This morning I traveled over to Mrs. Chung’s apartment for tea. She made breakfast consisting of a variety of rice cake and green tea. We talked and ate a lot. She served malch’a too. I bought some of it and some leaf green tea from her. She gave me a gift of several little plates as well as some deep fried seaweed and rice cake.

She asked me when I was going to have children. She said I should have one before I’m thirty because after that time pregnancy is hard on the woman and on the baby. She was thirty when her first child was born and it was difficult, so she knows. I said I’d take my chances. She said she knew Dave wanted one because he is a man and men want babies. She said she knew he would help me take care of a baby. I nodded my way through until she was finished. Then she added that she would take care of my baby sometimes. I said, "Yeah, I’ll just ship it over to Korea!"

There is much work to be done. I look around this house and mentally note items to be cleaned, discarded, or organized. Yet, I find that I don’t know where to begin and I long for a period of time when I can just relax. I’m not ready to disrupt this home I’ve so recently returned to; I’m not ready to say goodbye yet - I’m still just saying hello.

I was so happy to return, but now that I’m here I find myself sad and anxious. I’m painstakingly documenting this defined period of transition in a paper journal, which is why much soul is lacking here. I can’t pour it twice. I expect this three week period of intense change to resonate long after it has passed and I want to be able to return to the feelings of the moment for reflection. Day by day I will live it and then I’ll spend the next six months or so trying to make sense of why I don’t feel OK.

There is a feeling that everything is being seen for the last time. I am still in a period of remembering. Where will my decision to stay in Seattle this last summer fit into the larger weave of my life? I can’t yet see the pattern forming. I wish I had stayed so that I could have lived what I had anticipated and planned for; yet I know that living in Seattle has been incredibly rehabilitative for me. This is my home - right now I am typing at this computer I have owned for nearly five years - but it feels unfamiliar to me after nine months separation. This whole house is mine and yet unknown to me. The same can be said, to some extent, of the man who lives in it.