Coming Home
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"Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
- by Robert Louis Stevenson
Exactly two months have passed since I came home. You may well wonder if I had been to some place far away from home for a long period of time. The answer is simply no. I have virtually never left my apartment in Kwachon since I moved here twenty-some years ago. Every day, like most of my neighbors of my age, I drove to my office in the morning, did the work allotted to me and drove back to my apartment in the late afternoon. I ate supper, took a walk, watched some evening news on TV and went to bed. This seemingly eternal daily routine continued for about thirty years. It suddenly came to an end just two months ago with my retirement due to age limit.
Of course, people around me knew well in advance that it was coming. As it approached within less than five years, I found, to my displeasure, some of them began to count it down, as if it were their own business. Whenever my colleagues met me on campus, they never failed to ask about it, as if I had an incurable disease and they were worried and felt sorry for me. Before we parted, however, they never failed to doggedly ascertain the exact date, month and year of my permanent disappearance from their sight. Most of them, except for a few, seemed quite relieved to learn that I was surely doomed to extinction as of the end of Feb. 2006. I do not think ill of them, for I have experienced the same morbid curiosity for my senior retirees.
The mandatory retirement that came upon me against my will has brought about many changes, small and big, not only in my long-accustomed daily routine and physical habits, but also in my mental perception of life and world. For the first few days I felt stunned, overwhelmed and confused by the sudden and unexpected transformation of my situation. I thought I was happy, but I knew I was not. I could scarcely trust myself. It was like passing out of finite time into infinity, out of narrow confinement into a vast field of freedom.
Although I have long prepared myself with many resources, the simple but stern fact that I had no place to go in the morning baffled me greatly for the first few days. I should have gone somewhere in the morning as before, not at home. I found myself a stranger at home. At home I could not feel at home. I felt awkward about myself before my wife. Ironically, I felt I had suddenly become a bird in a cage. The cage that had imprisoned me for so many years was the office, and now, at last, the door of the cage was open and I was let loose and allowed to fly into the blue sky as free as a bird, but I found myself unwilling to fly away from it. Instead, I was lingering before the open door and longing for the days within it.
I now realize, belatedly, that indeed I had left home for a long period of time. Even when I was at home, my mind was always somewhere at my office and at the work there. I paid little attention to people at home. I left home long ago, spent most of my youthful days, first at school, later at the office, and came home silver-haired after over thirty and more years of wandering. My wandering cannot be compared with that of Odysseus in its scale, perils and adventure, but a wandering it was in my own way, nonetheless. It is quite natural for me to feel myself a stranger at home, like Odysseus did when he arrived home after ten years' wandering at sea. It is quite understandable that my wife looked at me suspiciously, like Penelope, for the first few days, when I stood in her way several times a day until she got accustomed to my presence under the same roof.
Fortunately, time reconciles us to anything far better and faster than we expect. Now at home for just two months, I have become accustomed to many new rules and routines at home. In the morning, instead of driving to my office determined to do some great work, I am told to do many kinds of sundry works that had previously been entirely done by my wife. I sweep, empty the trash can, carry the garbage bags to the collecting bins, and sometimes - not always - wash the dishes in the kitchen, when I eat my lunch alone when my wife is out. It has become my duty to see that my grandchildren go and come from kindergarten safe and sound.
By now, my wife has become accustomed to not only my presence at home, but also to my services. She runs me all the errands to the supermarket, grocery and drugstore with no remorse, and I follow her orders faithfully with no grumbling. I am allowed to answer, courteously, incoming phone calls and finding them mostly for her, hand over the receiverto her. Seldom I receive mine.
The tables are turned. Recently she is as happy and pleased as anything. It is she who goes out in the morning mostly, not I. With my pension for life in her hand, each day she plans to meet her friends in a fancy restaurant and have good time with them, mostly gossiping about their poor husbands at home like me. Now it is I who keeps the house, not she.
As I said, time has the mysterious power to quickly reconcile us to anything. I have already become content, as wild animals usually do in cages. Within two months I have grown accustomed to life at home, as it were. The monotony of life has entered into my soul. I have a quiet home feeling of the blessedness of my condition for the first time in my life. I am in no hurry. I exercise, read or scribble when fit seizes me, but not as violently or doggedly as I did in previous days. I no longer hunt after strong pleasures or excitement, of which I think I have had enough. Time is not a burden any more. I can manage it. I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked my task-work, and I have the right to have the rest of the days to myself.
(April 28, 2006)
(April 28, 2006)
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