“Did you have a good time?”
My son asked
as I was preparing dinner in the kitchen.
“I did.
It was fun.”
I answered with a smile.
He looked at me for a moment
before saying,
“I don’t think
Dad slept much last night.”
“Oh, really?”
I hadn’t realized
he’d stayed up that late.
This morning,
he and I had driven about an hour
to play a round at a par-3 course.
Maybe my son was wondering
how the morning had gone.
“Dad already went out again,”
I said.
“To a reporting dinner.”
My son smiled.
“Dad has good stamina.”
I just laughed.
How can we view the same person
so differently?
He had simply noticed,
Dad didn’t sleep much
but has good stamina.
He hadn’t written
the same story I had.
Mine had already begun.
The Story I Had Already Started Writing
The day before,
At breakfast,
he looked unusually serious,
eating in silence.
The front door sounded louder
than usual.
My body became tense.
Something’s different.
I reacted automatically.
Was something wrong?
Why did he look so serious?
Then,
just before leaving for work,
he smiled brightly.
Looking at him,
I thought.
Maybe I worried for nothing.
But that evening,
I noticed my husband
had put on a thin long-sleeved T-shirt.
“Aren’t you hot wearing long sleeves?”
I asked.
“It’s okay.
I couldn’t find a short-sleeved T-shirt,”
he said.
“There are plenty hanging up…”
I replied and thought.
That’s odd.
But I let it go.
I didn’t think much of it.
A little later,
as he scooped rice into his bowl,
he sniffled and said,
“I’ve got a runny nose.
Maybe my car’s air conditioner was too cold.”
Without realizing it,
I felt as if my morning impression
had just been confirmed.
Maybe he’s coming down with something.
I made two cups of warm ginger tea
with a slice of lemon.
One for him.
One for me.
Partly because
I hoped it would help him.
And partly because,
when he catches a cold,
I usually catch it
a few days later.
It felt good
to get ahead of it.
Especially
with golf the next morning.
Waiting Before Finishing the Story
The day before,
I had quietly been preparing
for a cold
that hadn’t even arrived.
I had noticed
a serious face.
A louder door.
A long-sleeved T-shirt.
A runny nose.
I had made ginger tea.
I had even started wondering
if I should make
beef bone soup again.
The story
already felt real.
Then,
my son simply said,
“Dad has good stamina.”
I smiled again.
He wasn’t correcting me.
He wasn’t comforting me.
He was simply describing
what he had seen.
The man
I had quietly been worrying about
had already spent
the whole morning
living his day.
Golf.
Cold buckwheat soup.
A short nap.
Another dinner for work.
He seemed
completely himself.
Maybe that’s why I laughed.
Not because
I had been completely wrong.
But because,
before anything had really happened,
I had quietly turned
a few small moments
into a much bigger story.
Mid-point
My body sensed something was different.
My mind turned it into a story.
Before I knew it,
I was already living
inside the story—
not the reality.
A Simple Reset
These days,
I notice
when I begin to turn
small moments
into a much bigger story.
Sometimes,
all it takes
is one ordinary sentence
to bring me back.
“Dad has good stamina.”
That was enough.
The story stopped growing.
And I returned
to what was there.
