A Thought About Love #6

My father and I
weren't close.

Still,
there's one moment
I've never forgotten.

A bowl of jajangmyeon,
just the two of us.

I was still too young for school.

I remember the dirt road,
warm under the sun,
and that small, happy nervousness
of walking there.

We sat down,
and my father asked,

"Can you finish the whole thing?"

I thought about it for a while,
then said,
"Yeah."

My first bowl,
all my own.

The warmth of that dirt road.
My father, smiling,
watching me force it down.
And the relief —
that I wasn't scolded,
even when I couldn't finish it.

Even now, at fifty,
that day still comes back to me.

· · ·

"Kids, want to go get jajangmyeon?"

My older one: "I'm meeting a friend."
My younger one: "I don't really feel like going out..."

That bowl of noodles,
I guess,
belongs only to our generation.

Run & Grind