Caveat: 노년의 내모습도 처음으로 궁금해졌네

My mother’s visit to me here in Korea ended about a month ago. Yesterday in one of my rare visits to facebookland, I stumbled across a post by one of my co-workers, who wrote about my mother’s visit and her having met my mother when we went to Ganghwa Island. Reading (err, trying to read) a language via a dictionary can be fraught with a sort of poesic impressionism that is probably absent in the actual language, but her facebook post seemed vaguely poetic to me.
Since many people in my life don’t use facebook (including my mother), I decided to share her post here in blogland.  She had written the post to accompany a pair of photos. I then make an effort on my part to translate. If there are errors or awkwardnesses of meaning, they are mine, not the author’s, so please forgive…

호주에서 오셨던 노부인이 보내주신 캘린더와 손글씨가 정겨웠던 카드..
짧은 만남이었지만, 오래된 사찰을 바라보시던 눈빛이 아직도 가끔 기억난다.
주름 가득했지만, 인자한 미소와 자기성찰의 시간이 가득한 평안한 눈빛에 나도 편안해지고…
노년의 내모습도 처음으로 궁금해졌네.

The old woman who came from Australia, the calendar she sent with a handwritten note..
A brief encounter, but I still sometimes recall the sparkle of her eyes gazing upon the old temples.
Full of wrinkles, but in her kind smile and relaxed eyes full of the time of self-reflection made me feel relaxed, too…
As if wondering at the form of my own old age for the first time.

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