Hope for No Stories
Tenafly, NJ
2024, Junior, Creative Writing
Winter (Gyeoul)
“Saehaebok mani batala. Tteooleuneun haeleul bomyunsuh bok batgil balanda.”
“I wish you the best of New Year’s luck. Let the rising sun give you good luck.”
I gazed out into the sky as my Appa spoke the words, the sky painted red, orange, and yellow. The ocean was as still as my palm, like it was ready to help what was above shine. And so it did: a bright penny in the center rose slowly into the perfectly round circle of hope. My eyes burned at the sight, but I wouldn’t look away, for the calling of the New Year had drawn me in. For the calling of Saehae had drawn me in.
The New Year was a special time. A time of rejoicing. A time of reflection. A time of rebirth. My parents would tell me stories in the New Year, simply to take me and my sister into their stories, stories reflected upon the still ocean. Stories that seemed almost magical–surreal. Snow so clear and abundant you could eat it falling from the sky. Flowers so clean you could suck the sweet honey and run it across your mouth. Oh, not a single pedestrian would be wearing a mask, for there was no minuscule lung-clogging dust floating around your face each day.
Then they would tell me those stories were true. I’d smile, pretending to believe them, but it wouldn’t matter. They couldn’t see my smile under my mask anyway.
Spring (Bome)
It was a vivid memory of spring almost three years ago. Warmth embraced me like a heavy blanket as I stepped outside, heading to school hand-in-hand with my older sister as we climbed up the hill. I’d like to say that was the part that made the memory so vivid, but it wasn’t.
A flashing, circular light was stuck in the exterior walls of our school. You’d see it as soon as you walked up that long, long hill–the sign that warned you each day of how much ultrafine dust floated blindly around under our eyes. Particle pollution caused by wildfires and combustion, which were ultimately provoked because climate change worsened dry conditions. Somedays, it would be green. A great, clear day. Somedays, it would be red. That day, it was red. Almost instinctively we put on the masks we had in our grips and headed up the school.
Quite a normal school, and quite a normal day, if you would have to call it so. Quite normal, for me, at least. I hadn’t thought much of it until I moved away to a place of clearer skies and healthier air, and that is the greatest fear in me that I haven’t even noticed before. The fear that one day, the children of my children, or maybe even I, will lose the memory of all that is clear and start to call this sight “normal.”
Summer (Yuhlem)
“Umma, why can’t I play in the sand?”
Grains of sand trickled out of my fingers, leaving a tingling sensation as my mother brushed them off me. I didn’t understand. The beach was our thing. Sitting under the rays of the golden sun, splashing in the cool flow of the ocean, and trying to run across the swallowing sand with no feeling of gravity but the soft pillows of sand tickling our feet.
And the sand castles. They were the best part. Molding wet sand into sculptures like I was Michelangelo for a day. Umma, my mother, was telling me I couldn’t do that anymore.
“The sand is dangerous,” she warned, ushering me out. “It’s full of plastic. Stay out of the water too. Unsafe things called algal blooms might grow. We have to be careful nowadays.”
At the time, I didn’t care that climate change impacted ocean acidification, or that plastic degradation in oceans would emit large amounts of GHGs and advance global warming. I only wanted to play. I stared longingly at the sand, only to find something glimmering in the sand. A seashell. If I couldn’t play in the sand, I could gaze at beautiful seashells!
I trudged through the sand, excitedly hurrying over to find it, only to have disappointment fill me. The seashell was broken. It was green, too, and sharp at the sides.
The seashell was also not a seashell. It was broken plastic.
Fall (Ga-Eul)
The leaves were baked golden, splashes of red and yellow here and there as I looked out onto the highway. It was a beautiful afternoon, about a year ago, and truly nothing could stop it.
I squinted my eyes as I passed an odd-looking tree. The colors weren’t red. They weren’t orange, brown, or yellow either. In fact, they were jet black. The leaves were oddly broad and flappy, reflecting off the light like the tree was glowing.
I moved closer to the strange tree, only to be mortified by what was before me. The tree was certainly a tree, but it had trash bags for leaves. Junk was sprawled around the small patch of dry grass. A beautiful tree that once sucked up carbon dioxide, a gas that grew the problem of climate change, was damaged. At that very moment, I had seen a junk tree, not labeled for how asymmetrical it was, but labeled because it was truly full of junk.
Winter (Gye-Ul)
I stared out into the horizon once more, memories reflecting upon the still, still water. Another year of life, another year of fighting climate change. My eyes burned from the sun, but I could not look away, as climate change had taken away all four seasons and so I had to look up at the sun to hope. Even to this day, I must hope. Hope that it will not come to a day when I’ll be telling my children stories. Hope I won’t tell them stories of playing in the sand, stories of colorful leaves, and stories of seeing the New Year’s sun. For if it comes to it, I will tell them the stories and they will smile at me, pretending to believe me, but I will not be able to see their smiles under their dark, pointed masks.
Works Cited
“Consequences of Climate Change.” Climate Action, climate.ec.europa.eu/climate-change/consequences-climate-change_en. Accessed 8 June 2024.
“Ocean Acidification | .” AdaptNSW, www.climatechange.environment.nsw.gov.au/impacts-climate-change/weather-and-oceans/ocean-acidification. Accessed 8 June 2024.
“Understanding Ocean Acidification.” NOAA, www.fisheries.noaa.gov/insight/understanding-ocean-acidification. Accessed 8 June 2024.
Reflection
Reflection
Climate change alters our physical experiences, such as the way we eat, the way we’re entertained, the way we attain our joy, but it also alters the way we think. It changes our perception of what is considered “normal” and what is considered not, and over time, all our realities become fantasies. We tend to lose the ability to distinguish between what is truly abnormal and what’s not, as climate change surrounds us day by day like an omnipresent blanket of “normality,” especially to the younger age groups who have never experienced a world with less climate change problems. The numbing of that ability is a horrendous thing, as it will indicate that climate change has stripped our ability to live, remember, and experience the wonders of a clean world. As my parents told me their memories in the New Year, like they did every year, I noticed myself fantasizing and imagining their vivid memories instead of connecting with them, as I had been stripped of the opportunity to do so by climate change. They felt more like a scene out of a fairytale than history, and it got me wondering if about fifty years from now, my experiences would no longer seem realistic to the future generations too. My research helped me understand how truly gruesome the climate consequences in my own memories were. Ocean acidification, increasing temperature levels, severe particle pollution were not things that I had originally thought were embedded in my memories, but my research helped me realize they were. This deepened my passion to revive what the world used to be and stop what it is becoming regarding the climate. I hope my writing, my story, will help others realize that their stories are too precious to be forgotten or discontinued to the next generation. That we must fight climate change to help continue what used to be a wonderful world and let future generations experience that wonder.