Michelle Zauner

From an early age, I loved supermarkets. I loved investigating every brand and its shiny, captivating packaging. I loved fondling ingredients and envisioning their endless possibilities and combinations. I could spend hours examining the freezers full of creamy melon bars and sweet red-bean popsicles, wandering the aisles in search of the plastic pouches of banana milk I drank every morning with my cousin Seong Young.

And I wished I could go back there then, back before I knew of a single bad thing.

My first word was Korean: Umma. Even as an infant, I felt the importance of my mother. She was the one I saw most, and on the dark edge of emerging consciousness I could already tell that she was mine. In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.