Korean Work Ethics: Missing Places Part 2/2

 

   Next missing place was destined for mum. Or everyone in family except mum. Dad was offered a sabbatical leave from his job and he took it. Dad, sister and I left for England for a year and mum stayed behind. It was three of us going to England and our family could not afford to have four of them without no one to earn money for a year. So mum stayed, keeping her post in her job, working. 

   I was a goldfish swimming merrily in a small pond, Wonju. Suddenly, I was transported and dropped into an ocean. In that new environment, mum's absence was as startling as a palace without the middle pillar. No one was to effectively intervene. Though dad tried, he only turned both sister's and my back against him somehow. Mum's missing place was following me everywhere. To bedroom when dad was working late, to streets when I rode bike and saw families together, to Tesco when choosing dinner menu, and to school dormitory among new people.

The only thing that connected me with mum was a two centimetre thick computer screen and a web cam. She was only forty centimetres away yet so far away. Seeing her in her office alone nearly everytime we skyped gave me an ache. Although I was old enough to understand the reason why she had to stay back with brain I liked to ask again the reason why. So I habitually asked sometimes:

   'Mum! Why can't you just come over and live with us? Leaving your work behind for a little while?'

   Then she replied in similar patters 'You know I can't. I have to work. It's all for you three, you know. Who would send you guys money for daily bread if it hadn't been for me? Huh?' in joky manner. Nonetheless, I knew she meant it.

   After returning to Korea, everything went back to regular basis. Continuing on for being a weekend couples for parents. For sister, studying abroad in a university. For me, also studying and being ready to jump into three years of hell in Korea, called high school.

   Our family had worked hard, as our society likes to see. We gained, consequently, things the society values. Parents, high social statues of being professors in Korea, sister, a title of student in one of the highest universities, and I, English test grade and some other grades. Our family does not live in sumptuous palaces but live with no serious problems caused by money. We enjoy things we want to in reasonable extent.

In the exchange, all those--took something. In my memory, there is no such a scene where the whole family, every one of them, gather after work every day at table and have meal after work. No scene where we see one another's face after work. Instead, we were normally greeted by empty house. The things easily observed in other families' were rare and valuable things in our family. And they accumulated for weeks, months, years.

   Our family have hardly lived altogether, always making a room for our old friends, missing places. Mother, father, sister and I all over different places. Things I was too young to understand, now I understand. Everyone have worked hard for good.

   Nonetheless, there sits missing places in different corners of our house, crouching like a ball, stubbornly keeping their original posts as always.