Shim Min Jung/A Plum Tree in My Nostalgia/Thursday 01:00~03:00pm

I love the word, Nostalgia. It makes me picture a girl standing on the end of quay and seeing a departing boat with eyes filled with sadness. The small wooden boat slowly floats away across the lake. There are mist rising from the lake and the lake is surrounded by lush green forest. Nostalgia is a mixture of two feelings – sadness and beauty. We recall the happiest time in our past. But soon we feel melancholy as knowing we cannot go back to then. The reason why the memory is so precious to us is 'it could not reply again'. It will not happen again. Even if the same things happen to you, the atmosphere and feelings will be not in a class with the first event. Therefore, a plum tree where I have memory with my grandfather always comes to mind with sadness and warmth.

 

There was a big plum tree at the garden of my grandfather's house. Under the tree, he and I used to pick some plums. The plum tree was so big that my grandpa had to use a ladder to get the ripe plums on the top. I was too small to see the whole picture of the tree. Therefore if I looked up to see it, a watery sunlight began to show through the branches. The green leaves became shiny emeralds and twinkled along with the summer breeze. After wrenching the plums off the branches, grandfather said "Take this and try it!" slightly throwing one of them to me. It tasted of summer. It was sour but meanwhile sweet and cool. Hearing the sound of fluttering leaves, I ate the plums with him and my brother under the tree. The summer day's memory with my grandfather remains as the plum's taste and smell. Since my grandfather passed away, I never have gone there. Not only because my grandma sold the place to another person, but the garden was no longer the same place as I used to know. I loved the plum tree in that there was always my grandfather who waited every summer to pick plums with me. If I go to see the tree again, it would not be the same tree any more. So I want to treasure this memory, my ideal big plum tree, in my heart - my nostalgia - forever.