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Soon E was starving by the time we got back to Chang's. And fortunately Myong had cooked a fabulous Korean dinner. This was the first time Myong had met Soon E. The three of them talked a lot in Korean with Chang translating for me from time to time.
Scott, my lawyer in the divorce case with Donna, had seen no problem with Soon E coming to the United States but suggested that Soon E stay with Chang. Chang and Myong had prepared a room for Soon E and Chang had told her that she would be staying there and that I could pick her up each day and take her back to the condo.
This arrangement made a lot of sense to me since I knew that Soon E's arrival was going to cause some amount of turmoil and I was hoping that it wouldn't jeopardize my efforts to get joint custody of the girls.
At one point during dinner, I noticed that Chang and Myong were having a rather serious looking conversation during dinner but didn't think too much about it.
Around 11:30, I began to think that I should leave and let Soon E get to bed. I was rather shocked and also quite happy when Chang told me that Soon E wanted to stay at the condo and sleep in the girls' room rather than at his house. I was willing to take the chance that the judge might not be too happy when this eventually came out. I felt it was the least I could do for Soon E after the long, hard trip she had made.
Soon E had asked him if the girls' bedroom had a lock on the door and he assured her that it did.
The next day I wrote in my diary:
I was really gratified that she wanted to come here. I have been so terribly lonely and i had been counting the days until I wouldn't have to be alone anymore. I was prepared for her to stay at Chang's but i had a rush of good feelings when she decided to come with me.
I later learned that even though Chang and Myong had discussed having Soon E stay with them that Myong began to have second thoughts after Chang and I left for the airport. Chang and Myong were close friends of both Donna and me even though they hadn't seen much of Donna lately and had spent a lot of time with me.
But Myong began to wonder if perhaps Donna might be furious with them for Chang's part in arranging for Soon E to come here and for having her stay with them.
Before we left, Chang told me that when we got back to the condo Soon E wanted to call her older brother and let him know she had arrived safely. Her wrote the number on a slip of paper for me.
It was around midnight when Soon E and I got back to my fifth floor condo. I had lived there for almost ten months after Donna and I separated. The condo was in a recently-built, modern looking building with elevators. I was the first one to live in my unit. I rented as did most of the other residents. The housing market was in some distress in the early 90s and few of the condos had sold.
The building was across the street from the commuter rail station which meant that trains passed from time to time. It was actually a bit exciting to look out in the morning and see commuters boarding the train for Boston and to look out in the late afternoon and see them return. While it was rather romantic I'm sure I was able to enjoy it because I worked at home and went out only when I wanted to.
I liked living in the condo. I had always thought I might like to live in a hotel and this was similar but with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms.
It had been a long day for me but even longer for Soon E. She had boarded a flight from Kimpo Airport outside of Seoul, Korea more than 25 hours ago.
As soon as we got to the condo and put Soon E's things in the girls' bedroom, we went over to the phone and I dialed the number for her. She talked to her brother briefly.
Chang had cautioned Soon E that calls from the U.S. to Korea are very expensive. He needn't have bothered since, as I would soon learn, Soon E is the most frugal person I've ever met.
Even though it had been more than 24 hours since she had slept, Soon E wasn't ready for bed. She seemed determined to organize some of the chaos of papers that were in evidence in every room of the condo.
I showed Mrs. Im some pictures that the girls had drawn and their schoolwork. She immediately started to organize them in a pile.
We weren't having much luck communicating so i retrieved my small English-Korean dictionary and my small Korean-English dictionary. That helped a little although the type is so small I was having trouble seeing the words.
Later she spotted a huge pile of papers on top of the laser printer and immediately took them down and started arranging them into a neat pile.
I showed her a little crown that Ashley had made. She immediately crumbled it up. It was all I could do not to laugh. It was rather cute to see her getting rid of one of the many little scraps that I can't part with.
The most wonderful thing happened tonight. Mrs. Im made ginseng tea for us and put two cups on the table. It is the first time in a long time that anyone has done anything for me in such a loving way and it was overwhelming.
But the most electrifying moment in the highly charged evening happened as we were kneeling in the my bedroom organizing some of the papers scattered everywhere. At one point my left leg and Soon E's right leg somehow came into contact. Neither she nor I flinched. We just kept looking at the papers together.
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