When Life Gives You Tangerines

 

No matter how good the intentions are, things don't always work out the way we wish them to work out.

That seems to be the running  message in the 2024 K-drama - When life Gives you Tangerines.

Every episode is filled with equal measures of heartbreak coupled with elation.

In the beginning, we are introduced to very strong characters, each one holding their roles and executing it to a fault.

I watched this drama in two weeks, I was down with an infection and it gave me an excuse to cry for my troubles.

Life is not easy, but you have to keep going, you have to keep giving it your best shot you have to continue taking risks, big and small.

And sometimes it will be great and you can celebrate in the summer, so that when winter comes, memories of happier times can keep you warm.

But there is also love in this drama, the complicated love of family, and the sweet love of young hearts that have decided to be each other's soul mates. Not in the inexperienced passion filled sort of attraction. This has to do with knowledge.

When  Gwan Sick asks Ae Sun  to marry him, she says : No I cannot , you have seen me in my worst. 

But he insists, that he can love her  and provide for her more than anybody.

And he tries to. 

In the end, when Gwan Sick is dying, Oh Ae Sun says to him that -  Because of you I have never been lonely for a single day in my life - 

The viewer is confronted with his own decision making capabilities. 

When do you ask for an epidural?

Should I borrow money to rescue my family?

I loved the ending, it gave so much hope. Even thought (Ae Sun) was not able to attend college to become a poet, through the publication of her poetry books, she  becomes a poetry coordinator teacher at 60 years old in an old people's home.

This Chic: Conversations into Adulthood

 

So it’s like this. I’ve always known I’m a kawaida person. But not kawaida kawaida like vitambaa za viti in my sitting room. A bit stylish But not sleek like who now, your sis in-law ? Like I don’t care for expensive silverware and do not mind an untidy table once in a while, a yard strewn with leaves and chickens.

But I sort of have never sat with the thought long enough until I started hanging out with this family I mentioned.

So they have all these big homes in and farms where people can go camping and they take holidays and the Mum is a professor.

But she’s just kawaida, she doesn’t even do manicures and pedicures and such just walks about in torn sandals.

And she keeps kawaida dogs and has a kawaida couch and her bookshelves are dusty

But they are a family you know, and coz they are so tight they are able to love other people. Lost souls find their way to their home.

That’s the family I want to have. Kawaida, but generous and open and I want people dropping by whenever.

“EXACTLY!”

Yeah... like that ... dealing with banana trees that fell at night and such.

“And you really cannot handle the dust so it stays. But you have a dog and your food is fresh and yummy

And people have one pair of trousers with gumboots they wear every day.”

And a Tshirt with a hole

“And you know they were pjs one time long ago

But because you have a mind, you have fancy fruit and veggies

And make a cappuccino at home”

Yes. With funny print like a red chimney or bugs bunny

“Red Christmas chimney was gonna say that with green leaves haha.”

And you can bake cookies outside and discuss literature.

“And books.”

And sometimes I imagine I’ll have this earthshaking meeting of minds with the guy I’ll marry, but that’s not gonna happen. All you get is some guy who cannot match his suits bringing you oranges when you are sick not the sleek ones with their chocolates.

“It won’t be an earth-shattering meeting of minds.. more a slow burn as he doesn’t know how to be sleek with a woman.”

There was a guy once, he would bring me oranges and burn me CDs by boy bands and it was kinda corny but I was still in the age of romanticism and still expecting that earth-shaking moment where the water parts and the train starts to move and he has to run a few meters to say how he feels.