It was a holiday morning.
I had spent about two hours at a café, working on the post I was going to publish that evening. I had a hot Americano and some chestnut bread, finished what I wanted to do, and drove home feeling good.
After parking, I was walking across the apartment grounds when I saw my husband standing outside, looking at his phone.
“Just getting back?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s gotten a lot cooler.”
I smiled and walked slowly toward the entrance.
When I got upstairs, my daughter was home.
“I went to the café near our place,” she said.
“Good. I’m just going to change and come back out.”
I was heading toward the bathroom when suddenly my neck stung.
I slapped it with my hand.
Something dropped onto the floor.
A bee.
I quickly grabbed the nearest cloth and pressed it down.
My neck still stung.
I washed the area with soap first.
Well. That was unexpected.
My daughter looked startled.
“There was a bee in the house?”
“It must have followed me in from outside.”
I asked her to look at my neck.
“I got stung. Can you see a stinger?”
She leaned closer to the red, swollen spot.
“I’d better call Dad.”
I called my husband and asked him to come upstairs.
My husband looked closely at my neck.
“I think I can see the stinger. We need tweezers.”
But we couldn’t find any.
“I’ll disinfect my hands and pull it out,” he said.
“Can you really do it with your fingers? Maybe it would be better to go buy tweezers.”
“It’s better to get it out quickly.”
He disinfected his hands and carefully touched the spot a few times.
Then he stopped.
“I don’t think that’s a stinger. I think it’s just your skin.”
“Yeah. I was starting to think that too.”
Since he had touched the area, he disinfected the spot on my neck too.
I took out some ice my daughter had frozen that morning, wrapped it in a cloth, and held it against my neck.
The cold felt good.
I asked him to look at what was under the cloth.
“Is that really a bee?”
“I think so.”
I even took a photo and enlarged it on my phone.
My daughter looked at the photo.
“It’s a bee.”
I laughed.
“Bugs like me.”
It was actually true. Even when I was with other people, mosquitoes often seemed to find me first. Sometimes when my husband and I were walking in the mountains, a bee would hover around me and he would tell me not to move.
Today, though, I had reacted without thinking.
One quick slap, and the bee had dropped to the floor.
Maybe all that exercise has improved my reflexes.
Maybe It Was Better to Rest
I wandered into the kitchen as if I were about to start making something.
First, I took the utensils out of the dishwasher.
Then I stopped.
Maybe it would be better to rest for a while.
I took a cold sheet mask from the refrigerator, went into the bedroom, lay down, and set a timer for fifteen minutes.
The cool mask covered my face.
The ice rested against my neck.
I began to feel comfortable again.
A little while later, my daughter came in.
“Don’t you want tteokbokki?”
“I think I want rice for my first meal today. I don’t really want to start with tteokbokki. Maybe later this afternoon.”
A little while later, she asked,
“Should I just order it?”
“Yeah. That might be better.”
After all the commotion with the bee, it was already getting close to noon.
My husband came over to look at my neck again.
“Let me see.”
He studied it for a moment.
“It’s almost completely gone down. You should be fine.”
Then he asked,
“So when are we eating?”
I laughed.
“One? Twelve-thirty?”
He nodded.
I had already taken the last mackerel out of the freezer and put it in cold water to thaw for lunch.
Lunch Found Its Own Way
Then the tteokbokki arrived.
My daughter was opening it at the table when my husband saw it.
“There’s a lot, right? Can Dad have some too?”
“There’s plenty. I can’t eat all of this by myself.”
They began serving themselves at the table.
The melted cheese on top looked especially good, and apparently my husband thought so too.
Soon I could hear him laughing.
“Ah, tteokbokki is really good.”
I stayed in the bedroom and rested a little longer while the two of them ate and talked.
Later, my daughter told me,
“Dad took all the cheese.”
I laughed.
Actually, I hadn’t been quite truthful when I said I wanted rice for my first meal.
I had already spent two hours at the café with a hot Americano and some chestnut bread.
Oh well.
My husband finished his tteokbokki and went back outside.
While I rested, lunch had already begun without me.
I hadn’t needed to make it happen.
The Last Mackerel
After resting a little longer, I got up and went to the kitchen.
The mackerel had thawed.
I put the whole fish in a frying pan and grilled it.
Then I sat down and ate half of it.
It was delicious.
I also had a little of the tteokbokki that was left.
Nearly two hours had passed since the bee sting. When I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, the swelling on my neck was gone.
Oh. The cold compress really worked.
A little later, my husband came back inside.
The other half of the mackerel was still there.
He sat down with some rice and ate it.
The last time I had grilled a whole mackerel, my husband and my son had eaten the entire fish between them.
Today, I had wanted the mackerel myself.
So I had grilled it.
I ate half, as much as I wanted.
And the other half simply found its way to my husband.
This time, I wanted the mackerel.
