Helping My Parents’ Business

When my parents opened their shop, helping them became part of my daily routine. After school, I would drop my bag at home and spend about three hours at the store. If I had exams or something unavoidable came up, I skipped it, but otherwise helping was simply what I did.

Most afternoons I stood beside my mother, the two of us moving in quiet synchrony. I packed eggs into thin paper bags, the shells cool against my palms, and handed them to customers while she made change. Every few days, I carried a bag of cash to the bank. Today in the US, the idea of a child walking the same route with a fistful of bills feels absurdly dangerous, but back then in Korea it was simply another errand. No one ever bothered me. The world, or at least our corner of it, felt strangely safe.

Sometimes I delivered a few trays of eggs to nearby restaurants on a heavy cargo bicycle. It was oversized for my small frame, built to carry burdens, and in learning to ride it I learned something about balance — not just of wheels and weight, but of childhood and responsibility. After a while, I could maneuver that lumbering thing as if it were an extension of my own body.

On certain afternoons, when my father had drunk too much the night before and couldn’t work, I handled the bookkeeping. My mother didn’t know how, and my father’s ledger was simple enough — not the neat columns of American accounting, but a homemade system of marks and numbers that even a child could decipher.

There is one memory I still recall as if it happened yesterday. One morning, I rode my bicycle seven miles to the wholesaler, bought three boxes of eggs, and strapped them to the back of the bike. Each box held about six hundred eggs — eighteen hundred fragile shells stacked behind me as I pushed off, my toes barely brushing the ground. The weight pressed down like a hand on my back. Sweat gathered at my temples before I had even left the parking lot.

Korean roads then had no bike lanes. I rode along the edge of the street, cars rushing past in gusts of wind and noise. It was my first time carrying such a load over such a distance, and the world felt suddenly larger, more dangerous, more indifferent.
When a car veered too close, I swerved, hit the curb, and the world tilted. I fell hard onto the sidewalk. The boxes hit the ground with a dull, devastating thud. When I lifted my head, yolk was already seeping through the cardboard, dripping onto the pavement in slow, sticky rivulets. Something inside me cracked with them. I cried — not the loud wailing of a child, but the helpless, shaking tears of someone who knows the cost of what has been lost.

A passerby stopped, lifted my bicycle upright, and asked nothing. His quiet kindness only made the tears come harder.
I couldn’t bring myself to get back on the bike. After a long moment, I wiped my face, took hold of the handlebars, and walked. Three miles, pushing that heavy bicycle, my clothes soaked with sweat and shame. By the time I reached the shop, I felt older than I had that morning.

After that day, I never again went to the wholesaler.