Weeks went by before I saw the fridge in person. It was Thanksgiving, the second without my mother. I made sweet potato tempura, which was what my mother always brought to Thanksgiving at Uncle Ron’s house. I remember on the drive over holding the heavy serving plate in my lap, stacked high with fried, battered sweet potatoes covered in cling wrap. On the drive home, the plate would be empty, and my mother would boast about how much my American cousins loved her tempura.

I bought tempura flour and a giant tub of canola oil and six Japanese sweet potatoes, dark purple in color and white on the inside, thinner and longer than the sweet potatoes sold at most grocery stores. I washed them clean and cut them into quarter-inch rounds. I combined the flour with ice water and made a thin batter. I dipped each round and fried them in the heated oil, working in batches, careful not to overcrowd them in the sputtering pan. I used chopsticks to pull them out once they’d crisped to a golden hue, and set them on a paper towel to soak up the remaining grease. I crunched into a hot fried potato and licked the oil from my lips. I dabbed at the puffed crumbs of tempura that fell from the edges with my index finger. Somehow my mother’s had always come out perfectly crisp all around. Mine seemed unevenly battered, but they were close enough, and it made me happy to maintain our family’s little tradition.

In Bucks County, my tempura went mostly untouched and slowly deteriorated into a stack of cold, soggy circles. I tried to put my own spin on it, presenting them in little fry cones I’d constructed out of parchment paper so they might seem more accessible, but Peter’s family preferred their own traditions, filling their plates with stuffing and green bean casserole instead. Only Peter and his mother made a show of adding my offering.

“Try it, it’s like a sweet potato fry!” Peter encouraged his relatives, much to my horror.

“Are these cookies?” Peter’s uncle asked.

* * *

—

AFTER DINNER I went down to the in-law suite to return some roasting pans. In the far corner of the kitchen, looking comically out of place beside knickknacks from Chesapeake sailing vessels and relics of Pennsylvania coal country, was my mother’s kimchi fridge. I’d almost forgotten Peter’s parents were keeping it down here.

It looked like a normal fridge laid on its side, large and gray, its exterior a smooth plastic. It stood just above the hip, with doors that opened upward, so you could peer into it from the top. In Eugene we kept it by the washing machine, and my mother would have to contort her body around it every time she needed to flip the laundry.

In each compartment there were square brown plastic containers to store different types of kimchi. I inhaled deeply, half hoping to get a whiff of the banchan my mother stored for all those years, half hoping there’d be nothing left to rush pungently through Peter’s grandmother’s apartment. I could swear I detected the faintest scent of red pepper and onion, though it mostly smelled of clean plastic. I peered inside. The containers were filled with something, but there was no way it could be leftover kimchi. The fridge had been in storage for months and it would have been wildly rank and rotten. I grabbed one of the containers, hoisting it out by the brown handles, surprised by its weight. I set it down on the kitchen table and unclipped the plastic lid from the sides.

In place of the chonggak and tongbaechu, effervescent dongchimi and earthy, life-giving namul, in the vessel that had housed all the banchan and fermented pastes my mother stored and cherished, were hundreds of old family photographs.

There was no order to them, no set time period or landscape. Pictures of my parents before I was born—my father in front of a snow sculpture, hunched over in the cold, his hands in his pockets. He is thin with a full crop of black hair and a mustache, in blue jeans and a tan down coat. The film is Fujicolor HR and the colors have a magical, nostalgic quality.

Photographs of me as a child, in many of which I am naked—on the back of a red tricycle on the front lawn, perched on a kitchen stool by the island, leaning against the door frame with a case of colored pencils and a xylophone mallet spread out before me on the carpet. Crouched on the grass, my hand plunged into a plastic tub of cheese curls, staring at the camera like a wild dog.

I knew it was my mother behind the lens. Capturing and preserving me. My simple joys. My interior worlds. In one photograph I am lying on a small quilt, unfurled in the living room, bathed in a patch of light coming in from the north-facing window. I remember pretending to float on a body of water, the articles spread out on the patchwork, my sole possessions on my makeshift raft. There is another photo taken from far away, and while the picture shows only a lone toddler in the driveway, seated on a towel one can only guess is a magic carpet drifting on a crosswind, I can also see my mother. I can see her, although she is out of frame, at the top of the stairs, disposable camera pressed against one eye, watching me all along from the doorway. I can hear her instructing me to curtsy in front of a children’s rocking chair in the yellow dress she maneuvered me into, instructing “Man seh” as I pulled my head through its collar, my arms through its sleeves, the Mickey Mouse knee-highs she bundled in her hands before wriggling onto my feet. I search for her in the surroundings, the painted Dutch houses and the porcelain ballerinas and the crystal animal figurines. And I can see it in all my expressions as I regard her—searching for her approval, caught in the act, blissfully occupied by a gift she has given me.

I called for Peter to look, tearing up as I sorted through the pile. I passed the baby photographs around to his grandmother and his mother.

“That’s one adorable little Korean,” his grandmother said, squinting as she held the photo close to her face.

“And god, that dress,” Fran squealed, singling out a photograph in the small stack amassed in her lap. “You can tell your mother just adored dressing you up.”

* * *

—

IN THE OLD PLAYROOM, where we spent the night at Peter’s parents’, I took the photographs out and went through them again while Peter was sleeping. My favorites were the mistakes, ones of my mother that were objectively bad. Her eyes closed, accidentally blinking and unaware. An impromptu photo shoot at the local Rite Aid to finish off the reel. Smiling and posing in front of the cardboard Valentine’s Day decor, standing beside a coin-operated kiddie ride, the aisle of wine bottles, the lawn chair display. A surprise shot at the garage door, halfway through closing the trunk of her white Isuzu Trooper. It’s like I’m there, watching her edge along the driver’s side and come around the car to unload groceries into the house, wearing large sunglasses, as always, her mouth halfway open as if in midsentence, I can hear her call to me to put down the camera.

Candid photos where she’s not composed. Where she sits on the couch and I can see her affection radiating toward me, unaware, my back turned as I open a gift from Eunmi. Leaning back in a chair, about to take a sip of beer. Sitting on the living room carpet of our old home, watching something off camera, her nightgown falling off one of her shoulders. I can see the vaccination scar on her upper arm, the one that looked like she’d been burned by a car lighter, how it stoked all her fears that I too would have scars someday. That it was her duty to protect me from everything I might regret.

She was my champion, she was my archive. She had taken the utmost care to preserve the evidence of my existence and growth, capturing me in images, saving all my documents and possessions. She had all knowledge of my being memorized. The time I was born, my unborn cravings, the first book I read. The formation of every characteristic. Every ailment and little victory. She observed me with unparalleled interest, inexhaustible devotion.