“Next week is Chobok.
Could you ask your parents
whether we’re going this Sunday?”
I asked my husband
a few days in advance.
Every summer,
we visit his parents
around that time.
Chobok is the first
of Korea’s three traditional
summer heat days.
If we’re going,
I make
braised beef short ribs.
Waiting for an Answer
Good fresh short ribs
aren’t always available.
If I know the plan,
I can ask the butcher
to set some aside.
It always makes
the braised short ribs
taste better.
“I’ll call Mom,”
my husband said.
The next day,
he still didn’t mention it.
It felt like
I might be waiting
for a while.
Even last year,
I would have called
my mother-in-law myself.
I would have asked,
“Should we come this Sunday?”
I would have called the butcher
and asked them to set aside
some good short ribs.
Everything would have been arranged.
For years,
that felt completely natural.
But
somewhere along the way,
helping my husband
had quietly become
my responsibility.
So a few months ago,
I stopped.
I stopped making the calls
that belonged to him.
Little by little,
he simply stepped
into his own role
as the eldest son.
Nothing dramatic happened.
He just started
taking care of it himself.
The Stories That Filled the Space
Still,
another day passed
without any news.
What if
the butcher
doesn’t have any left?
Maybe I should
call and check.
Or maybe
I should
just buy them now.
Then I noticed
something.
“Oh…
I’m feeling
a little anxious.”
If I handled everything myself,
I wouldn’t have to wait.
But
waiting left a space.
And
my mind kept filling that space
with stories.
I was imagining future problems.
Two evenings later,
my husband said,
“Mom wants us to come
for lunch this Sunday.”
I smiled.
Just as I had thought,
it was the Sunday
before Chobok.
Then another thought
quietly crossed my mind.
He told me
sooner than I expected.
I hadn’t even
reminded him.
For some reason,
the worry
about the short ribs
simply disappeared.
If that butcher
didn’t have any,
another one
probably would.
If not,
there was
the supermarket.
There would be
a way.
Back to Reality
The day before our visit,
after my husband and I
finished a round
at our favorite
par-3 course,
I called
the two butcher shops
where I usually bought
short ribs.
Both had sold out.
Then I called
a large farmers’ market
near the course.
“Of course we have them,”
the man said.
We stopped there
on our way home.
I bought
the short ribs.
I left
with fruit, too.
There had been
a way
all along.
