn't he just leave me alone? I put on my pants one leg at a time, just like everybody else. "You're lying, you Korean," he said. "You're just ashamed of being Korean."
My friends waited for me to deny it so they wouldn't have to play with a Korean.
"You better take it back, Rambo, or else I'll beat the crap out of you."
"You zip," he cried. I threw him down and sat on his stomach. I slugged away until his older sister in the fourth grade pulled me off, screaming and beating my head with her shiny white purse. Miss Gregory was on playground duty, and she ran over. She shook her head as she led me by the hand to Mr. Adams' office.
She didn't want to do it because I was her pet, but rules are rules.
When Jimmy was born, Grandma could only spend a part of her time on me, and I was glad. I worried what my friends would think if they knew that I was cared for by a Korean grandmother.
Sometimes I felt bad for having tried to avoid her attentions and made up for it by letting her feed me apples, peeled and sliced, while I told her about things I had done at school. At such moments, Grandma's eyes were misty and her face crinkled with happiness. Grandma was proud of the flower garden she had created in the backyard against the gray cement wall that surrounded our house.
Whenever Mary, our tan mongrel, trampled through it, Grandma became fierce as she chased after her with the sticks she kept for that purpose. This caused a lot of hard feelings between the two. There were hard feelings between her and Papa as well because he was equally fond of the struggling young lawn that he had managed to start in the backyard, against all odds.
On Saturday morning, as usual, he was mowing. Suddenly he charged into the house.
"Good God, that old woman's done it again!"
"What's the matter?" Ma asked. He glared in mute anger, unable to find words suitable for the atrocity he had just discovered. He grabbed Ma and me by the arm and dragged us out to the yard.
He pointed an outraged finger at a small patch of freshly-hoed earth that had lately been a part of his lawn.
"See that? Before you know it, this whole damn yard will be nothing but flowers!" With that ominous prophecy, he allowed his arms to flop to his sides.
"It's only a little piece," said Ma, already on her way back to the house. "She's a very old woman, so please be nice to her."
Papa scowled after her. Then he looked at me as if to say, What can you do with a woman like that? I sighed diplomatically.
"It's a shame, ain't it, Bob? I bring home the paycheck for Christ's sake, but I'm nothing around this house. What I say just don't make a goddamn bit of difference. I might as well live out in the doghouse with Mary for all that respect I get."
Mary lifted up her head at the mention of her name, and after a short yawn and a shake, trudged obediently over to us.
"The trouble is," Papa continued, "Grandma ain't got the sense God gives a goose. But she's got an excuse because she's getting old and her mind ain't what it used to be, all right? So what's Ma's excuse? I shrugged. She's hard-headed, that's what, just like the rest of them Koreans. Hard-headed.
"She knows I'm trying to grow a lawn so you'll have a nice patch of grass to play on instead of the dirt. I tell Ma, if you let me grow a lawn out there, you won't have to worry about mud when it rains. And it won't be so dusty when it's dry. So what does she do the next day?"
"She covers the yard with gravel," I answered to hurry it along so I can return to watching the cartoons on TV.
"And you know, I had a hell of a time getting all them rocks the hell out of here. I'm telling you, the woman's got rocks in her head. Just like the rest of the Koreans. Why do you think they call this country ROK? I felt obliged to chuckle. Now don't get me wrong, Bob. I'm not saying the Koreans are bad people. They're hardworking and good-hearted. But they think they know everything and don't like to listen to nobody.
"But they can't even get along between themselves. How do you think Japan took over for so long? Now, your typical Japanese is smaller and weaker than your typical Korean. But they know how to work together. All the Koreans can do is fight among themselves.
"Now you got some of that Korean hardheadedness in you, Bob. You can be a little stubborn at times, but you're a smart boy and we're going to give you the best education money can buy. Harvard, Yale, Princeton. You just keep up the good grades and I'll take care of the financial end. You're going to have that hardheadedness educated right out of you." He ruffled my hair and let a smile creep over his face. "All right. Run inside and watch your Captain Kangaroo."
I ran back into the house and Papa returned to mowing his diminished lawn.
In the fifth grade my closest friend was a blond-haired boy named Bob Wiley. Everyone called us the Bobby Twins because we were always together. When he asked me to spend the night at his house, I told him I would let him know after asking my mother.
The next day I decided to accept. After that I accepted several more invitations.
"How come you never invite me over to your house?" he asked, looking at the sky.
"I live too far away. I felt my face burn."
"Well, I'll bet it's loads of fun riding in a bus full of kids."
"It's all right. We have orange peel fights and make fun of the dumb girls." I couldn't contain the pride I felt at the one advantage I had over him. "This morning, Peter Shouf gave Carl Stephenson a bloody nose."
"My mother says I could go over if it's alright with yours," Bob said.
Before I knew it, I had invited him to spend the entire weekend and felt miserable for the rest of the week, anticipating his reactions to all the non-American things about my family, house and neighborhood. If only I could be sick enough on Friday. After that, there were only a couple of weeks left until summer vacation when I would simply avoid him.
But on Friday morning, my act didn't fool Ma, and I rode silently to school. Bobby opened his bag and showed me the orange and firecrackers he had brought for the ride.
"Nobody sets off firecrackers on the bus. The driver would really get mad."
"So what?" His blue eyes shone with anticipation as he pantomimed the lighting and tossing of a firecracker. "He's just a Korean, right?"
That afternoon I forgot my worries as soon as we started an orange peel fight with some girls who wore plastic hairbands and lipstick that they rubbed off before getting home.
After we had used up the orange sections, as well as the peels, Bobby tossed the firecracker to the front of the bus and plugged his ears. The bus didn't blow apart as I had expected from the sound of the explosion, but it did screech to the side of the road. The driver jumped out of his seat and glared at the busload of momentarily silent kids, biting hard on his lower lip. "Goddamn son of a bitchmotherfuckingshits."
After repeating that a couple more times, he muttered a few fascinating phrases in Korean. When the bus was once more rumbling down the road, Bobby led the kids in a sing-song taunt of the Zip bus driver. I again felt ill. From the bus stop to the gate of our house was a narrow dirt road bordered on one side by an open sewer overgrown with weeds and beyond a cabbage patch, and on the other side by the unbroken cement wall that formed the front of the row of houses. Fortunately, ours was the largest. Bobby made no comments as if we were walking down a white cement sidewalk of the Yongsan Eighth Army South Post, bordered by neat lawns and well-barbered maples.
When I pressed the buzzer concealed in the mail slot of the heavy iron gate, he chuckled and wondered out loud if we would be let in.
"It's like a fortress!" he said, gazing at the spikes and barbed wire atop the wall.
"Lots of slickyboys try to break in." I tried to make it sound like a joke. With the army of MPs and SGs patrolling the wall that separated South Post from the rest of Seoul his family didn't have to worry about burglars.
The door was opened by Grandma, who, as usual, was happy at my return from school.
"Is she your maid?" Bobby asked as I tried to evade her affectionate touching.
"No." In the foyer, I bent down to pull off my shoes, feeling my ears grow hot, and Bobby quietly followed suit.
"Is she your grandma?"
"Yeah. I'll take your bags to my room. That's my baby brother. Ma, I'm home with Bobby!" I warned, hoping that she had not forgotten my list of special requests, mostly don'ts, that I had carefully written out for her before leaving for school. Ma came in with a tray of cookies and milk and, according to my script, asked Bobby several senseless questions while I feigned irritation.
"She's pretty," Bobby confided.
When she had gone to cook dinner, I prayed that she hadn't forgotten about the smelly foods.
"She's different from the other Korean ladies."
I wished he hadn't felt it necessary to add that.
Our split-level seating arrangement at dinner confused Bobby. At first he tried to pretend that there were only we three men in the room until Papa made his usual cracks. Then Bobby hung his face over the little table of curiosities.
"Ooh, what's that, Mrs. Taratelli?" asked Bobby, pointing to a dish of toasted seaweed.
"Here, try a piece," said Ma, holding it up to his mouth with her chopsticks.
He looked at Papa and me and shrugged as if to say, what the heck? you only lived once before taking it into his mouth. He made a show of chewing it very cautiously, amusing everyone but me, then swallowed with an exaggerated gulp.
"That wasn't too bad," he decided. "What's that, Mrs. Taratelli?" he asked suspiciously, pointing to the hot pickled radish.
This sort of foolishness continued until Bobby had filled himself on Korean food, hardly having touched his own plate. For the rest of the stay, he joined the women outright. He didn't have to worry about me thinking that he was Korean. Anyone could see he wasn't.
The next afternoon Grandma came into my room while we were reading my collection of Superman comics.
I tried to ignore her as she stroked my head and asked me questions. Why hadn't Ma told her not to speak Korean to me? I snapped one-syllable answers. When she persisted, the strain of embarrassment and hypocrisy became too much. I burst out of the room and ordered Ma to make Grandma leave me alone.
"Bobby, she's your grandmother. You haven't said a word to her since you came home yesterday."
"She's bothering us!"
Grandma didn't understand English, but she had understood. As she passed slowly out of my room, she touched me and smiled as best she could. I reached out for her hand, but it was a weak gesture and too late.
I reached into the coffin and ran my fingers over the cool but still soft wrinkled face. I had the urge to open her lids so she could see me once more, at least so I could see her looking at me. I opened them slowly but immediately re-closed them. She was dead.
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