Ramen and painted work clothes
Eating ramen at lunch on a summer day isn’t usually in my mind. It is much rare to choose Korean spicy ramen, unlike Japanese-style soy-sauce ramen. If my co-worker who had a sudden craving for ramen didn’t catch me at lunchtime, I would not go to “Kimbab Cheonguk”, a Korean snack bar, in the sunny weather, and order K-ramen.
Kimbab Cheonguk at lunchtime was so crowded that we had to line up. Since we already passed two or three restaurants, we gave up looking for another place and lined up after other guests. I thought eating even 3 dollar ramen at the Euljiro area, the central business district in Seoul requires quite a bit of effort. When I sneaked a look inside, some people seemed to work at the construction site nearby cramping down foods.
When I saw their work clothes with paint stains, I naturally thought of my dad. No, in fact, I remembered my dad a little later, and the scene first came to mind — when I came home from the funeral and took out dad’s clothes. I opened the closet and put all of his work clothes stained with paint, and all the good work clothes he had kept into a plastic bag as well. There were so many clothes that it took a while to carry all out to the recycling container outside.
My father was a manager of a local small business. To put it plainly, he was a salaried worker who struggled to get stuck between the boss and employees at a subcontractor at the end of the value chain in the construction industry. My father’s clothes, who had been working at construction sites nationwide for decades, always had paint stain on them.
The clothes of the people in the snack-bar were the same as the dad I had always seen. The work clothes bruised, so I used to say to dad, “Make it a little neat.” As I kept looking at them, I thought even my dad would stand up now wiping the sweat on his forehead somewhere in the corner of the restaurant.
Oh, my… meeting my dad again.
This awkward feeling is also getting used to it. It would have been nice if I could say to him that now I could understand your life a little more. But it is also nice to welcoming dad’s unexpected visit to my daily life, like today.
Dad, mom enrolled in her high school graduation exam today. Please don’t let her fail at this time again. Even though you used to say you didn’t have a bit of luck at the test in your lifetime, I think you should do this if you still think of your wife over there. Her wishing is not even a big deal, like winning a lottery. Isn’t it?
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