Chusok plans

Chusok is the Korean harvest festival. The Thanksgiving, if you will.

Its date is determined by the Lunar calendar, so jumps around, but wherever it lands, it is a big holiday. Everyone travels back to their hometown for a big feast with their extended family. In Korea, everyone lives in a city, but everyone's parents live on a farm in their rural hometown.

Chusok is a three day holiday, but as it bounces around, it can coincide with other holidays, and weekend holidays are shifted to the week, so this year Chusok gives us six day weekend.

My wife's mother's farm is a little bachelor apartment in Seoul. She grows happiness there, and I am sure this is what we will feast on when we are there.

To my absolute joy, when the issue of first going to the farm for Chusok came up several months ago, my wife suggested that it might be a bit uncomfortable if all of us went, and that I might just stay home.

Two weeks ago though, it is revealed that "I was joking."

Good joke!

Subsequently, my wife and I get in a fight about something else. Though I might be somewhat biased, the fight is objectively her fault. But she is not playing fair, and so I tell her she can cancel my ticket to Seoul.

She will not talk to me. But the fight continues via a messenger app. This works fine for me, because I don't like fighting, and have trouble thinking in the heat of it, but when her arguments are written out rather than layered in curses and eye rolls, their fallacy becomes transparent.

This way of fighting is too effective, really, I was hoping it would continue into the weekend.

I get a message, "Are you going to Seoul for Chusok or not?"

I message back, "Are we still going to be fighting on Thursday?"

"I'm not fighting, I am peaceful. You are the fighter."

We both know this is not true. This is an olive branch. More, it is an apology. In 20 years of marriage, this is the most explicit apology I have ever got.

"Those sound like fighting words. I'll decide when I get home."

I could misinterpret it, and stay in Daegu over the weekend. But I guess that is unfair to the kids. They would have to deal with my share of the happiness.