By Lee Chang-kook
One of the most important jobs, nay, duties still assigned to me in the house these days is to take care of my six-year-old grandson. The care of the boy ought to belong to his mother, I think, but as most of the women do nowadays she works and the most thankless job on the earth falls inevitably into the hands of his grandmother ― that is, my wife, and I am obliged to fill in the gaps she inevitably makes from time to time.
What is allotted to me is more of a procedure than of a task. Following the boy's time schedule of the day I go out in time to pick him up him from the yellow pre-school bus and keep him until his grandmother or his mother comes home. His father? He is always too busy with his work to be engaged in this business.
It may sound easy and simple to you who have had no experience in it, but to those who have will understand the enormous subtlety of the chore. In fact, it is much more of a handful and even laborious task than it looks and seems. It requires physical, mental and emotional ability as well as stability. More than anything else it demands attention and patience.
On the day of duty you should be very alert from the morning. You should not make any lunch or dinner appointment with your friends, or cancel it if you have already done so. You should not be late for the school bus coming and going, nor forget or confuse the time schedule of the child's. I have already committed the crime of negligence of duty several times out of forgetfulness, and was severely reprimanded each time by my wife, his grandmother, and by his mother, my daughter in turn. They lamented and deplored my declining power of memory and inattention to the mission, and threatened to revoke the privilege of taking care of the dear grandson.
Each time I apologized deeply and sincerely for my unforgivable misconduct, and promised to be more careful and vigilant hereafter, and was generously pardoned. What if, they said, by me not being on the promised spot on time, the dear person should have wandered off, been lost, hit by a car or kidnapped, while he was left alone by himself? They are quite right. We are not living in the Garden of Eden before the fall of Adam and Eve. Anything can happen to anybody anytime, especially to innocent children. We must be very careful and be extremely alert nowadays.
Left alone at home with him I try to relax on the sofa watching my favorite program on TV, but he does not allow me to do that. He has all the wonderful and very expensive toys under heaven to play and to amuse himself with, but he demands my companionship and participation all the time. It exasperates me, but I conceal my emotion and pretend to welcome his request. He is the only son, and he has no brothers or sisters to play with at home, nor friends in the neighborhood. I feel sorry for him.
He asks me to play card games or any kind of game with him, and I must agree and play it with him, although I don't like it. And I have to be careful not to win too often because he doesn't like to lose, and if he should lose, he becomes very angry, peevish and petulant and threatens to tell his mother on my watching the soccer game on TV leaving him alone. Although I haven't done anything wrong, I capitulate and decide to coddle him, because when he really tells a bad tale about me to his mother, she believes him, her dear son, not me. I am sad.
Being tired of the indoor games and plays he says he wants to go outdoors and my heart sinks, but I agree with a sigh. I know he is going to ride a bicycle. Recently he has switched to two-wheeled bicycle from a one that had two little extra training wheels added to the rear wheel. With the new speedy two-wheeled bicycle anything can happen during his riding. He may fall or collide with other bicyclers and get hurt and bleed. If hurt, it is the end of the world for my wife ― his grandmother and for my daughter ― his mother. They think it is entirely my fault, not his. Always, therefore, I have to run after him with my hands on the bicycle during his riding at the risk and cost of my old lungs and legs.
I suggest instead going to the playground nearby where he can ride the hobbyhorse or play on the swing, slide, jungle gym, and many other things and I succeed sometimes. When he agrees I breathe a sigh of relief. There he has many of his peers and I can take some rest on the bench just keeping an eye on him, and enjoy the scene of the playground.
Sitting on a bench nearby in the playground I sometimes become very philosophical on being a grandfather. Why am I so weak, chicken-hearted, soft, patient, generous and even obsequious before my ungrateful, indifferent and selfish grandson? I was not so to my own children. I got easily angred or impatient with them, although I loved them. My love for my own children was somewhat more reasonable and reciprocal, I think, while my love for my grandson is, I should say, totally blind and one-sided. I don't understand why.
My reflection transports me back to the times I was a grandson myself. I haven't seen my own grandfather, since he had died already when I was born. My memory with my grandparent at all is only with my grandma whose hair was already as white as snow on the roof, and with a stooping back and several missing teeth. She always depended on a walking stick when she walked. I look around and see many modern grandfathers and grandmothers with their own grandchildren, but none of them look like my own grandma who died long ago.
I miss her. I realize now she must have loved me instinctively and blindly as I do my grandson now, but her love and affection went totally unappreciated by me. Furthermore I laughed at her, disliked her and avoided her. It was always and only my mother and father who were important to me. She was just a dependant, an addition or even a burden to the family. With aching remorse and pity belatedly I understand the neglected and difficult situation in which she found herself in the large but poor family. I did not know then that a girl grew up to be a granny some day. I thought that a granny was a granny by birth. Now I am being punished by my grandson for my ignorance and ingratitude.