The Man

We, my dad and I, met up my mom at the Korean market.  She’d gone shopping for kimchi material.  Oh, blasted kimchi.  But that’s for another entry.

I found her in the cabbage corner picking through the pile mindlessly.  She saw me and started laughing.

“Yah!  You know how long I’ve been standing here trying to figure out this kimchi business?!  Should we do our regular 10-15 cabbages?  … Or should we buy the box?”

“How much is the box?”

“It’s super cheap!  $4.99!!  … For 50 pounds.”

“…”

Holy cow.  Dilemma indeed.  I couldn’t help her with the decision.  If she was to do this, she had to find her own determination and umph to do it.  Of course I’d help out (sigh) but this one was on her.

My dad came around and found us shuffling around the cabbage mountain, unsure of our kimchi-making capacity, ability and endurance.  After listening to the situation at hand, my dad simply said,

“Let’s get the box.”

Immediately, something in my mom changed.  I literally watched the worry, uncertainty and even fear melt away from her face.  No one and nothing would get in the way of her and her 50 lb. box of napa cabbage (SIGH) now that her man backed her up.

Isn’t that crazy?  My dad, who knows nothing about the kimchi-making torture except how to chop up some stuff, altered the future kimchi population in the Kim household forever.  Four words.  It wasn’t what he knew or his ability.  It was simply that he believed in her.  Yes, such a trivial example, but it got me, got me good seeing what a man can do for and to his wife in a moment of unsurety and insecurity (because she wasn’t sure if her kimchi-making skills could match the box pound for pound).

Fortunately for the time being, I have escaped the claws of my mother the dragon kimchi-maker.  My dad endures another fate.  He’s downstairs in her lair peeling garlic, cutting green onions, splitting cabbages and alla that good stuff.

Four words.  He might regret them but my mom sure doesn’t.