by Diane Farr
I would have thought Seung’s summation of why we make a great pair was in the interest of getting the rest of my clothing off, but instead he asks me if I want a tea from Starbucks. Amazed that he could be so “girlie” by wanting to take our chat to the next level rather than take me into the bedroom, I say yes, I’d love one. And off he goes, to hunt and gather tea with sugar for us while I finish painting the living room and “wallpaper” the kitchen with gift wrap and thumbtacks. I am so thrilled that I have the place to myself at this moment—to be as myopic as I like about completing a task—that I never even give his spontaneous departure a second thought.
I WAS UNAWARE THAT SEUNG bought an engagement ring when we’d been dating for just nine months. In hindsight now, though, I can guess the exact day because when he came home from this purchase he was a complete mess. Seung was so worried that he would never make enough money to have children and send them to a decent school in Los Angeles, not to mention afford mortgages and college tuitions and still have any time left for me. Thank God I took the time to sit him down and remind him that we had at least nineteen years to worry about college, and a whole month before the next mortgage payment was due on the Mammoth house, and thirty-five years of work left to fund everything we wanted to do in life. The fact that he was so shaken up should tell you that he bought an amazingly beautiful ring that was completely out of his price range.
And Seung has been carrying this not-so-little gem around in his pocket ever since! After eleven weeks of his life savings rattling around in his pants, bringing us to today—just one week away from our one-year anniversary as a couple—the stone must have finally burned a hole in said pocket. Because on the way to Starbucks to get our tea, Seung pulls over on the side of a mountain to place a call to my father.
Of course, I’ll hear about all this later, but after a round of casual greetings, Seung cordially asks my dad permission to marry me. And then the phone cuts out. Both my father and Seung frantically call each other back, only to get the other’s voice mail—three times. When Seung finally gets my father back on the phone, my dad reassures him that he did not hang up because of Seung’s request. After putting Seung at ease about how my family feels about him, my father then decides this would be an appropriate time to warn Seung about how my family feels about me.
My dad solemnly asks Seung if he has “taken a long drive” with me yet. My sweet boyfriend would never even consider that my father would use this opportunity to make jokes at my expense, and so he begins earnestly selling my father on how much driving and flying we have done together (since I also tend to act like a jackass if I am late for a plane). My father is leading the witness as he seriously asks Seung if he is sure he still wants to marry me given these behaviors.
Does this annoy anyone as much as it does me? Especially considering I don’t really live in a culture where anyone needs to ask my father permission for anything in my life. This is just a warm and fuzzy courtesy call, not a time for my father to vent about my less attractive behaviors. Would you have any more empathy for me if I told you that this was not the first time my father received this kind of call from a suitor—and he made the same jokes that time, too?
WHEN NIGHT FALLS, SEUNG IS getting ready to shower before we go to our favorite local restaurant, and I refuse to bathe. I have paint in my hair, up my arms, and all over my clothes, but I’m fine to just change my gear so I can continue to rearrange and hang pictures until the last possible moment. When Seung tries to cajole me into at least scrubbing off the spots of green and blue that cover my body, I instead pull out a pair of full-length gloves from my ski collection. The gloves cover me from my fingertips to my biceps. There is literally no possible way to get a ring on my finger.
Cutting his losses before I break out a chastity belt, Seung takes his shower and then steps out of the bathroom in a full suit. And I begin to wonder what the hell is wrong with him. We like to call Mammoth Mountain “just good enough.” The snow is terrific, but that’s about it. The service at everything, anywhere near the mountain, is the pits. It’s so bad that sometimes we wonder if the locals are growing acres and acres of weed beneath the slopes in gigantic igloos, because that would explain why everyone is in such a fog. As well as why things take ten times longer than they should and fail to materialize no matter what you are promised or prepay for. We’ve found that consciously imagining that every hospitality employee is stoned keeps us from finding them as frustrating. Now, the farther you get from the chairlifts, the better things get, and the restaurant we are headed to is one of our favorites in all the world. But still, no one inside will be wearing a suit, unless they had a court appearance earlier in the day.
Seung tries to brush off his wardrobe choice by telling me that the bag he has up here in Mammoth is the one he took to a wedding we went to last weekend. And I believe this because Seung never packs until the last second. I am standing on a chair, drilling into drywall above the faux fireplace, when I see Seung heading out the door. I yell to him while balancing screws between my lips, asking where he is going. He says he’s going to return the touch-up paint to the front desk of the lodge. So many of the owners of these condos come to Mammoth just for weekend getaways that the building has a little concierge service in the lobby for us. But now I’m thinking Seung is really sleep deprived, because it’s eight at night and the desk is closed. Seung quickly tells me “it’s fine” as he dives out the door. And why am I not suspicious? Because I really want to keep hanging this picture. So much so that I leave my bicep-length gloves on to get it up as fast as possible.
Thank God the screws are out of my mouth and into the wall when Seung walks back in, or I might have swallowed them. He has a bottle of champagne in one hand and a ring box in the other. And it still doesn’t sink in. When I see he has tears streaming down his face, I am just concerned, and moreover confused, but when I look down from his chin and notice he is now wearing a silk tie, I drop my drill and gasp.
Still standing on the chair, I put both my hands into my mouth like a nervous child and say, “What are you doing? What are you doing?” over and over again. Of course, the wool from the damn gloves makes me feel like I am eating dog hair, so I promptly begin to gag. Seung is so choked up from emotion that he can’t speak and I am coughing, and maybe even drooling a little, and at thirty-five and thirty-six years old, we are a general mess in the middle of the room with all the bear-motif furniture piled in around us.
From the bended-knee position, Seung says many beautiful things that I barely hear as he opens the ring box. And then I can’t hear anything else at all.
I AM THE ONLY ONE LEFT of my high school and college friends who is not married. Only two in my circle of friends in Los Angeles are betrothed, but I am older than the rest. I have spent many years wondering and privately worrying if anyone will ever pick me as their partner. Yes, I have a lot of things going for me and I’m very cavalier, but inside I am still just a girl who’s always wanted to be asked to the dance of the rest of my life as much as anyone else.
I actually wanted this so much that I stopped going to wedding ceremonies for a few years, as they induced panic in me. I also stopped practicing yoga because I would find myself looking down the line of mats in the downward dog position and see nothing but bejeweled ring fingers. There was no relaxing for me while my hand lay on the floor, spread and empty. I’m not even a fan of jewelry, but what an engagement ring had grown to represent for me had nothing to do with a diamond or its size. It meant that a person was willing to promise their heart and take all their hopes and fully invest them, with their savings, into someone they felt was worthy. It had begun to feel painful and embarrassing that I was not that person to anyone. Particularly as my window to have children would soon begin to close.
Another ring, one of desperation, had begun to form around my heart, and with each passing season it grew a little thicker. But here I am before the man I love, who is extending that question, that offer, and the other ring�
�the one that can encircle my heart so much for the better and act like the kryptonite I need to purge my desperate fears.
I get down on the floor beside Seung and hug him and we both cry. I breathe a strong “yes” to his request, right into his ear because I want to be sure he hears me. I am not a girl who is easily surprised and I don’t particularly like it when I am, because I’d rather give a person the response they are hoping for when they make a big effort. When I’m really caught off guard I can’t be as effervescent as the person deserves. I cannot even think about making a fuss for Seung and all he has done to make this moment happen because I am frozen still, just staring at this beautiful jewel inside a silky box. Other than giving the one-word answer I am required to speak for my part in this ritual, I am completely checked out. And I can’t get back inside this moment with my fiancé because I’m stuck staring inside the box. I am actually afraid to even take the ring out because my mother once told me it was bad luck to try on another person’s wedding ring. Even with Seung’s proposal in evidence, it still seems implausible that this beautiful thing is for me.
Then, of course, I am nervous and my palms are sweating and I can’t get the fucking gloves off. And Seung is so nervous he strolls over to the kitchen, opens the champagne for himself, and begins drinking it directly out of the bottle. In the fog of all this, I eventually reach in, take the ring out, and put it on my own finger—after which Seung and I walk to the couch like zombies and both just sit and stare at my hand. And now I wish I had listened to Seung when he was still my boyfriend and suggested I shower to get the paint flecks off my fingers.
IT’S A QUIET NIGHT, just for two, at our favorite restaurant, and then we are back on the couch to stare at my left hand some more. I ask Seung if he planned this, this way, and he says his only strategy was to do something simple and indicative of our lives together because he knew all the other events this decision would manifest would include the masses. Seung wanted our engagement to be just about us. Which in no way should imply that this is calm or easy for either of us.
My heart never stops racing and my head never stays in the present all night. We suck down that bottle of champagne he proposed with and then another and yet we are both still sober. There are so many people to tell and so many decisions to make and so much shit to do that I can barely breathe. I am a list-oriented person, and this decision begins what seems to be the biggest list of my life. Not just the actual physical wedding, but our whole lives forever after. And, of course, because there are all the expectations of others—the usual expectations of a wedding and the very particular ones of our families. So along with this beautiful sparkler on my finger, I can also feel an anvil making a new home on my chest.
We decide to take a break from looking at my bejeweled ring finger to call each of our four parents individually. Everyone is thrilled, except Seung’s father, who doesn’t pick up and so we just leave a message. We never hear back from Apa, but considering it’s the middle of the night when we call Korea, it does not seem cause for alarm. We also call every person who will eventually become our wedding party. After they also jump for joy, we go back to staring at my hand until we fall asleep. Or rather, until Seung falls asleep and I lie there freaking out.
With Seung passed out next to me, all those years that I hoped for a partner, rather than just a lover, disappear in an instant and now all I can see are the challenges that getting married presents. The many challenges that I could fail at. My inner (fearful) child begins chipping away at the happiness I felt just a few hours ago and creates a space for me to hide in for the long term. A place where I would remain alone for eternity, but intact from disillusionment and the fear of change or the disappointment of others. A place whose entryway is etched deeply with five letters that I could easily get lost in forever—as this is a place called doubt.
Really, doubt should be a four-letter word, because it is a foul thing. And it causes subpar behavior. I value fear as an emotion, as it instructs you when it’s necessary to run, hide, or hustle. But doubt makes you consider running, hiding, yelling, manipulating, testing, suspecting, and other unattractive verbs for no actual cause. And doubt has just taken me over and I seem to have no control as it permeates my whole being.
When Seung wakes in the morning I am sitting over him waiting. He gives me a big smile and I tell him this ring is way too big. That we need to leave Mammoth now and go to the jeweler today to have more prongs put on it so I don’t lose the stone in the middle. Gee, what in the world could that be a parallel fear of?
Seung talks me into eating some food before getting on the road. I decide to make breakfast for him—for the very first time in our entire relationship—because now that I’ve been engaged for half a day, I feel the need to channel June Cleaver. During breakfast, I inform Seung that I will need final say over which of his relatives are invited to the ceremony. When Seung looks at me, wondering what evil spirit has suddenly taken over my body, I raise an eyebrow at him, inviting a challenge. My man is too smart to fall for this bait, but the mood in our relaxing-weekend-getaway-space is decidedly tense now.
While we are packing to get out of Dodge, I sit down on the bed and casually mention that when we have our children, Seung can pick any name he wants for them ... from a list of names I then hand him. Seung bursts out laughing. He is thinking this is too absurd to be true. When could I have possibly formulated such a list? Um, maybe over the eight hours you were sleeping and I was becoming Bridezilla? All I needed was a pen and paper ... and both of those things came with the furnished condo. So, here are your children’s names.
Seung, obviously, is a patient man (given all of the other behavior I have already mentioned about myself, even previous to today). So rather than being angry with me, he is just plain old bummed out. He can’t quite formulate why, but I can see the shine in his eyes from yesterday is gone. But by the time we are driving away from this special weekend and I am asking Seung if he would be willing to let us both date other people in our marriage, he loses his mind. As he begins slamming his hands on the steering wheel and asking me what kind of game I have been playing with him for the past year, even I realize that I have left myself.
If you look closely at the first three mandates, you can see where my self-doubts were born: a fear of losing him, a fear of his relatives judging me, and a fear of coparenting children. When these three missiles failed to start a fight, I believe I threw out the open-marriage request like an atomic bomb. I was not consciously aware that I was looking for a brawl or that my doubt had put me into a state of panic, but seeing Seung’s despair immediately awakens me to the fact that I am trying to kill our union. Seung has too much at stake to recognize the fear behind any of my terrible behavior. Instead, he just begins to circle the drain with me. We fight and I cry for many hours on the way home from Mammoth this day. And although I argue with him to defend myself, I am already aware that I am the problem.
NOW, WITH SOME DISTANCE from that terrible day (the one I completely ruined not even twelve hours after the magical one Seung arranged for me), I can say that most of my marital fears had to do with what I brought to the relationship with Seung. I’m not at all sure that the short obstacle course of my “not being Korean,” which we had just traversed, was even a small part of my emotional demise. I knew that I could use those events, though—like so many people do when they pull the race card—to convince myself and anyone who would listen that those obstacles were evidence that this marriage was not meant to be. However, I was so lucky to have very long-term friends who could see past my well-spun story and tell me I was just afraid and I was handling it badly. Which forced me to run, not walk, to therapy before I did irreparable harm to my terrific relationship.
The therapist of course wants no part of my discussion about cultures clashing and how dangerous that is for me in a possible marriage to Seung. He wants to begin with my last engagement. Which seems like 150 years ago now. But the first thing I realize as he makes me recount
every detail of my last brush with marriage is that none of my former boyfriends over the last decade came from the same culture as I did, including my former fiancé. Most of my previous partners do not even speak English at home. So who am I kidding that maybe I have an intrinsic fear that a marriage to someone of a different race or culture could not work? Finding something in common in a culture that’s different from mine is exactly what I’m attracted to.
In fact, the only fear that both the therapist and I can even find in me—despite relentless searching for one due to race—is my own fear of failing. Which has nothing to do with my last engagement. Although that man was also born outside of the continental United States, he was a very good friend of mine whom I decided I liked in a romantic way. When he asked me to marry him, after only six weeks of dating, I believe it was his attempt to show me how important I was to him. When another six weeks passed and he realized he couldn’t live up to all the promises of marriage, he was man enough to admit it immediately. Which, two and a half years later, makes me simply admire him.
My fear of failure, on the other hand, is entirely about who I am as a person. That is, an overachieving, workaholic, recovering beauty queen who wants to excel at things in the way a heroin addict wants to get a needle into their arm. And for better (in so many ways) but also worse while standing here on the precipice of a marriage, I have fallen in love with a man who has the same internal drive to achieve, win, and please that I do. Not only is he, like me, an oldest child, people-pleasing, overly organized Virgo by birthright, but he is also Asian. Which could be a generalization, but from my experience, it is like tripling the desire to do right and do well, firstly for Mom and Dad, and then for everyone else after them.