Dram Man

In the chaos of the past couple weeks, I did something that I should have done a long time ago, but never had the time or initiative. I got my daughter registered as an American, and started the visa process for my wife.

First let me talk about my daughter. Everything was fine. It is an expensive paperwork process, but not too burdensome from the out set. One of the larger hurdles is that both parents, and the child, have to physically be there. Things were just fine, until they told me, "Do you have five years proof of residence in the United States?". I said, "Um, er, I like Hot Dogs?". As you can imagine this question has an immediate metaphysical implication. How can you prove you actually exist, let alone in a particular place in time? In any case the answer according to the US government is school transcripts.

(The reason for the law by the way is to prevent people simply born in the US from making citizens abroad. My wife asks why it is so complex, and I tell her because some people abuse the system. I can't imagine how any of this is a problem in Korea.)

I also got the information on how to get my wife a visa, a really long and cumbersome process. I will say this; anybody who goes through all the requirements to get an immigrant visa qualifies by their sure force of courage alone. This did however get me thinking on one of the bigger questions that always existed in the back of my mind, "What will be my wife's biggest problem in adjusting to life in America?"

I thought of our current situation. I also thought about other things relating to that and Korean society. Then I had the most dramatic backdrop for the answer I concocted, the death and funeral of Ronald Reagan. The hardest part I think my wife will have in adjusting to America is our optimism.

I often half joke that Koreans love to get together and rail on how the world is against them. Even in the modern popular telling of Korean history it is all about how bad everything is that happened to them. There is little talk of the pluck, good fortune, and realpoltik, which played a role in Korea's independence in the face of larger powers for so long.

Even on an individual basis the problem is puzzling to me as an American. My wife worries about the business and our corresponding financial future. From what I can gather, the only things my mother-in-law and sister-in-law talk about with my wife is how horrible their lives are and how its never going to change (either that, or how horrible I am, and how she needs to change or leave me!).

All this eventual gets dumped on me obviously. However I take the American/western approach to it all. I a cliched way, I count my blessings, become thankful for what I got in life so far, and look forward to a new day tomorrow. All three of these seem directly in conflict with Korean culture. Why I am not a religious scholar I wonder if the dominate religions are related. My wife's/Korea's Buddhism sees everything as a curse (including the money to theoretically make everything better), while my Catholicism sees everything as a gift from God.

Even in the prose of Cathartidae you see the signs of life I am talking about. He talks about how thankful he is for his girlfriend. He also talks about what is "next", not "how will I go on in life".

My wife tells me I am always overly optimistic. Admittedly this is true even by American standards. However I wonder how she is going to react being around so many people that look forward to tomorrow, chance to forget yesterday, and start anew.

posted Thursday, 17 June 2004