After his retirement, I thought he would be able to live a quiet, relaxing, normal life, to live in ease and comfort – I thought we would be happier than ever before. Perhaps you don’t know, but since my father’s life had revolved around work, he didn’t much care for family life and he didn’t show much concern for us. But our feelings for him were deep and real. We never complained that he spent little of his time with us. In truth, we understood him, supported him, respected him. We believed that his golden years would be filled with happiness because, up until now, he’d known only work. In order to give him something to do after his retirement, we planted a flower garden round the house and began to raise a few birds and fish. Once the holidays came, we took him to see our relatives and also for strolls in the park. At the time, Ah-bing hadn’t yet begun his graduate studies and he didn’t talk much about girls. I just wanted him to keep Father company and not to burden him with his own personal concerns. That’s what he did. The two of them would just chat about trivial things and go for walks together, all very relaxing. Ah-bing was raised by our maternal grandmother. Afterwards he performed his mandatory military service, and then went to university. So you could say that the relationship between father and son was rather cold and distant. Now that they were often together, I worried at first that they would have difficulties talking and getting along with each other, but I soon realized that my worries were groundless. They got along marvellously, much better than I had expected. Afterwards, I thought this might be because they had never had much to do with one another before: they were like two long-lost friends getting re-acquainted with one another. They always seemed to have something to talk about, and they’d talk and talk for hours non-stop. For the first little while after his retirement, everyone was incredibly happy.