Dr. Park is 73 years old. Roberta is 80. I am afraid to find out what the nature of their relationship really is. Its clear, Dr. Park does nor recognize his age as the time to hang up the spurs. He was constantly thinking, what to do next. I saw an e-mail that our church has opened a new school of the Oriental Medicine in Las Vegas. Dr. Park met the news ecstatically, wrote an eight hundred words essay (he managed to fir it on a half page by measuring the page and deciding how much space each letter should take). We saw him off, I - wiping tears from my eyes. Who is going to be my husband's Korean wife now?
That was before I found out that both, Roberta and Dr. Park, are not what they claim to be. That was before Roberta's eightieth birthday.
A friend explained to me, that truth is not important to the Japanese people. At least, it doesn't have the same degree of importance that the Western world allots it. What they value most is the harmony of co-existence. I was going out of my mind, trying to understand, why the same Japanese sisters who were upset about a blog with Roberta's life in it, were calling me, one after another, to say that they will come to Roberta's party. I began to arrange it before the truth came out, and it was too late to cancel. Half of the church showed up, many Japanese members gave testimonies about Roberta's work and achievements. She got up and talked about the love and support that she received from, specifically, Japanese sisters. Our pastor, who just a day ago was doing his best to strip away Roberta's lies, came and congratulated her. I felt like a tremendous fool, a pawn in a game I didn't understand, but we all smiled, bowed and proclaimed our love and devotion to each other. Perhaps, the manipulation for the sake of harmonious relationships is a good thing and the truth is really not that important, but life becomes so confusing without it!
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