At a drinking gathering at that street-side drinking tent in Insadong,
the saying “Half the liquor has been spilled” became the evening’s theme.
While I read books or watched TV dramas, tears often gathering in my eyes,
my husband would come over, tilt my chin upward, and tease,
“There goes our baby crying again.”
Yet these days, whenever he hears even the saddest tale, his eyes grow moist.
Today as well, he arrived in haste, saying he had been moved to tears by a radio program on his way home from work.
At the evening table, after the grown children have left the nest,
a husband and wife with silvering hair sit across from each other,
exchanging glances of gentle compassion.
Is it because half the liquor has already been spilled?
Or is it the hope in our eyes that half the bottle still remains to be shared?
Inside the bottle of life, whose depths no one can truly know…
