What is he doing over there…?
I stared at him, puzzled.
My husband and I were playing a round at a par-3 golf course. I had reached the green before him.
The couple ahead of us had already left the green. But the man was still near where my ball had landed, practicing short approach shots. He looked a little younger than my husband.
As I approached the green, he hit a ball toward the edge of it, then hurried over with a smile and sent the ball back onto the grass. He kept going back and forth, practicing short approaches on the grass near my ball.
The couple ahead of them had not teed off yet. He seemed to be practicing while he waited. His wife was sitting on a nearby bench.
He has no manners.
I just watched him.
When my husband came over, he was heading toward the next hole with his wife.
I didn’t say anything to my husband about him.
We hit our approach shots, putted, and left the green.
But the couple still hadn’t teed off.
I walked over to a nearby bench and sat down.
The Same Patch of Grass
When I turned my head, my husband was practicing short approach shots.
On the same patch of grass where the man had been practicing.
My husband was smiling just like the man, walking back and forth as he practiced.
This is funny… Whenever we have to wait for the group ahead, he usually practices his approach shots and putting on the green. Now he’s over there doing exactly what that man was doing.
Oh, I’m sitting on this bench waiting, just like the woman was…
I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Without even thinking about it, we had copied what we had just seen.
Earlier, when we arrived at the golf course, my husband stayed in the car and ate some bread. Usually, he would sit on the sofa near the counter and eat something before we started our round.
But that day, I had eaten a sandwich in the passenger seat while he drove. Seeing him eat his bread in the driver’s seat, I wondered for a moment if he was copying me.
I laughed.
Something My Mother Said
As we waited for the couple ahead, I suddenly remembered something my mother had said to me twenty years ago, when our children were little.
“Don’t push the kids so much.”
She said it gently.
“No, I’m not,” I said, smiling.
At the time, what I was doing felt natural to me.
But even now, I still remember what she said.
My parents rarely nagged me when I was growing up. They didn’t tell me what to do or how to do it. I mostly figured things out for myself. They let me decide what I wanted and find my own way.
And I did.
After I got married and had three children, my mother-in-law helped take care of them, and we lived very close to my husband’s parents for about thirteen years. For much of that time, we even lived in the same house, on the floor below them.
I saw my in-laws almost every day. We ate together, and much of our daily life revolved around their home.
I had lived with my parents for eighteen years before leaving home to attend university in Seoul.
The atmosphere in my husband’s family was very different from mine.
My family was quiet. There wasn’t much arguing or shouting. I took care of myself and also looked after my younger brother.
My husband’s family was noisier. There were small arguments and raised voices. They seemed to see that kind of constant involvement as part of being close. Nagging children was also natural to them. It was something they did because they cared.
Every morning, I ate breakfast at my in-laws’ house, left the children with my mother-in-law, and went to work. After work, I came back, helped prepare dinner, and ate with everyone. Then I did the dishes, took the children home, and went to bed. The next morning, we did it all over again.
Living that way, perhaps I absorbed the atmosphere around me without realizing it.
I Thought I Was Good at Adapting
I thought I adapted quickly.
I could focus on what was in front of me and move on from the past.
I had dreamed of becoming an announcer in Seoul, but I returned to my hometown and joined a newspaper instead.
I stopped using the standard Korean I had spoken in Seoul and went back to the local dialect my colleagues spoke. I got along with them and learned how the newsroom worked.
I had planned to move to Seoul after three years. But before those three years were up, I married a senior reporter at the newspaper. Soon after, I had our first child, and within seven years, we had three.
The Bench Under the Trees
I thought about my husband. He seemed to smoke more since we moved into this apartment last year.
When we lived in an officetel in Seoul, he had to take the elevator down to the basement and go outside every time he wanted to smoke. The small smoking area wasn’t particularly pleasant either.
Here, it is common to see men casually smoking around the apartment grounds.
There is a bench under the trees beside our building, with a can for cigarette butts next to it. My husband usually sits there, looking at his phone and smoking one cigarette after another.
One morning, as I drove out to a cafe nearby, I saw my husband sitting there smoking.
More than an hour later, when I came back and was parking the car, he was still sitting there.
Smoking again.
He really does keep smoking.
I took the elevator upstairs.
Maybe what we see matters more than I thought.
