A farewell to arms

Ernest Hemingway interpreted the word “arms” as the instruments of war (though this was more of the rifle and the sidearm rather than the nuclear instruments of the U.S. and Russia) and the embracing arms of a beloved. Our farewell is on the second since in context we head for China to join the “arms” of my wife who left Saipan before Christmas of 2017.  Ours then is the emotional farewell to the “arms” we left behind.

Just so we were fair, my current Xiaoyan included, I was married seven times, divorced six times.  Mary Lou Brunkow and I lasted for more than 19 years, then I quit.  Patricia Jordan of USAID and I lasted 10 years, then she quit on me. Deborah Thompson came to teach in the CNMI and married me when I came to Saipan but she was eager to leave and I was not, so we quit on each other by default. All the three were Caucasians, so I went Asian and would have considered a Pinay but no one would take me.

A Zhongguoren did, and I had been with Zhongguo (China, to the West) ever since. The list would have begun and ended with Yuan Yinghua who married me on Saipan in April 2001, and we took the train on a 28-hour wonderful ride from Hong Kong to Beijing, but we did not have a life of our own unless it was blessed and led by Yinghua’s elder sister, and that posed a problem.  Then I got pastorally enamored (at first) with a nurse whose group was on a flight with me headed for Saipan for their NCLEX, and the group came to the Resource Center one day as their sponsor had not been able in their minds to offer the assistance they needed.

Yinghua and I parted, and Qian Xinyi walked into the gap, 36 years my junior. She aced her NMC course and passed her NCLEX, said goodbye five years later, and married the immigration officer.  She was a determined professional, got her doctorate and became a nurse practitioner in California.  Zhou Yun was 24 years my junior but she had problems with her English and given to volatile emotional explosions when frustrated. She came from Jiangsu north of Shanghai, and I visited her town, but if Zhou Yun had problems with English, it was nonexistent in her relations. She left me after more than a year, but she stayed on Saipan. Eight years, three loves, and I survived though heartbroken at every turn.

Xiaoyan married a guy in New York who came to her home in Shenyang and petitioned for her and her son joining them in the U.S. Guangzhou decided to decline the visa application, so she came to Saipan to meet her husband and he did not show up. I went to New York not too long after, and found out that the husband suffered from a neuro-cardio vascular condition and in a care home. Had he come to Saipan, they would have been stretched and the relationship strained for the island did not have the medical facility he needed and Xiaoyan was neither inclined nor in a medical position to care for him, on Saipan, or in New York.  He filed for divorce, and as soon as it was granted, he died. 

Meanwhile, having led the Oleai Marianas Resource Center of the United Methodist Church in various causes, including that of the abuse of imported garment factory workers, I visited former clients in China, and met Xiaoyan’s parents, brother and wife with son, and her own son.  

Nursing a cervical spondylosis, I got a good non-surgical attention in China; discovered pedagogical challenge at the Education Center in Shenyang Aerospace U, found a great host in Xiaoyan’s family. They were investing in a new dwelling; I was offered a third of the space for a seventh of the cost that served as my residence for my remaining years.  They warmly welcomed me into their fold. The daughter (who returned from Saipan to Shenyang 2010), her son and I legally constituted a family in 2010. After four years of a «marriage of convenience,”

we made it covenantal.

The decision on the dwelling occurred while I was still gainfully employed until 2013. China under President Xi Jinping went by the books on everything to combat corruption.  One item on the book was that foreign teachers were not going to be older than 65 years of age. The foreign office denied my working visa in November 2013. I was a good three years past the bend.

Xiaoyan and her son, Yunpeng, came to Saipan to live with me.  Xiaoyan’s brother and mother came, too, and though it was fall going into winter on Saipan, my brother-in-law hardly wore a shirt. It was hot by their standards. Mother-in-law at 78 was widowed last year. Of age, she needed tending to as well. So when Xiaoyan went home, she automatically fitted the role.  She evidently could no longer return to Saipan.

So, guess who travelled. I left Saipan for Hong Kong on my way to Shenyang. I had five days visiting on the “Olopai Park” by the lagoon, the one with the Micronesian catamaran under repairs (the Taipo), and the scattered numerous one-outrigger proa of Pacific island’s navigation.  I stayed with the old friend on Saipan, even as he entertained a visiting Japanese friend Ken of Hawaii but resided and retired in Japan. They both sailed to Satawal. Ken will return and maybe, since he lived in Japan, they might make a trip into Zhengzhou in Henan, China in the near future. Ironically, their host’s daughter, born in Zhengzhou and left when she was 4, did not have any desire to see her birthplace at all at 12. I left Sunday; will not return ever again. 

It had been good, Saipan!