Dr. Lynette Hinings-Marshall
Author and Travel Writer
A New Safeguard
Hot sands burn my bare feet as I peer at pale silhouettes of bathers in the shallow waters far from shore. I walk into the water toward them until the four women, all in white, back away. 'Anyeo hasseo,' I say. They stop, then giggle and drop their gaze. When one responds, 'Anyeo hasseo' I move closer. Each girl is wearing a white, long-sleeve muslin shirt and long, white muslin pants that cling to her wet petite body. Tiny hands are clad in white cotton gloves. Most surreal is that each holds a white umbrella over her head to protect beautiful high cheekbones that whisper a Mongol ancestry.
For the two years I lived in Soul I benefited financially from this determination by Korean women to safeguard their beauty. Each Monday morning I would walk up to the third floor of a building on Myeong-Dong for a one-hour Ginseng facial. This cost the ridiculously low sum of fourteen dollars and included Rose Hibiscus tea in the cosy lobby afterward. Today the same treatment in Australia where I am living costs me one-hundred dollars. I would happily pay this, but current Covid lockdown rules in Melbourne restrict travel to five kilometres from home.
Choices
Lloyd for a boy. Grace for a girl. We both hoped for a girl. When there was no baby after years of trying I took it as a sign. Career was more important. So, I left Australia for the promise of success in America. Did I do the right thing?
Lost
The word lost comes from the Old Norse word los, meaning the disbanding of an army. This is how I feel sometimes settling into this new country. I am alone. Familiar friends and family are now somewhere else.
Serial Irresolution
I am hiding in my room at Silliman College when an envelope arrives with the familiar handwriting. It is two days before I can open it. When he called me in Denver last month I told him I would drop back into the abyss if I saw him again. Then we were so perfect together last week the pain I have felt from his absence belonged to somebody else. “I am so proud of my beautiful and independent schoolgirl studying economics. I love you and you are so far away”, he wrote. We shall never be quite done with each other.
Happenstance
The screeching of the rental gears reverberates through the hotel’s empty car park. Where’s that damn reverse? Shit! Now it’s starting to snow and my flight leaves for London in two hours. I slump forward on the steering wheel. When four enormous men appear out of nowhere I reach for the door lock. Too late. When the one with a shaved head and neck tattoos bangs on my side window I cower. He opens the door. I am mute with terror. “Wir helfen lhnen geme. Wir helfen lhnen geme.” They lift the car like a Tonka toy, turn it to face the road to the airport, and wave me goodbye. I don't know German, but recognize kindness.
Denmark
I stop and listen to the landscape, the whisper of the trees, the wind rippling through the leaves. The ground is smooth and soft under my feet. Everything is softly silhouetted. Danish Summer is benign; unlike Australia where prickles pierce underfoot and scrubby branches scratch as I pass by.
Hong Kong
She is at home in Colorado when a shocking phone call comes from England.
"David is dead. Killed himself. Bloody car accident in Hong Kong."
The sound of her ex-husband’s father sucking in his breath reverberates through the phone line. She imagines him at his home, trying not to cry.
“Would you believe it was in the bloody Morgan we made him for his birthday? I’m flying out there now. Thought you should know.”
She stands open-mouthed. She cannot swallow. She cannot speak. There is no air in her lungs.
She remembers how much her ex-husband loved his family’s connection to the car company—the visits to the factory, his pride in it.
She whispers, “I’m so very, very sorry. Is there anything I can do?” Her voice fails her. She begins to sob. “When did this happen?”
"Yesterday. Thursday over there."
After she puts down the phone, she wraps her arms around herself and rocks back and forth. She cannot absorb the torrent of heartbreak.
She stands, in her mind, beside him, in the early years—before everything became complicated. She wants to call their mutual friends in Australia, but she cannot. She is the former wife. She has no standing. Most mutual friends have long since retained their friendship with him and his new family; they may not yet know of this tragedy, and it would be wrong for her to be the one to tell them.
Reflections
Images ricochet around the room as multiple reflections march randomly and shout at me to declare myself. How do I voice what these changes do far beneath me, moving deep under the surface, like the plates of the earth? Will there be a crash of tectonic plates and my life will become a failure?
Ladies Who Lunch in Doha
"We lunch there every week; Join us." Allison invited.
"Our usual tea" Caroline smiled to the waitress.
At five o'clock the sweet-natured staff continued to refill our teapots.
"Here's to our leisurely life in Qatar," toasted Judith.
Fortunately, we came by taxi because the teapots were filled with gin.
