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A KOREAN WOMAN IN AMERICA

임 순이 / 한국 여자가 미국에서

  
Updated: November 16, 2008: 2:00 pm
 
   

Day of disappointment

Tuesday, December 11, 1990

Chang had come up with the idea. He was going to Korea to search for his parents. He said that maybe the girls would like to send their Korean mother, Soon E, some of their school drawings. He would look her up, give her the drawings, and see if she would like to come to the U.S. for a couple of weeks and see the girls. She could stay with him and Myong.

Having been accidentally and permanently separated from his parents when he was about six years old, he still lived with the pain of going for a walk with their housekeeper, becoming separated from her on a busy Seoul street, and never being able to find his way back home again.

For Chang, Soon E's situation had some of the same anguish that his own mother had suffered now for more than 30 years. Soon E had stood in the Kimpo Airport in Seoul and watched her daughters disappear from her life. Chang's mother had come back home from work to find her only son missing. The frantic and futile search to find him was certainly with her every day of her life.

In our naiveté, neither of Chang nor I could imagine that there would be any problem with Soon E seeing her daughters a few times over a couple of weeks. After all, Donna had promised her on the day she had seen her daughters for the last time in January of 1987 that we would bring them back to Korea for the 1988 Olympics so that she could see them.

By the fall of 1988, Donna no longer had any interest in going back to Korea with the girls. That always bothered me because I felt we had betrayed Soon E. Later she would tell me how she got more excited every day as the Olympics approached. The Olympics passed and with it any hope of seeing her daughters. That hope had kept her going in the dark days since she last saw them. The light at the end of her dark tunnel was gone.

To be on the safe side, I went over Chang's plan with my divorce lawyer and he said he saw no problem with Soon E coming for a visit.

I waited to call Donna until I was sure that Soon E was on U.S. soil. Shortly after Soon E called Chang to let him know that she was in San Francisco I called Donna and told her that Soon E was going to be visiting Chang and Myong for two weeks. While we had been at war since before our separation at the beginning of 1990, my impression after talking with her was that she would pick up Mimi and Ashley from school and drop them off at the condo the next day which was my visitation day. Melissa no longer wanted to come to the condo and I had accepted that. But, at least, Soon E would be able to see Mimi and Ashley.

But we would wait for them in vain. And that night I suddenly I would have the sobering and traumatic realization that maybe Soon E's 8000-mile trip to see her daughters had been in vain.
 

ed's diary

tuesday

december 11, 1990

i was up at about 6:00. mrs. im came in around 7:00. i was surprised that she was up. she said "pir hae-yo". i tried to place the korean phrase but just couldn't get it. so i scrambled for my korean books. finally i got the big korean-english dictionary and mrs. im found the word. It means "to need": at the same time, she showed me a list in korean. chang had told me last night that she would make a list of food she needed from the korean store. he advised me not to take here to the korean store yet because of possibility of gossip..

soon e was busy cleaning up around the condo as I prepared to leave for the korean store and demoulas supermarket. i said in korean, "han-guk ka-ge gai-yo" ("i'm going to the korean store."). then "an-yong-hee kye-seh-yo" ("goodbye." literally "stay in peace"). soon e took me over to the table, got one of my korean language books, and pointed to the korean phrase for "so long" and helped me say it.

to korean store and then to demoulas where i got purple mums for her.

chang called some time after i returned. he cautioned me not to let myself get too caught up. myong is forecasting all sorts of dire possibilities.

he also told me that last night soon e told him she was depending on him to counsel her.

soon e went back into the girls' bedroom for a nap around 1:00. i began to fee very sad thinking about her going back to korea. already, i trust her so much. if she goes away i'm really going to be devastated.

2:55 well it's controlled panic time. the girls should be getting out of school now. i hope they're not waiting for me to pick them up. will donna bring them as she said she would? i don't know how much more of this i can take.

called my lawyer scott at 4:00. he checked the visitation schedule and said i was supposed to have the girls.

i started calling donna's. i finally left a message.

called scott at 4:35. really getting worried by this time.

finally at 5:00, donna called. donna, "i just came back from salem court. your visitation rights have been suspended."

i was shocked and depressed. called chang. he talked to soon e. she had worked many hours preparing bulgogi and other korean dishes for the girls. i felt devastated for her. she took it much better than i did. chang and myong said they'd come over.

soon e and i sat down at the table. i felt tears coming into my eyes. i covered them and sat there for a while. but it was torture thinking that ashley and mimi could have been sitting there with us.

when myong, chang, and their daughters Jia and Jan arrived, myong gave me a big hug. she could tell that i wasn't doing well.

we ate dinner. soon e told me through chang to eat everything. she said i had left a lot of rice this morning. i told chang that it was mainly because i had had two english muffins before she got up.

chang briefed me on what my approach should be. "you must deal with these two things (the relationship with soon e and the custody fight) as two separate things."

it was so great having chang and myong here for dinner. i felt like a human being again, having dinner with friends. soon e had really done a great job preparing the meal. how can i be so blest?

after chang and myong left, soon e and i sat down at the table. she got one of the korean dictionaries. she wrote down a phrase for me. i think it was asking if i was tired and wanted to go to sleep. i did feel really tired but didn't want to go to bed. i struggled with saying the phrase.

then we got off on various words in korean and english. at one point we did the days of the week and the months. (it reminded me of "calendar" chant in ashley's kindergarten.) i began to revive and my mental attitude became much more positive. i had gotten so much work done today with soon e taking care of the household chores. and it was wonderful to have dinner with friends.

chang and myong are rather spare with their translations when something is going on. i'm in a fog in terms of what they're saying. my big frustration now is how i can tell soon e some of more emotional things that i want to say. i'd like to tell her how i feel about the girls and about her.

we said something about music. i was going to show her some songs from melissa's rock tapes. but then i realized i had given the impression that i was going to show her tapes of the girls. so i got the latest 8mm video tape. it was almost exclusively of ashley: her tide pool presentation at school and the christmas parade. soon e wanted to see mimi and melissa.

i got the previous tape. i think she was really touched by it. so far i hadn't seen her show any emotion but when she saw the scene of ashley and mimi trying to talk to her on the toy phone tears welled up in her eyes. ashley does some really cute things on the tape.

we watched until almost 1:30. after she went to bed, i thought about what a great transition had taken place tonight. since she has been here, i have felt that we were two islands and i wondered if we would ever connect. tonight, i really felt that we were exchanging thoughts and information. it is quite a feeling.

 
 
 

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