Cancer Update

Let me lead with the good news:

They have stuck cameras into Horyon's digestive tract (ew), scanned every part of her body with all sorts of machines, tested her blood, taken core samples (biopsies, if you're a stickler for details) and read her tea leaves: there is no sign that it has spread to other parts of her body. Being on the receiving end of all this was unpleasant at times, but you need to know whether the news is good or bad. This was good news.

The doctors were just guessing, but this week they made it official: Horyon has early stage 1 breast cancer. The earlier you catch it, the better, and this is not just as early as you can expect to find it, but earlier.

The Story of How we Caught it Before It should have been Possible to Catch

I joined the story just as it was starting: Horyon came to me worried. She put my hand on one side of her chest, and said, "Feel this." I felt both sides. On her right, it felt like a half-flattened marble sticking out, that wasn't there on the left. The word you never want to hear about someone's breast. A lump. "Should I do something?" 

"Yes."

The next day she went to the nurse teacher at the high school where she works, who also said, "Yes. Do something. Today. NOW."

So Horyon went to a small clinic, where they took the first biopsy. The biopsy needle has to be big, to get enough tissue to make into slides. She told me it hurt pretty badly, though she recovered from that pain in just a couple of days.

But she was confused: they had put the needle in a good three inches lower than where we had felt that lump. Yes, she's almost 50, and things aren't as perky as they used to be. But she would have had to been hanging by her knees from a trapeze to be off by that much. (True confession time: she wasn't.) So she asked the doctor what happened.

The doctor explained that what she was feeling, and what I had felt, was just a bone abnormality. One rib with a little protrusion that isn't there on the other. Nothing to worry about, perfectly normal.

This is the point in the story in which your faith is staring to make noise, whatever direction it runs in. So choose whichever paragraph you find most suitable:

A) It's a miracle! God rewarded our faith and prayers and Christian life! He spared us from the ravages of late-stage breast cancer, and is the ultimate doctor in this story!

B) We defied statistics on this one. The universe is an endless table, with dice being thrown constantly, and we just came up lucky 7s like, a dozen times in a row. It's not impossible, just not very likely. Nowhere near the improbability of a whale appearing out of nowhere high in the atmosphere, of course.

C) We have generated good karma by being kind to others, and the universe is bringing that back around to us. There will be balance.

D) It is a miracle of the statistical fluke variety. It is not a reward for good behavior, just as the cancer is not a punishment for bad. It might have been the difference between life and death. Or it might have provided a wider gap between "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Maybe the brokenness of the world was sinking its claws into my wife when God stepped in and gave Horyon a little taste of the fear from her own future.

I can talk, and theorize, and dance around it all day long, but in the end the word "miracle" just won't leave my mind, and I won't stop using it. It's the same kind of miracle that brought Horyon and I together. I won't be offended if you can't buy into that, or even if you push back on it. To me, this is like every other major miracle God has worked in my life: obviously so to those who are looking for miracles, and easily dismissed by those who can't or won't see. You can tell me that we got lucky, or that we were blessed.

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One strange thing about what we are going through is that right now Horyon is not really suffering much. She is starting to feel some physical pain from the biggest tumor, but she says it's barely noticeable. There is a sense of dread that is slowly settling over us, but it's like a wispy fog of dread that doesn't block our sight. It just makes life a little bit harder to see.

I started writing this a week ago, and I've noticed that it takes up a chunk of my processing power all the time. I am slower than usual to come up with the words I need, the next bit of the lesson to teach, the motivation to do anything.

At first there were times when I didn't think about what was coming at all. Those stretches have been shrinking, though. I told Horyon the other day that this feels like moving to a foreign country did when I was young: I knew it was coming with some part of my head, but I didn't really feel like I was moving sometimes until I was in the airport saying goodbye. As I got older, that threshold pushed back into the packing stage, and even the ticket-holding stage. But at some level, my thick, slow brain just refuses to accept reality until it is dropped into the deep end, kicking and screaming.

But cancer is a very intrusive reality. We learned this week that the cancer has not spread through her body, but it has pretty much fully claimed her right breast.Some things I learned in the wake of this:

1. The breast tissue must be taken out, but the skin, including the nipple, can be almost completely saved if you use robot surgery.

2. "Robot breast removal surgery" is a real thing. I want to know more, but that motivation thing I mentioned earlier has effectively blocked me from learning whether it looks more like R2D2 or a Terminator. Or Johnny Five, for that matter. I suspect that when I do find the truth, it will be somewhat of a letdown. This may be part of my motivation for not learning more.

3. When you catch breast cancer this early, the treatment routine is mostly standardized, can be highly refined, and no longer has the ring of death that came with "The Big C" while I was growing up in the 70s and 80s.

5. Women who are facing a full mastectomy do not take much comfort from the legend of the Amazonian Warrior Women who all had their right breasts removed to make it easier to draw a bow. (Full disclosure, some women may appreciate this, but not mine.)

6. Four is a bad luck number, because the Chinese character for the number 4 resembles the character for death. That is why older buildings don't have a fourth floor, and that's why I skipped it in this list. Although, to be fair, I learned this a long time ago. Pretty sure it's come up in the Roblog before. 

7. I am even more prone to mental wandering than usual. Just take a look back at this list.

There's another weird thing: I feel more like I'm observing myself than usual. You know the feeling like your life is a movie that you are watching, rather than living? I haven't been that deep into it, but it's had small stretches like that.

Well, it did last week. This post has been in the pipeline for eight days now, and that has kind of passed. Or I've gotten so used to it that I don't notice. Now I am in an emotionally and mentally tired space. It's like I don't have any down time, because when I do my brain knows exactly where to go: the cancer treadmill. I haven't slept well, can't get work done, can't carry on a conversation without getting stuck on simple words, and can't balance a sentence well enough to keep my readers from feeling like they need to take a breath by the time they get to the end of one. 

I know that Horyon is going through some of this, but her naturally driven personality has kept her very busy, even though she hasn't been at school for the past week and a bit. She can't just let go of her job completely, because she will feel bad if she abandons her students, so she writes review questions, and has recorded a few lessons from home. 

She has hired a cleaning lady to come once a week, and the first day is tomorrow. She has given us all lists of things to do, that basically involve cleaning up before the cleaning lady comes. Needless to say, I will not be accomplishing everything on that list.

And with that, I will hit publish.

Our Next Trial

 The next Sack family ordeal is now on the calendar.

Eight days ago (October 17th) Horyon noticed a lump in her breast. The next day she talked to the nurse at her school, who recommended, insisted, that she go to a clinic the same day.

Horyon went to a clinic on Monday, where they took a biopsy, and guessed it was cancer. (Spoiler alert: they were right.) They also took blood, and made a follow-up appointment for Thursday (Oct. 21st). 

The next day, Horyon started talking to an uncle who is a doctor in Seoul. Busan is a big city, with good hospitals and clinics, but Seoul is where the talent focuses in Korea. She made a couple of appointments in Seoul for October 25th, 

They confirmed that it was cancer. One lump is about 1.2 cm (that's less than half an inch), and they found two smaller lumps in the same breast. Nothing in the other, but couldn't tell us much beyond that. This is still the discovery phase, and Seoul is the place to go for more detail.

We had not talked with our friends about it at this point. We hadn't even told the kids, though I'm sure they noticed that we were both more tired than usual. We told them Thursday night, at my insistence. They had a few questions, and there was some crying, but they took it well. The next day Maxine asked what stage it was, so she had clearly done some research at school. At that point, we had no answer.

On Sunday we told our church friends after the service. There was a lot of praying, and crying, and sympathy, and offers of help in the times ahead. It was a huge relief to share the news. It's unbelievable how tempting it is to just not talk to anyone when something like this happens. It's not even a conscious decision, you just don't want to tell people about it. I explained it three times to different groups of friends, then couldn't do it anymore. 

We had lunch with my friend, Tim Taylor. His wife died of lung cancer less than a year ago, and he had a lot to offer us, besides Thai food for lunch. (Which, for the record, was very, very good!)

 She told me yesterday that she was starting to feel pain where there was none before.

This morning (Monday, October 25th) I drove Horyon to the train station for a 5:30 train to Seoul. She had some more tests done, all the standard cancer diagnostics, and another biopsy. I came home, got the kids off to school, and taught my one hour of Monday classes in a more scattered state than usual.

Then I got a message from Horyon: she will go back to Seoul November 9th for a sonogram, then again for the results before the surgery, which is scheduled for November 26th. A month from today. The doctor told her that it looks like early stage cancer, and she did well to find it and act on it so quickly.

In short, we still have a tough hill to climb. I am not a worrier, but this has been a test of my faith. I am not looking forward to seeing how God will grow me through this. I suspect that God is planning a major renovation in our lives, and like most renovations it will be messy while it happens, but worth it when it's finished.

The rest of this post is a political slant on our story. If you would rather not have your ideas challenged, feel free to skip it.

A big piece of good news for us is that we live in a country (South Korea) that has basically socialized medicine. The national insurance (a government run provider) will pay 95% of the costs. You see, socialized medicine is really, really bad news for some people: the people who make money off of health insurance. The health conglomerates that charge incredible rates to insurance companies that use those rates to justify the hefty premiums you pay, and squeeze you for whatever they can. Horyon just showed up, gave them her info, and it was done. She got a series of 10 tests done today, total cost about US$260, and that's before insurance!* It costs what it actually costs, and the health insurance pays most of it!

*Big correction! I misunderstood Horyon's message. The $260 price tag was after national health insurance paid. The pre-insurance cost was closer to $800. Still, at $800 for a complete series of tests like this feels very cheap to most Americans!

I have never been so relieved, even happy, to not live in the United States. I love my home country, but I know that some Americans will read this and call me a liar or a shill or an idiot. Have I bought into socialized medicine? HELL YES. Don't believe everything rich people tell you. If we had stayed in the States, on my teacher salary and her working out of our home, this would have been a heavy blow. There is not much point in speculating about it, but in our four years living there I paid so much in health insurance, and still ended up using free clinics because I couldn't afford the premiums.

Allow me to elaborate on the phrase "basically socialized medicine." A few years ago, Horyon started to worry about getting cancer, as there is a history in her family. So she got cancer insurance. (I can't get it until I lose a fair bit of weight, but that is another blog post.) It is a monthly expense that proved to be a wise investment. This insurance paid out immediately on her diagnosis, a chunk of cash that will cover traveling back and forth to Seoul, that missing 5%, and other things that will make this whole thing so much less stressful.

You see, you can get better insurance if you want. And for people without insurance, you can still go to hospitals and clinics. It's expensive, but it costs what it costs, not what the companies think they can squeeze out of you.

But enough soap boxing. Feel free to email me if you want to continue the conversation. Or unfriend me on Facebook if you would rather feel good than be informed.

How I Met Horyon

Memories are wax sculptures in our minds.  As we handle them, they get warm, and reform, or perhaps deform, to fit more comfortably in our grip.  The sharp edges smooth out.  Bits that make us look foolish or selfish shrink, and sometimes fall off.  Parts that we are proud of are enlarged, and made smooth.

When I met her, I had no idea that she was the answer to my prayer.  More plea than prayer, really, a literal mountain top surrender to God's will.  Begging for help.  I was revisiting Nepal, where I had apprenticed in being alone, where language and geography had tag-teamed me into believing that my previous life in America was nothing more than a half-forgotten dream. I was once again experiencing the isolation that lives in the places where all you can see is the sky, green fields, and gray stone. Where there is nowhere to go but down.

In Nepal the doorways trained me to obey one command: keep your head down while passing through.  The penalty for disobeying?  A direct assault on the organ responsible for the poor decision.  My rebellious brain suffered one punishing blow after another, for I come from a race of stiff necked people.  Eventually the tedium of washing blood out of my hair and the desire to spend a day without a splitting headache gave rise to obedience.  I bowed my head as I walked through doors.  At first resentfully, with much grumbling, then with resignation and sadness.  Finally, like a well trained dog, without even thinking about it.  Weeks after returning to America I found myself nodding deeply as I passed through door frames that would allow even the most elevated of hats to pass undisturbed on my head.

In Korea there was a different kind of training, with a different command:  keep your heart to yourself.  The girl who chose alcohol instead of me.  The girl who suddenly stopped returning my calls.  The girl who lied to me.  The girl who agreed with me that we didn't belong together.  Each one a blow urging me to stop looking for love, to get used to the idea of being alone.  To keep my heart down.

I returned to Nepal for a month.  Alone.  At the top of a 9,000 foot hill in the shadow of the Himalayas I sat down on a rock and talked with God.  I cried out, "I am so tired of being alone, but if you want me to be alone for the rest of my life, then so be it...  But I have no idea how I am going to do it."

The only answer was silence, though by the time I returned to the Land of the Morning Calm, I was cloaked in a calm of my own.  Vacations are often refreshing, so I did not recognize this calm as an answer to prayer.  Hindsight reveals that it was part of the answer, the Breath before the Word.

The Answer showed up in my classroom on February 1st, 2000.  One of four students in a class that should have been cut from the schedule.  The highest level of English conversation available at our institute, it was a class for talking.  The news, science, social issues, food, our hobbies and habits.  Some grammar, but mostly talk.  Lousy attendance.  Usually two students, sometimes four, but always The Answer was one of them, ready to talk, listen, learn.

During the third week of class her father invited me to have dinner at their home.  As he was driving me home afterwards, she and I sat in the back seat and held hands.  I didn't know what she was thinking, and couldn't have told you what I was thinking either.  A conversation without words flowing just under the conversation with her father about something that I pretended to be interested in.

The last class, a Friday.  I was early and she was waiting, so we talked in the hall for an hour before class.  No other students, so we talked for another hour, then we went out and talked for two or three hours more.  As we talked over one neglected beer, my hand wanted to continue the conversation it had started in the car with hers the previous week, so it did.  Neither of us said anything about it as our hands conversed, at first casually, then more intimately.  Once again, we ended the evening without acknowledging the silent conversation.

On the way home I took a detour to the mountain top by way of a pedestrian bridge over the rail yard in Bujeon.  The joy that had been percolating in me just bubbled up and for a moment I Gene Kellyed my way across the bridge, laughing and telling the sky, "I've found her! I've found her!"  My moment of clarity, when The Answer to my prayer was made abundantly clear to me.

Two weeks later, after dinner in a top floor restaurant, flowers, chocolates, and perfume, I suddenly realized that I was going to propose to a woman I had met only six weeks previously.  No more than a hundred hours of conversation, only two weeks of actual dating, but I had never in my life been more sure of anything.  "Will you marry me?"

Her answer, forever emblazoned on my heart, "I beg your pardon?"  An opportunity to laugh in this sacred moment, I took it.  Her second answer we are still living out for the world to see, for she said, "Yes!" and we have never looked back.

To you, the reader, this may seem like the magic moment, when it all came together.  In actuality, the magic is bound up in the days that follow.  In the joy and pain, the boredom and excitement, the triumphs and defeats.  The magic is not in the moment of clarity, but in remembering the moment of clarity and believing in it when you can't see your hand in front of your face for the fog.

A Family Divided

In Korea staying in the hospital is not nearly as big a deal is it is in The States.  For starters, if you have insurance it is surprisingly cheap.  At less than $50 per day*, including meals, it's often used as a sort of quarantine.  They keep you hooked up to an i.v. so you don't dehydrate, take your temperature regularly, and the doctor comes to tell you how you are doing on a regular basis.  My kids have gone through some version of the flu, an H2-N something.  Contagious, messes with the digestion, but not too serious.  In an effort to avoid spreading this bug, they've both spent time in the hospital.

Last week Maxine stayed in the hospital for five days, and with Horyon's parents for one more.  Horyon stayed at the hospital with her, and I stayed home with Quinten.  We were hoping that Quinten wouldn't catch the flu.  It didn't work.

This week Quinten stayed in the hospital for five days, and will be coming home tomorrow.  Horyon stayed at the hospital with him, and I stayed home with Maxine.

During one of our rare moments together this week I said to Horyon, "Whose turn is it next week, you or me?"  She laughed, an even rarer gem these days.

"You can't get sick," she told me, the italics clear in her voice.

"Fine," I said.  "You go next."  Another laugh, but this one was tinged with exhaustion.  It is possible that staying at the hospital where you have easy access to an I.V. is the only thing that has kept her from getting sick.

We were very fortunate in one respect.  This week Horyon's school took their spring trip on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  She was originally to have gone with them to Yangsang, about an hour and a half from home via public transit.  She would have spent the days out there and come back to spend the nights with Quinten in the hospital if it necessary, but she got permission to skip the trip, so she spent those three days as well as the nights in the hospital with him instead.  I suspect that she found it very restful.

It has been interesting observing how my children behave when they have long stretches of sibling-free time.  Maxine has definitely adjusted to it better than Quinten did.  To her, he is still the interloper.  But Quinten was generally quieter without his sister.  He was more demanding of my time, of course, but playing with me was much less likely to lead to crying and fighting.

From him, at any rate.

During Quinten's week I helped him with a few projects, mostly encouraging him to keep making.  I am still sure that he will be the first kid on the block to have a 3D printer.  But in the mean time, he gets so frustrated when he can't get the picture in his mind to manifest in the real world the way he wants it.  The most valuable lesson I can teach him is patience, a lesson which is difficult to teach if you struggle with it yourself.  The sound of Quinten whining and crying wears down my patience like using a belt sander on a cookie when I am tired.  The best way for me to deal with it was to push bedtime earlier.  If we start to get ready for bed after he is tired, the whining is inevitable.  But if we can do snack, pajamas, and the brushing of the teeth while he still has enough energy, then he can get some bonus playing/making time, and still have time to read some books together before bed.

Maxine and I get along much more easily.  We can both spend time reading without getting uncomfortable, and tonight I made a wonderful discovery:  she has been learning the recorder since she started at Apple Tree School, and I have heard her play in groups and at home a few times.  I was moving some stuff around and found my recorders, a soprano (the one you are probably thinking about) and an alto (a few inches longer, lower, mellower tone).  I can't usually resist taking out the alto and playing a bit, so I did.  I let Maxine play the soprano.  She immediately started playing the Pachelbel Canon.  So I joined in playing one of the counterpoints.  Well, probably more than one, as I have never studied the piece.  We then moved on to a couple of Christmas carols, Amazing Grace, and one or two more.  She can hold on to the melody while I play a harmony!  We will definitely be making time to do this again.  She wants to surprise Horyon and Quinten with a duet, so I will try to get us some practice time before we are all together again.

I am so looking forward to being all together again.

I especially miss Horyon.  We talk on the phone from time to time, and even see each other a bit.  It's not as bad as last summer, and has been good in a strange way:  the last seven months have been relentlessly stressful, and we were both becoming more and more sensitive.  Every married couple has times in which they lash out at each other.  We know that for a short time we can let loose the dogs of war that have been chained up in our hearts, because the target is the only one who will take the full brunt of the attack and immediately forgive.  If not immediately at least by the next morning.

We can take it because we have bound ourselves together.  Every time we have ever kissed and made up we added a strand to the bond.  Every time we hashed out a disagreement, and came to share the same resolve it tightened and strengthened the bond.  Every tough decision we've made, every crisis we've weathered, every tear we've shed together has built up that connection a little more.

At Kwanganli Beach there is a display case with a sample of one of the cables holding up the Kwangan Bridge.  It is made up of hundreds of cables, each about the thickness of my pinky finger.  Any one of those cables on its own would snap under the weight of the bridge.  A bundle of ten or twenty would do little better.  But hundreds are practically unbreakable.  Even if there is a flaw in one cable, and it snaps, the load is immediately taken up by all the cables around it.

With fifteen years of adding strands to our relationship, we can handle this.  God knows we could take more of it if we had to, but just between you and me, I seriously hope that this is not the warm up for a repeat of Job.  Because we do need to fix a few broken strands, and it would be nice to get back to adding new ones.

We will be a complete family again tomorrow.  I think our first plan is to sleep late Saturday morning.!  Wish us luck!

*I'm not absolutely sure of the price, as I don't handle the bills here, but I think this is the price for a double occupancy room.

My reaction to stress

I have decided that on this occasion of my 24th birthday, instead of spending the next 30 minutes doing the dishes before going to work, I will do the Roblog:

In times of trouble I tend to stop communicating with the people around me.

This is not because I don't need people in general, or want to keep my problems super-secret, but because I am more introverted than I usually show.  Dealing with people is draining for me, though not as much as with the serious introverts.  (They are the ones spread out over there not looking at each other.)

As much as I like writing, sometimes the idea of spreading my mind out on a board and pinning it up for display is not as attractive as it sounds.  But I believe that doing so lightens the soul, and perhaps helps to lighten the burdens of others.  So...

In October Horyon found out that her teaching contract would be renewed for at most one year, perhaps not even that.  She also found out that there was another job opening at the school at which her father used to be the principal.  Check my post from November for details.

From the time of that posting, the stress kept building.  She passed the history test (short lived relief), and started prepping for the English and Teaching Pedagogy tests, which were scheduled for the same day and made the history test seem relatively simple.

When she came home from the big test, I thought it was behind us, but it clung to us like a vicious spider monkey, pulling our hair and snatching the food out of our hands.  For starters, the online forum in which the people who took the tests discussed their answers, the grading, and all the other details of the test.  The test-takers were allowed to keep the pages with the questions, but the grading of the test is a black box out of which comes only a score.  If I hadn't been living in Korea for so long, I would have called it unbelievably unprofessional.  So call it cungly unprofessional.

I felt like we had just finished a marathon, stopped for a breather, and heard the sound of hounds at our heels.

Eventually we found the the results were a typical mix of good news and bad news:  the bad news was that her score was not good enough to be hired as a permanent teacher.  The good news is that none of the candidates were good enough to be hired as permanent teachers.  The resulting bad news was that three or four of them were hired, and the administration decided to make one or two of them permanent after a year of seeing how they work.

As a mother who wants to spend some time with her children during the week, Horyon is at a disadvantage.  Some of those candidates are staying until 9 p.m. every day to show their dedication.  Horyon has been put in charge of testing for freshmen, a data analysis and preparation job that will keep her busy this year.  It seems that if she knocks this one out of the park she may be made permanent.  She found a way for me to help her chances as well:  twice a month I will be teaching a Saturday "club activity" class at her school.  It will be students who signed up for it, but everyone has to sign up for some activity.  I have no idea how this will be, other than busy.

My goal is to take this job as a blessing, and a chance to bless Horyon.  If I am there, she can be home with the kids, and her school won't ask both mother and father to come on the same Saturday.  I haven't had to wake up early on a Saturday for that yet, so it's still pretty easy to be positive about it.

Just stopping to breathe here.  I hate going whiny on you like this, but I promise that there is a silver lining coming up.

In addition, God has taken an opportunity to teach me about what I should pray for, and which problems I should not worry so much about and trust to God's good will:

I am planning to take Maxine and Quinten to Kansas this summer.  By myself.  Horyon just can't get away for long enough during the summer to be worth an $1800 plane ticket.  Even so, I had little idea how to pay for the tickets.  We have money in the States from the sale of our former home, but spending a big chunk of it like that is tricky, and our credit card here was maxed out.

Did you catch that "was"?  It's important.

So instead of praying about it, I decided to do something about it:  I committed to teach at an elementary school this year, twice a week for four hours at a time.  It would have enabled us to save enough money to pay off the card, freeing up the card to buy plane tickets, and pay off the plane tickets by mid fall.

One week into the semester and elementary school job, Horyon got her severance pay from the high school at which she just finished working.  It was almost $9,000.  Enough to pay off the card and pay for most of the plane tickets.  It took a few days for it to sink in, but I eventually realized that God had answered the prayer that I was supposed to be praying, providing for a need that I took upon myself to take care of.

And now I am paying the price.  The elementary job is not too hard, but eight hours of teaching each week, plus an extra hour or so of commuting by bike (doubled if it's raining and I have to take the subway) means that I have to teach two night classes at KIT, so Maxine and Quinten are spending more evening time at Horyon's parents home, not with me or Horyon.  It's actually more accurate to say that my family is paying the price for my lack of faith.

Now for the silver lining:

The stress of the past six months was becoming unbearable.  I have also been witness to two more couples, friends of mine, going through marital difficulties.  I was crying out to God, gravitating to the Psalms about how much life sucks, but also how gracious God is through suckiness (my paraphrase), when a friend recommended a book called Sacred Marriage by Gary L. Thomas.  (It's only $3 for the Kindle edition at Amazon right now!  I paid $8 for it!  If you are married, or think you may be married sometime, go get it!).  It changed the way I viewed marriage in general and my marriage specifically.

I'm not sure if I ever thought of my marriage as a chance to be a servant. I considered serving my wife to be something done as a quid pro quo, part of "the deal" of marriage:  I serve you, you serve me, we serve the kids, and hopefully they take care of us when we're old and even more feeble than we are now.

Just a contract, of sorts.  And of course it was built on love, and in front of God, and all that, but those were just details.  During the past few months I have come to learn that those details lead to the greater potential truth of marriage: it is a series of opportunities to better see myself and my sins, my selfishness, my pettiness.  The way Horyon knows me is still just a shadow of the way God knows me, but it's closer than anyone else has known me since I was young and living with my parents.

Let me reassure my single friends that it is not my intention to say that you cannot reach spiritual maturity without marriage.  But for me, living single was leading me down some self-destructive paths that I may never have left without Horyon.

I am having serious trouble putting this revelation into words, people: I am finding that stress on our marriage is breaking me to God's will, rather than just breaking me.  I am turning to God, rather than my wife for basic sustenance.  And I know, I knew that depending on people rather than God was a recipe for disaster, but there is knowing at an intellectual level, then there is knowing at the gut level, where you make the snap decisions.

Our life is not perfect, but God is good.

I still have no claim to understand God.  Now we see God dimly, as in a dirty, scratched bare metal mirror.  Then we shall see God face to face.  But prayer, reading the Bible and taking counsel from those wiser than I helps me to polish the mirror, maybe bang a dent or two out.

I need to get going.  I've gone well over my allotted 30 minutes, and will have to rush some food before starting class in 42 minutes, but my birthday feels more complete for taking the time to let you know how I am doing.

Just the Facts, Ma'am, Just the Facts.

It is testing time again, but this time it is my test.  I have time to write because my students are spread out, well behaved, and still right in front of me if I just look over the computer monitor.

My Uncle Bob complimented me on my last post, but asked for pictures of the kids.  Though I am writing this in the afternoon at school, I will post it later tonight from my home PC and tack on some pictures.  They will not match up with much of what I am posting, but that's OK.

No deep thoughts today.  My brain is not working in deep levels right now.  As Friday says, "Just the facts, Ma'am, just the facts."

Right.  As if any human being were capable of delivering facts completely divorced from emotion and interpretation.  Even spreadsheets reveal the expectations of their creators, how much more so our words?

Fact:  Horyon is taking a big, important test on December 8th.  This test is on education in general, and English specifically.  Not the fun kind of English where you communicate ideas and understand the viewpoints of those who have passed before, but phonology, the esoteric specifics of grammar, and the intricacies of translating complicated, stand-alone sentences from English into Korean.  And spelling, I think.

Fact:  Horyon took a big, important test on October 26th, just three weeks ago.  This test was on Korean history, covering... I don't know.  I assume it goes all the way back to when Koreans invented the knife, fire and kimchi.

Fact:  These tests are necessary for her to change positions from a temporary teacher to a permanent teacher.  In Korean schools, temporary teachers can be released from their contracts at the end of the school year for no reason.  Permanent teachers have the metaphorical brass ring, and may continue the ride until they turn 65.  Firing them is difficult unless they have done something very foolish.  Permanent teachers pay into a pension fund that is quite generous, while temporary teachers pay into a giant envelope under a giant mattress, I believe.  (I am willing to concede that this may not be an actual, true fact.)  Permanent teachers get to rock around the clock, shake their booty, feel the noize, get jiggy with it, and produce milkshakes which are indubitably better than yours.  Temporary teachers are low-quality Kenny G. covers.  In other words, these tests are Important with a capital I.

Fact:  Horyon does not take any tests lightly.  She's like the academic equivalent of a hard-boiled detective with brass knuckles in one pocket and a snub-nosed pistol in the other.  She figures out what she needs to know, then grabs its throat like a bull dog, never letting go until it is either limp in her grasp or she is called back by her master, Time: the master of us all.  For these Important tests, she is dialing it up to 11.

Fact:  Studying in the Sack Family home is difficult, due to the affections and needs for affection from the two shortest members of the family.  (Though Maxine may be looking to move up in the height rankings within the next couple of years.)  Our kids play well together for stretches of time, sometimes upwards of ten minutes without yelling, hitting or crying.  However, they frequently do things which seem to require the attention of a parent.  Sometimes this requirement is of an urgent nature, to avoid serious bodily harm or rifts in time and space, and sometimes it is more of an emotional requirement.  There are even occasional nutritional and medical requirements (e.g. snacks and owies).  These requirements can sometimes be stalled by allowing them to view a DVD, but inevitably the period following that viewing is used to make up for the previous 90 minutes without interruption.

Fact:  Horyon's parents' home has a computer room that does not get used much.  It has a big desk.  It is a good place to study.  Horyon has been going to her parents home after work and staying there until 10 or 11 p.m.  Sometimes later.  Since they take care of the kids for some time every day, and feed them dinner three or four times a week, they get to see their mother during dinner time.  Maybe even a little time before and after.

Fact:  By the time Horyon comes home from studying, I have put the kids in bed and tried to get some housework done.  Horyon has been awake for about 45 minutes longer than I have, but I am usually more tired.

Fact:  I am carrying around decidedly more weight than Horyon is, while she is carrying around more cuteness than I am.  I am also trying to do all of the dishes so that she does not have to.  By itself, washing dishes is a soul-draining exercise for me, but listening to podcasts while doing it keeps me entertained enough to not mind the work and dishpan hands.

Fact:  A normal day for us includes about 15 minutes of conversation, most of it just after or before one of is sleeping.  We send a couple of text messages if needed, and talk on the phone if it is urgent.  On a good day we will sit and talk after she gets home, adding another 15 minutes.

Fact:  I miss my wife.

Well, there you go.  How facty was that last one?  Not very.  But my last student is almost finished with her test, and I need to wrap this up.

I'll tack some pictures on before I post this.  Horyon twisted or sprained her ankle on a school field trip, and she took a great picture of her foot while getting acupuncture treatment.  Enjoy.

Quinten's new favorite game: Pregnancy.

Horyon's new favorite game: Needlework.

Maxine's new favorite game: Spying.

She has a combination of Rob and Horyon's teeth.

Scary Monster!  Quinten-made Mask!

We scored us a Christmas tree!

Maxine eating Japanese noodles that SHE MADE!   IN JAPAN!
She was so good they offered her a job!

Sleeping for two.  Don't worry, I took the pillow out after taking the picture.

I'm not Myself Today... Or Ever

This post originated as a discussion between me and Aubrey about being married and single, and how married people often forget what it was like to be single. It also originated in December. I started writing it, saved the draft, then got caught up in other things.

I know that I have a tendency to become separated from my past. I often feel that I have always been with Horyon, and the time before her was something else; perhaps a dream, maybe a book I read. The same with Maxine. We were married for four and a half years before she was born, but now it's kind of hard for me to remember what it was like, being married and without children.

I think everyone tends to live in the present like this to some extent. Another example: when I was living in Nepal, it took no time at all for my American life to seem more like a story I had read than an actual experience. Vice versa when I left Nepal. I went back to visit Nepal five years after leaving, and found that I couldn't just go back to what I was before. Partly because I could no longer speak the language as well. Partly because I no longer had my "Nepal Reflexes". And mostly (if not entirely) because I was no longer the person I had been.

Getting married is similar to moving to another country, even in the language department. One adds new phrases, like "my wife" and "since I got married". The first few times you say them, they feel almost like a foreign language in your mouth. (How embarrassing is it to say, "I met my girlfriend yesterday," when everyone knows that you're married?) And like learning a foreign language, the next bits you learn seem easier, like "my daughter" and "our family".

Some of the other transitions were also difficult to adjust to: I had always jealously guarded my privacy, and being married means not being alone as much. That is mostly a good thing, but sometimes difficult. I still love to have time alone, I just don't get nearly as much of it. The first time I walked into the bathroom and almost fell on my butt because the floor was wet, even though I had not taken a shower since the previous day, it hit home for me: "I" am now "we".

Sharing stuff wasn't such a big deal for me. Once Horyon realized that putting a CD in the wrong jewel box was an executable offense, things went pretty smoothly. But I know that for some people merging stuff is a big transition, along with merging finances. Neither has caused us any problems, but it's still an adjustment: it was "my stuff", now it's "our stuff".

The changes, big and small, are along the same scale as moving to a foreign country. And the memory of the time before those changes can also be slippery to hold on to. We lose details over time, making our mental picture somewhat blurry. In addition to being blurry, the picture may be inaccurate for other reasons: it's easy to romanticize your single days, glossing over the loneliness and pain, remembering only the good bits. And it's just as easy to focus on the bad days, forgetting that there were some damn good times back then.

It can all be quite confusing, and sometimes leads to not trusting one's own gray matter. When I met Horyon, I quickly became aware of the void in my life that she filled so perfectly. I told her many times, without exaggeration, that she made my whole life better. My best times before meeting her seemed, in retrospect, kind of pitiful. But now I can remember that there were times when I really was happy, even with a steady undercurrent of loneliness. Being with friends chased the loneliness back into a dark corner for the evening, and I wasn't like one of those stupid pictures of a crying clown. I was actually happy! Or was I? The memories of happy times now seem somewhat suspect. I was so sure that those good old days weren't really that good; why do they appear so attractive when I think about them after weeks of insufficient sleep?

It suggests that the only feelings you can be really (if not absolutely) sure of are the ones you are experiencing right now.

In one of the Harry Potter books, Dumbledore says to Harry, "Harry, I owe you an explanation. An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young...and I seem to have forgotten lately."

I had to go look that up. Found it at MuggleNet. I didn't remember the exact words, but the idea rang clear and true to me when I read the book, and came back to mind as I was writing this. I would like to think that I can still be sympathetic with people who are going through what I have long ago finished, or never even started. But I know that I have that universal tendency to superimpose myself on everyone around me.

And for the record, one thing I love about the Harry Potter books is that the central, larger-than-life, super hero/role model character of Dumbledore, with all of his fans and wisdom, still has his failings. He is very human.

And if that is not enough wandering for you in one post, you will just have to read more than one post and pretend it was just one.