N姐姐接到L弟的电话，说会来LA开会。L弟头天晚上到，第二天上午开会，中午两个人约好，在会展中心门口见面。第三天一早飞机L弟会旧金山。只有短短半天时间。

两个人通信的时候，曾经设想过无数次下次见面的机会。 可是没想到，欢送会一别就是十几年。谁也没想到会分开这么久，不过因为太久了，反而不觉得久。

很多时候是这样，几天几个星期的分别最难熬。可是五年十年又变得很快。

17，18的少年而今已经30了。见面的机会，来的这么突然。两个人都有点惴惴不安。

LA会展中心门口台阶上。L弟故作镇定的站在那里等N姐姐。一辆通往机场的大客车开来。台阶上很多人拎包上车。这群人和L弟穿着差不多，衬衫领带西装外套脖子上面挂个名字牌。隔开人群和大客车，L弟看到一辆Alfa Romeo Spide敞篷车开过来。L弟知道这是N姐姐的车。L弟突然觉得嗓子发干。LA不靠海的内陆地区，夏天树荫下面就很阴凉，可是太阳底下不能站人。没遮没拦的烤着。L弟这么想着的时候，N姐姐已经穿花拂柳般绕过人群来到面前。L弟咋看到N姐姐，第一个感觉是，心口好像突然被闪电击中。第二个感觉是像找个南墙撞撞，而且要边撞边大喊“我为什么没有等她啊!”

L弟内心正在翻江倒海的时候，N姐姐说话了。

”呀。L弟变成穿西装的帅哥了”

“…..”L弟感到膝盖发软。

“这里太热我带你去新港海滩吧”

 “恩” L弟根本不知道新港海滩在那里。

海边比会展中心那边要低十度。空气正好海风正好沙滩正好下午的阳光正温柔。L弟和N姐姐边走边交换了两个人过去十年的经历。

N姐姐还在日本的时候，父亲就生病去世了。所以当然N姐姐全家已经不能住在驻军基地了，而是在外面租房子住。只等到N姐姐他们姐妹两个学年结束返回美国。

军队的工作是很稳定的。福利也好。退伍军人，部队会提供学费。很多人家境不好，就先当兵几年，退伍之后用部队发的钱，去读大学。L弟和N姐姐的父亲，就是签约三十年的。建立家庭之后，全家都可以在分落在世界各地的部队基地上面生活。这里是自成一体的小城市。食物衣服都非常便宜。退休之后，还可以拿到原来薪水的70%。 所以虽然薪水很微薄，很多人还是喜欢这种稳定长远还可以环游世界的工作。

可是军人家属这一切的好处，都在N姐姐父亲去世之后失去了。

离开驻军基地，N姐姐母女三人搬回来美国基本上是举目无亲。N姐姐的妈妈，是在那个年代很普遍的家庭主妇。突然来美国，并没有生活技能。三个人只能靠父亲的退休金和社会救济金生活。

N姐姐在飞往美国的飞机上写了给L弟的第一封信。

“妈妈和姐姐吃了意大利面。我吃了鸡肉。飞机的食物很难吃。抱歉，我的字写得很难看，飞机不稳。

我看到远处太阳升起来了。

也许意味着我的新生活的开始。

可我已经开始想你们大家了。想我们的小学校。

L弟，你千万不要忘记我啊。

而我，也永远不会忘记你的。”

一边是不可预知的新生活，一边是对过去的无限留恋。我要看得哭了。

N姐姐搬家几次，最后来到了LA和圣地亚哥之间的一个小城市。这时候已经是她高中最后一学期了。高中毕业之后，N姐姐读了大学。UCLA哦。大学期间还是要靠补助金生活。大学生的打工机会多了。N姐姐买的第一辆车是71年的甲壳虫，可是却不能常开，因为没有钱买汽油。那时候80年代出，LA的汽油价是1.29。N姐姐笑说，打工好几个小时赚的钱，踩踩油门就没了。（这样看来现在油价3块钱。也没涨很多。）

N姐姐当年在信里曾写“一切都会变好的。总有一天我会得到那些我想要的东西，包括一个好丈夫。“

工作之后，生活慢慢好起来。当年高中很多同学也都搬到LA了。唯独一直没有L弟的消息。

秋千架上。

N姐姐和L弟面对面荡秋千。N姐姐警告L弟说不许偷看自己裙下春光。

L弟面对着N姐姐，当年心目中的女神，此时近在咫尺，活色生香，心情和秋千一样起起落落七上八下。

How long would you wait for someone?
Would you wait forever?
Or would you move on when the time is right?
Does a promise have an expiration date?

Here is why.
Although Vin had his way with girls in college, he never had a stable girlfriend. In the 80s, there were still very much prejudice against people of color especially in the middle states.
This had only gotten better in the past ten years.
By better, it just meant people of color were no longer openly discriminated. Enough with politics.

After graduating from college, Vin moved to Chicago, a big city, a big melting pot of people from all kinds of ethnic background.
Vin, who had been living in the farm lands for five years, was overwhelmed and over joyed.
He could blend in, he could fit in, he could find other familiar faces. He found where he belonged.

Where Vin worked was an all male engineering company. There was only one girl in the company, the front desk receptionist.
After being trapped in the Midwest for five years, Vin had not seen another Asian face for a long time. A overjoyed, overly excited Vin fell in love with everything in this city, new friends, new opportunities, new job, including this Asian girl.

Nerdy engineers didn’t venture very far when it came to love interest. They all sought after the only female in the company. Front desk girl had lots admirers. But she sent a discrete message to Vin’s friend that she was interested in Vin. Vin who was originally too coward to join the massive race.

After he heard the message, he was fully charged with male hormone, oh, i mean…positive energy.

Vin timidly asked her out. She quickly said yes. They started dating.
Months later, Vin received shocking news.
Front desk girl came to Vin one day.

“I have to leave the states to go back to the Philippines..”
“What?? NO! Don’t leave me!”
“I have to.”
“Why? Why?”

Front desk girl replied with words that made me sick to my stomach when I heard it again 20 years later.
“My visa expired. I had to leave or marry a citizen!”

OMG！Time for a knowledge level setting for immigration laws.

First of all, No ONE and I mean NO ONE has to leave. Expel happens only to criminals. Most people can stay illegally indefinitely.
Also, to expel someone back to another country, the receiving country has to have an agreement with US s well. For example, US can not expel anyone back to China.
US provides protections for Chinese political prisoners by offering them visas, Green cards, which in turn allow them to escape to US. Therefore, Chinese government do not accept expels from US.

Now let’s talk about expiration of visa.
There are long term visas and short term visa.
Visitor and business visas are short term visa. People with this visa can not work, and can not have social security number. Without SSN, they can not open bank accounts, among other things. Let’s assume that the owner of the company is Filipino, and he/she hired front desk girl illegally ( i assumed a Filipino owner because most will only risk this for their own people), then it could probably explain the job part.
Now this meant she had to get paid in cash. Since she couldn’t open a bank account, she had a big cash box under her bed.
Its very unlikely.

If she was a law biding citizen that would exit voluntarily when her visa expired, she shouldn’t accept this job in the first place.
If she didn’t care for the law, why bother leaving now?

Student visa and work visa are long term visas.
Student visa could last forever as long as she was in school.
Work visa could last for 6 years. After that, if the person was in the process of filing for a green card, it would last forever.

Vin and Sarah knew nothing of immigration law besides what they saw in movies. Hollywood did his damage.

Back to the scene 20 years ago.

“My visa expired. I had to leave or marry a citizen!”
Vin looked down at his chest and made a shocking discovery, “I AM A CITIZEN!”

Vin went back home and thought it over for a few days and decided to get bug a ring despite opposing advices from his sisters and friends.

Vin was in love. He couldn’t stand there and watch the love of his life slip away from him to another side the world one more time. Vin thought of the promise he made at 17 and Sarah. But Vin had no idea where Sarah was and if she still remembered him. All he knew was that…front desk girl was right here, was reachable, and with real flesh and blood.

Vin kneed down and proposed.
Front desk girl said yes.

But this won’t be a story worth typing up for if there wasn’t another twist.
Front desk threw another bomb at Vin.
“by the way, I am 30.”

22 years old Vin that was previously on one knee, now decisively fell back down on his bosom.

When I heard this part of the story, it didn’t shock me as much as it did to Vin back then. I was mostly concentrating on hiding the sneer on my face.

Front desk girl must look very young for her age, or Vin was blinded by love because he thought she was younger than him. Although she was 8 years older than him, she was the most (and only) sought after girl in Vin’s company.  She was also supposedly (according to Vin) very pretty. That was enough for Vin.

Deceiving or not, as long as it was out of love (no, I don’t mean convenience) it’s OK, right?
There starts the marriage of Vin and front desk girl.

Vin had only one picture of Sarah. She was 18 and beautiful.
He kept it in his wallet. Years into his marriage, front desk girl found the picture.
“Who is she”
Vin thought of the three year crush, the promise at 17, the letters hid in the garage, as well as the feelings buried deep in his heart.
He summarized it. “a girl l liked in high school.”
“I don’t like it when you carry a picture of another girl.”

Vin took the picture out and wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Throw it away.”

Vin tore the picture apart, which tore his heart apart at the same time.
Vin said he wasn’t upset at his wife, he could understand where she was coming from.

It is no one’s fault. It is the irony of fate.

How long would you wait for someone?
Would you wait forever?
Or would you move on when the time is right?
Does a promise have an expiration date?

If they met not at 30, but at 50, would the story be as devastating as it is now?

It has been 15 years since the going away party in 1979, they started talking again but had yet to meet in person.
But very soon, Vin had an opportunity to go to LA, three times in a row.

To be continued….

A small, seemingly insignificant event can change a person’s live forever.

After the half kiss, came the long wait.
The first letter from Sarah arrived several weeks later.
Vin’s hands trembled with joy as he opened up the letter.
He wrote back immediately. After he posted the letter, he was back to waiting again.
At that time, it took two weeks to send a letter across the Pacific Ocean.
Although the letter lit Vin’s heart, it was quickly overshadowed by the darkness of the two week wait that immediately followed.
A year later, Vin and his family moved back to the states.
Much closer now, yet not close enough for two high school students with no money or freedom to travel.
They were separated by vast land of corn fields in the Midwestern states.

After the going away party, they kept writing to each other for two years. BUt they never saw each other again until they completely lost touch.

20 years later, Vin told Sarah, “I still have all of your letters.”

How or why did they lose touch?
Vin went on a camping trip during his summer vacation.
Sarah. and her family moved at the same time.
This was as foolish a reason to lose the love of your life as the teenage boy that were young and foolish at that time.

Let’s not dig into the details.

Before they lost touch, they made a promise to reunite one day. If neither of them was married by 35, they will marry each other.
A promise they made at 17.

This was 1982.

1995, Wal-Mart, San Francisco

Vin saw someone familiar. The way he put it was, she had a typical walk of a bow legged Japanese girl .
“What a jerk!” was what i thought.

He walked over and said, “I can’t remember who you are. But I think I know you.”
Again! Jerk!
But the girl turned around and screamed, “Vin. I am Amy. We went to the same high school together.”

I was relieved but I didn’t think Sarah was bowlegged anyway. (Sarah is not bowlegged…)

“Sarah. has been looking all over for you. Let me give you her number!” said Amy.
This was when Vin’s wife walked up and introduced herself while carrying their two year old son.

No one knew what Sarah’s reactions were when she heard of the discovery of Vin, and his marital status.
Nobody wanted to ask.

When Vin called her, they talked for two hours.
Sarah congratulated Vin.

Vin said “She sounded fine. Didn’t seem upset.”

Young and stupid.
No longer young, yet still stupid.
In fact, Vin knew better than that.
But people always believe what they want to believe.

When they found each other again, Vin was 30. Sarah 31. They did reunite before they turned 35. But only one of them was still single.

I couldn’t help asking,”In today’s world, how many men father two year old sons at the age of 30? What are the chances of that? What is the rush???”

This is 1995, Sarah lived in LA while Vin in SF.
They were closer than ever, and all grown up, with jobs and money. They could afford the 6 hours of drive that connects LA and SF.
in 1995, there was also the instant electronic mail and cellular phones.
In fact, after that first phone call, they started to talk and exchanged emails regularly.

But they had never been so far apart.

A gulf forever divided them, they would never be able to cross it for the rest of their lives.

Vin had a two year old son.

What Sarah later found out was that Vin had been married for eight years, which means he was married at 22, barely a year after college.

I asked Sarah, “What kind of people get married at 22? Who on earth would do that in today’s world?”

After I heard the reason, I felt a knot forming inside of my chest. It grew tighter and bigger, and became firmly stuck in my chest. It has stuck there for weeks since then with no signs of going away.
I was afraid that I would carry this knot with me for a long time if I don’t tell it to someone.
But how can I remove the curtain that hid the big lie for over 20 years.
But how can I not?

To be continued……

LAX

Los Angeles International airport.
How many flights arrive here everyday?
How many flights take off from here?
How many reunions?
How many goodbyes?
How many of those are forever….

This story is hearsay. It happened a long time ago. It was thought of over and over again by the people involved in this story. Just like how an oil painting loses its color, every time someone uses flash to take a photo of it, a memory gets distorted every time someone tries to recall it from memory.

August, 1994
On the patio outside of the second floor waiting room at LAX, two people were smoking. In front of them was a table with a cup of mocha and a plate, in it a strawberry scone. They faced a dusty parking slot with noises of planes taking off and arriving. August in California is no time for hanging outside under the cruel sun. The two people sat outside for four hours. When the time came, one got up and boarded a plane, while the other left the waiting room, and took a car back in town.

“Did you stand there and watch his plane disappear into the sky?” People laughed. Must have watched too many movies. “Better to get back home before traffic gets worse.”

To protect the innocent, let’s just call the girl that drove back home Sarah.

Travel back in time to 1980, Okinawa, Japan.
There was a going away party in the high school on the America military base. This high school was a little different. If you opened up the year book, all kids in there looked mixed, half Japanese, half American to be exact. (What you can’t tell from the pictures is that many had Japanese, Korean, Filipino, or Hawaiian mothers and American fathers)

Of course, not everyone turned out good looking as the myth suggested. Judging from the year book, only less 30% turned out well. However, Sarah was a true beauty that reminded me of an exotic Southeast Asian woman.

Sarah was a junior. Due to illness in the family, her family has to move back to America.

All two to three hundred students from this little high school threw a going away party for Sarah and her sister.

Next came the younger version of the LAX plane boarding Vin.

Vin was a year younger, a sophomore.
When we found him in the year book, we all fell off the chair laughing.

He had the hair cut in the shape of half cut water melon, fat face, small eyes, smiles that looked sweet at first, but later on made you think he was hiding something sneaky.

It is a small school. Therefore, although Vin and Sarah are from different school years, they had always known each other.

At the going away party, Vin gave Sarah a pair of double hearted ear rings. The kind that had two hearts looped together.

Sarah took the ear rings, put them down, moved closer, lowered her head, and planted her lips on his.

It all happened too fast. Vin froze.

He was definitely not her first love.
This was definitely his first kiss.

This could hardly be qualified as a kiss. Its more like a half kiss in my opinion.

Sarah kissed his lips, and tasted Vin’s lips with her tongue from left to right, right to left…

Vin stood motionless during the whole time trying to comprehend what was happening – she with her lips and tongue and he with his lips and teeth clenched together – he desperately asked himself, “what do I do?”.

That’s the end of the party. Inevitably, the night retired, the morning started. Sarah and her family boarded the plane to America, and later on arrived in America. Young love. Now with two separated lives.

Many years later, Sarah asked, “Did you like me back then?”

Vin,”I had a crush on you for three years.”
“Why didn’t you kiss me back then?”
“I didn’t know how.”

How innocent is the boy!
( to be continued….)