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Something terrible was about to happen today.
Since meeting Change and Myong in the fall of 1986, I had grown close to both of them, often visiting in their home and being treated by their two daughters, Jia and Jiun, as a beloved uncle. While Donna and I had met Chang and Myong in 1986 as a couple, I saw a good deal more of them than Donna in the following years, both visiting them in their home and attending Korean functions with them; my interest in all things Korean growing as Donna's waned. I began to feel as if Chang was a brother but, while also feeling close to Myong, always hugging her when she came to the condo or I went to their house, I knew that she and Donna also felt close and I had sensed some ambivalence by Myong toward Soon E from the beginning.
Without Chang, the language and distance barriers would have precluded Soon E and I ever being together; of this there is no doubt. And Chang, both before and after Soon E's arrival, continually assured me that that Soon E and I could and would be together.
But something happened during the days around Christmas of 1990, something that I never totally understood, that resulted in a rupture in our friendship that never healed.
Donna had called Chang one night when he drinking heavily to kill the physical pain in his legs and spent the better part of an hour chastising him for bringing Soon E here and insisting that he help get Soon E out of this country and back to Korea.
On December 28th, my lawyer and I went to court, trying to get some limited visitation for me with the girls. We succeeded but only on two conditions: that Soon E not be present during the supervised visitation and that both Soon E and I turn over our travel documents to the court: my passport and Soon E's Korean passport and the travel visa she had received from the American Embassy in Seoul.
I was very concerned about how Soon E might react to giving up her travel documents. I knew first hand about unsettlIng it can be to be in a foreign country without your travel documents. On the first day Donna and I were in Beijing, China our travel guide, who spoke barely understandable English, had our driver, who spoke only Chinese, drive to a mostly-deserted business district somewhere in Beijing where the guide took our travel documents and disappeared into an obscure building across the street. Donna and I were both momentarily stunned, being in a strange country with no travel documents with visions of being abandoned. Of course, Andover isn't Being and I knew that Chang would be able to explain everything to Soon E in Korean and answer any concerns that she might have.
It took a while after returning from court before I was finally able to get Chang on the phone. In a totally unexpected and shocking turn of events, he announced that Soon E must go back to Korea immediately and settle things there with her husband while I continued my legal efforts to get partial custody of the girls. Once Soon E and I had resolved our problem, she could come back.
I knew that if Soon E left now, with everything still in a very unsettled state, that I would, almost certainly, never see her again. All of us: Soon E, Chang, and I, knew that Soon E would have to return to Korea before her visa expired in June, but I felt that by then we would we would have learned enough about each other to know if we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. And also, I was determined that Soon E alone would decide when to leave.
I let Chang make his case and told him I'd consider it, all the while feeling our friendship slipping away, being pretty sure that if I didn't follow his advice his continued support would be, at best, lukewarm. In the years that followed Chang and I continued to have contact but things were never again the same.
Despite severe physical challenges, making it difficult for him to walk, Chang was determined to obtain a law degree by going to night school in Boston. The winters were particularly hard since he often had to maneuver through the snow on cold nights. While he was attending law school he bought a computer and needed help setting it up. i was glad to come to his aid and hoped, in vain, that it would bring us closer together. He eventually graduated from law school and started a law practice.
Our sporadic contacts could never overcome the divide. After not having heard from him for several years, Soon E came home one day with the news that Chang had died while in the hospital, quite a shock since we hadn't even known that he was ill, getting the news of his sickness and death some days after the funeral.
I remember so well that when Soon E first came, I envisioned many happy evenings with the four of us watching some of the 800 or so movies in my tape library, going together to Korean events in the area, Soon E and I babysitting Jia and Jiun, getting to know Chang's parents.
I have often wished I could talk to Chang now and find out what really happened that Christmas. When I began writing about him in the fall of 2008 I pledged to think about Myong, Jia, and Jiun at least once a day as a tribute to Chang, responsible almost single-handedly for the story-book life I have shared with Soon E since 1990.
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