The joys and sorrows inside the roof

 It's the coldest day this year. I don't want to get out of bed. My husband seems to have woken up because he feels the same way, but there is no sign. 

"Aren't you thankful that we're lying under a warm roof on a cold day?" "I want to drink coffee." "Yes, ma'am. I'll make coffee." 

 While my husband is going to make coffee, I am imagining the people under the roof on a cold day, and I remember visiting my son who was studying in Florence. As soon as we returned to Florence after finishing our trip to Venice, my son said that he was busy with final exams. 

“Mom, if you need me, email. Chao.” 

He said goodbye and went to school in a hurry. And we never saw again during the trip. I felt the coldness of my son desperately. As if the hotel was an unfamiliar warehouse, it felt stuffy and my legs lost strength. Outside the window, scarlet roofs attached to each other were spread out in front of me like waves under the fading sky surrounded by twilight. Inside the endless roof, the sorrow of life whispered and comforted me. 

'You're not the only one who's sad. It's hard for us, too.’ 

 If open the roof lid and look into each house, there are many joys and sorrows of wriggling in it. In the past, there lived a woman who got remarried brought two daughters to an old man who had a newborn next door. It was strange that a gray-haired grandfather and a young woman lived. I observed carefully. The old man passed away shortly after. Fortunately, the old man left a store site and house to her, so she raised the baby with love. 

 The woman's second daughter looked like Pocahontas in a Disney cartoon. I liked the attractive her. She used to ghostwrite my homework, a consolation letter to soldiers. Eventually, it ended with a happening in which soldiers on vacation came to school to see me because they wanted to meet her. As a frequent writer of her writings, she met and married a man living in the United States as a pen pal, and she left Korea. 

 As soon as the woman's son graduated from college, he started a family with the girl he was dating. Her daughter-in-law lured her husband and said, give up her property because she is not even your biological mother. 

 The woman, who her two daughters married and believed only in the son, was bewildered and complained to my parents in embarrassment. I felt sorry for the lady. As a consolation, I used to go to the Youngrak Church with her. 

 I lived on the 4th floor when I was young, how many people's sorrows wriggle inside the roof overlooking down from the window? I was standing by the window thinking about it, and then I used to intermeddle other's life.