- Country of Origin: USA
Six letters, six minutes. C-L-O-S-E-D at 8:00pm. It’s now 8:06pm.
I stare at the bold black letters in front of the weathered “J. Hara’s General Store” with a bit of torturous disbelief. My stomach grumbles and I feel my husband’s thinly veiled displeasure radiating off his person like a heat wave. I turn to him and state, “Well now what?”
Grumble, grumble. “I don’t know, honey. I’m just as surprised as you are,” my husband says.
“I know right? It’s a Saturday evening. How can things close at 8 o’clock at night?!”
“Big Island really does things differently from O’ahu.”
I nod in agreement. “Well,” I suggest, “I guess we can try to drive back further into town. Do you want to grab Taco Bell?”
My husband, Jess, ponders my inquiry for a few moments while kicking a rock on the pavement below. I begin to shiver from the evening air while I likewise scan our surroundings.
Currently we’re standing in front of a locally owned market and general store boasting its historical status with old, wooden siding and some sepia tone photos on its outer cork advertisement board. To our left is a gravel parking lot, and to our right is a closed cafe and a small gas station. Other than a few lampposts dotted here or there, the cool, white moonlight shining down is the only illumination we have.
J.Hara’s General Store is the closest to our weekend getaway…a mere 40-minute drive away. Neither my husband nor I really want to keep driving, but we’re too hungry to go back to our campsite without something to eat. We have spent the whole day hiking the Volcanoes National Park and, in our excitement, we have neglected to eat anything beyond trail mix for the better half of the day. So, we hop back into our rental Jeep long past the sunset on Pele’s playground and decide to drive North until we find somewhere to eat.
And now here we are. But we’re six minutes too late.
Perhaps noticing my sudden goosebumps or feeling the cool breeze himself, Jess recommends we head back to our vehicle to try and look up something else on Yelp. Up until a few miles down the road, we have had no phone service, thus the time discrepancy with the restaurant. Agreeing, we begin to walk to the Jeep, chatting about our day all the while, when the young couple at a gas pump catches my eye.
Other than the not-so-amenable employee closing up, my husband and I, and the couple, the parking lot is empty. Typically, I mind my own business, yet I can’t help but notice that the man has been fiddling with the gas pump for the entire time Jess and I have been there. It clearly has an “OUT OF ORDER” bag over its handle, so I can’t understand why he would be trying to use it.
They look young, and seem stylish; the man sporting a boy band singer haircut and monochrome black ensemble and the woman, with her profile poking out of the top of the red Mustang convertible, is pretty enough to be an actress. He continues to call out to his female companion, with increasing frustration when suddenly it clicks.
He’s speaking Korean!
Many years before I wound up at this gas station in Kurtistown, Hawai’i, I spent many nights in Monterey, California at a little place called the Defense Language Institute (DLI), the United States military’s premier language learning academy. For sixteen arduous months, I spent upwards of seven hours a day, five days a week learning my assigned language of Korean to become a linguist in the US Navy.
Frankly, the experience was very difficult for me. Although my aptitude was great, and I had not much trouble with the actual Korean learning process, many of the emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects and consequences of my Korean course were back-breaking. The rigorous military-school work balance, homesickness, youth, poor self-esteem, and even just the blunt, and seemingly callus treatment from our native Korean instructors often wore me down.
I can see now how these experiences shaped me and helped me become a much stronger version of myself today, but at the time, I was often melancholy and filled with angst.
I channeled my feelings into despising the Korean language for being required to learn it. I didn’t want it to come to me easily; I wanted to fail and start something new in the Navy, but my fear at what the military would do to me were I to quit at such an advanced stage forced me to continue to perform well academically.
Essentially, I had shown my potential in a difficult course with a low retention rate. Were I to fail, my superiors might know I was doing so purposefully and reassign me a terrible job in the Navy. Like painting ships for twelve hours a day. Needless to say, when I finally graduated from DLI, I was excited to move on and my first duty station was…well, you guessed it, Seoul, South Korea.
Many aspects of living in Korea were very enjoyable, like the cuisine, shopping for cheap skin care and beauty, all activities I enjoyed, though I was not a huge fan of the culture itself. Being a foreigner, even one who spoke Korean fluently, didn’t exactly help me feel at home. The homogeneity of the society only succeeded in making me feel like a fish out of water, no matter how hard I tried to swim.
My time there, luckily, was short, lasting only about four months before I was reassigned to Hawai’i. I’ve more or less been here ever since, though I left the military about a year ago. Nevertheless, my relationship with the Korean language and Korean culture has always been one of contention for me, with me rarely speaking Korean to this day.
Do I speak Korean or not?
So it is, on this June evening in the middle of seemingly nowhere on a verdant, tropical rock in the middle of the sea, that a young Korean gentleman and lady are in need of help, and, if you believe in it, divine intervention sends a Korean linguist their way.
As my husband and I approach the door of our rental car, I feel a mixture of anxiety and apprehension enter my gut. Should I help them? No, they’ll figure it out. But they’ve been stuck there for a while already. But what if I try to help and I mess up? Will they understand me? No, I should just let it go.
Then, I think, “What if they were me?”
I feel myself walking toward the pair as if my feet had a mind of their own. Even if I am shy and my past experiences make me wary, I am going to help these people if it is the last thing I ever do.
After all, especially having come up the way, I know there is nowhere else to get gas but another ten miles north or so into Hilo proper. What if they can’t make it back that far? No, we will Korean our way through this together.
“Hwaiting!” (Pronounced more like high ting, the marker is similar to “Let’s go” or “Do your best.”)
I approach the man meekly, but then energetically surge into Korean, like we’d known each other our entire lives, though much more politely, I hope. He is definitely surprised, but I can see the relief on his face. I explain, “Ee-go-noon an-twey-yo” (It doesn’t work), and that he has to use a different one, that these other pumps have 89 or 93 octane, depending on what the Mustang needs.
His girlfriend/wife even steps out of the car to say thank you, as they are clearly getting very flustered, having never been to the US and are not completely versed in English, signage, and the like. Before we part ways, we even bow to one another as is customary in Korean culture, though rare in Western ones. In spite of my initial fear, I am able to help people in need. This holds a special meaning for me.
As we walk back to our Jeep, Jess says, “Nicely done, babe! I’ve never actually heard you speak Korean before. You seem really good.”
I reflect for a moment on his words. At DLI, our teachers enforced humility. Even the top student was not good enough. In Korea, I never felt good enough either, being a boulder in a world of pebbles. In my heart, I often struggle with worthiness, too.
But tonight, I look at my husband proudly and smirk, “You’re right. I’m actually kind of a pro.” Lesson learned.
Thank you to Yosef Baskin, and Eric Mabry and Julianna Wages on the Lifestyle & Relationships team for their inspired edits on this piece.
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Kloie Hiemstra-Tiska
Kloie is a wife, mother, and veteran living her Hawai’i dream. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family, being outdoors, and doing arts and crafts.