CHAPTER TWENTY
WHEN I look back there are so many things I wish I had changed. At that time, it was a flow. You didn’t plan your life, as many people did, but you rode the wave that took you to one place or another. Thinking back, it was all reckless abandonment. There is a time to march forward in your quest to accomplish what is in you or be practical and worry about your own impracticality. I chose the latter and took the aimless direction option. Where I would be tomorrow was not something I worried about. That moment in time is where I wanted to be.
I met Suratchawadee in 2002 in Thailand. We met in a very proper way. She was just graduating from university. She didn’t know much English but we seemed to get around it. It wasn’t long before I left the country and discovered…
I married Suratchawadee eleven years later. We used to take walks for miles.
It wasn’t long before we were talking about marriage. When she mentioned she wanted a child I bailed. I had two in the USA already and I was not ready to be dad again. I took the next plane out to the US. I got home and kept thinking about going back to Thailand to my friends at the church. After a year or so I emailed and a brother in Christ asked me to stay with him. He was a great guy with two extra rooms. He asked me to stay at his house.
She had gotten married. I found this out later. She was married for seven years. So ten years later I semi-retired to Thailand. After a year or so my friend in the church told me that Suratchawadee’s husband had died. I remember I was walking into the shower when I thought, “I am getting married again.” I knew in my heart that it was going to happen. Even though I resisted, the plan was already written. I kept pondering that for months trying to make better sense out of my relucta