A man who has owned a one-bedroom apartment for rent said fretfully one day. His tenant—a young man had rented his apartment for many years, never wanted to own a dog, especially they had an agreement at the first time he moved in and signed in the lease that pet wasn’t allowed in the building. Until he had a girlfriend who just moved in his apartment, the problem quickly came with her. His silly girlfriend acted as a child that if she wanted to have something, the boyfriend must bring it for her. She doesn’t care of what the landlord’s gonna think about because a dog was already kept inside the apartment then she kept pushing her boyfriend fighting with the landlord, otherwise demanding him to move out.

The man who is the landlord told me the logic: if the young man takes care of a dog well, he will take care of his kid well ‘too’. It’s like a test before married. It’s new to me as growing up in a different culture. If I fall in love to a man, all my love go with him; it may not be necessary that I have to love his pet too because human and animal don’t have the same personality and appearance, yet they are not twin. A father who loves playing with his kid isn’t necessary that he has to like playing with a dog too; he can be allergic to fur. He may like to hold a baby but he may not want to touch a dog. However, if you still think that taking care of a dog and kid can be logically related, should it be simpler the girl can skip the dog test by choosing a man who works at a pet store to marry? Or should single American men own a dog farm just to prove their ability as baby sitters? Or should kindergartens/child cares merge their business to dog cares / dog sitters as they are considered the same routine jobs?

Additional information from the landlord: girlfriend generally thinks that she will have been through the labor in pregnancy so the boyfriend must do the rest of the job by taking care of kid. Except, in the case of divorced couples, mothers generally will choose to take care of children while fathers provide financial support—if so, rather than training a boyfriend to raise a dog, girlfriend should push him to find a good paying job and to demand him to keep working hard so he will get used to the after-marriage life. However, both of a couple has never realized that the sickness of marriage has already placed at the beginning of relationship. This is like the cancer of marriage when a girlfriend never stops being paranoid that she will be taken advantage by doing more jobs than a lazy boyfriend who she believes does nothing much—“I already do this and do that, now it is your turn to do this and do that too!” “ Then the cancer begins to grow slowly and bigger when masculine nature, in general, finds that telling (or commanding) a boyfriend/husband to do something from girlfriend/wife is a nature of girly bossy fussiness. Men feel being irritated and bothered. Next, fighting comes along and finally unhappy ending in divorce.

Let think in your mind a little bit while continue reading further, ‘What comes with a dog?’—First, you now know that is a girlfriend. Then what else?

Before revealing the answer, I have another story. It is a story of a young man’s life. Before married, I often saw, he liked riding his bicycle around. He didn’t own a dog at that time. Every time I saw him, he was exhilarated just like he was still in his teenage. After that he married and quickly had a baby. Now his life in the marriage has changed him very much. He stopped riding his bike anymore. One day I saw him sat under a tree with one hand held a dog collar, another hand held the baby stroller, and his face looked to the ground all the time. The exhilaration which made him looked fresh and young was completely gone from his life. Just a few years past, his good-looking face quickly turned into a much-older look than his actual age—unattractive at all. Now, the answer of what else comes with the dog is: a girlfriend, baby and a boring life.

In my opinion, generally men don’t like doing routine jobs. Think like you, as a husband, work all day long: being tired in the office from dealing with crazy problems. In the end of the day you come home, you want to relax for the next day but can’t. Your wife commands you to walk dog which now becomes an extra routine job undeniably. However, your wife may want to argue that this is a practical training before having a real childcare job. It’s true BUT in the time you are ready to have a child, the dog isn’t gone anywhere; this isn’t like after graduation from school, books can go to waste or recycle somewhere else. Working and taking care of a kid already give you hard works, now the dog adds double. Especially, double spending which causes you to work harder to earn enough incomes to support them all. Because both husband and wife are tired and stressful especially during bad economy, the family feud starts and continues constantly to the final state of cancer growing big ending up a divorce. There is a real story to support my argument: a couple files for a divorce with a big nasty fight over child supports. The fight supposes to be ended with the judge’s decision in the divorced court, however it extends to the dog. You may think that dog problem is easy to be solved by such as donating the dog as a training kit to another new couple. However, the real problem isn’t the dog itself, there are thousands of dollar veterinary bills still unpaid and the nasty fight is for—‘who will take responsible for?’

Now you know the boyfriend’s extra job is to walk dog. To be fair, girlfriend also has a job too but not to be a dog walker. Girlfriend will monitor her boyfriend from the apartment’s window because she is so worried that her boyfriend will get lost with another girl—don’t say I’m wrong about this because in the past I have been curious all the time ‘why’ every time I greet young men who walk with a dog near their apartment buildings, just to be friendly to my neighbors, they look nervous and every of them always looks up to their apartment’s windows. In addition, even some young men don’t walk dog but smoking a cigarette in front of the building, girlfriends keep an eye from the window until the smoking is finished. A new way—as now there is better technology, a girlfriend doesn’t need to stand at the window any more but keep talking on the phone with her boyfriend until he comes home; it’s just to make sure that he can’t talk with any girl while walking dog. I have believed all the time that marriage brings happiness to couples but too-much paranoia from girlfriends turns their marriages to be like swallowing bitter pills, struggling utmost, any way they could just to obtain the ‘marriage’. If at the beginning of relationship a girlfriend had to monitor her boyfriend from the window, she will have to stand right there everyday for the rest of her marriage. [A joke: ask your girlfriend that after walking dog, does a boyfriend also have to be a window cleaner for his girlfriend to have a clear look?] Keep in mind that if walking dog doesn’t open up an opportunity for a boyfriend in hooking up other girls, still there will be other ways else. Can a girlfriend think that it’s a waste of time to keep looking out the window or talking nonstop on the phone every time her boyfriend walks out the apartments when what she is trying to do is just to close only one door of opportunity but hundreds of doors are ready to open for him she is unaware? Or could she become a crazy girl if she tries to close all hundreds of doors; in this case would it be better for both of them if either one (or both) chooses to live alone? On the other hand, if at the beginning of relationship a man is forced to do a job he doesn’t want to do, through out his marriage he will see uncountable unwanted jobs from his girlfriend’s ideas come up constantly—start counting ‘one’ from the dog then second and third will follow very soon. Next, in a boring time of the marriage, husband will contemplate to what causes him has enough in such a boring life, then he looks at the dog he sees his wife, then he looks at the baby he still sees his wife. Finally, the boredom urges husband wants to sneak out of the house.

A story: a very long time ago a gay male couple appeared on a local magazine as ‘number one’ gay couple in the gay town area: both were young, good-looking and monogamous. Many gay men in the town were very jealous at the couple. One day a group of gay men discussed about them at a café over their monogamy level there were many gay men lived in their neighborhood tried hooking up with them to catch up they cheated. But their relationship was strong, deserved to earn the title. Suddenly, while chatting at the café, a gay male in the group who worked as a male escort, took the magazine to see the photo, he immediately blurt out that one of the couple was his regular client. I support gay marriage but let think what would also come with the marriage. Now the numbers of married gay men who hire discreetly male escorts continue to grow more than before the marriage is put into law. Think—if you are a single man, you can hook up anyone. Moreover, gay men who hire male escorts begin to ask for more variety of kinky sexual fantasy than before, just like straight men did. Like straight men, they begin to gossip/complain about their partners won’t provide enough sex for them and that makes them want to get out of marriage but difficult to do so because things are now shared—sound like straight couples, right? What makes this happens—the marriage, right? When you put your life into the same concept of marriage like other couples do or like general straight couples do, your life will be the same as them, no matter what kinds of marriage you obtain.

I have another short story of a couple I used to work with them a very long time ago. During a lunch break, a wife asked me as curious that what I did with guys when I had sex. Then she revealed to me that she didn’t know much to do in bed with her husband. I taught her how to give a blow job by using a cucumber. Her husband sat in a distance, kept smiling and glanced at us constantly. The next day she told me that last night when she went to bed, her husband asked her that “What Lisa taught you in the afternoon, can you show me?” She told me that she did and he complimented her “good job”. They didn’t need a dog.

However, it doesn’t mean that you should not own a dog. If I date a man who already owns a dog, I will tell him that I don’t mind to live with his pet. But if a man doesn’t own a dog, it tells me that he isn’t crazy about having a dog so I will not ask him to have one. If I have to test his skill, rather to date a man who is already skillful. I think, raising a dog provides more benefits to a single person than a couple. Think—you don’t want to have a roommate as you can afford all the rent by yourself but the problem is each day you come home, your apartment/home is too quiet due to having no one to talk with and play with so you choose to own a dog. For a couple, they already have someone to talk and go out with. In addition, don’t think that having a dog or a kid can be a commitment of relationship. Many couples who file for a divorce have both dog and many kids but they still want to divorce anyway. There is no perpetual commitment.

If I decide to have relationship with someone, that person should be a responsible person—which I mean that any ideas/things he brings into family, he must be solely responsible. I can help him, for example if he calls me from his office that he will be home late and ask me to help him walk dog—I can, and that I mean ‘help’ but he must know that I am not mainly responsible for. I can deny helping in case I don’t want to do the job and he must find a way to solve the problem. This is the way to keep relationship simple with fewer things. You don’t want to act as a child who plays with toys then let the parents clean off the mess. I can help him pay the dog’s bills as much as I feel comfortable based upon my income level which it can be / or not necessary to be divided in half. IF having a baby is my idea, I will never wake him up at night when baby cries—all the jobs are mainly my responsibility, except we have the same idea then we share the responsibility. If one day we break up relationship, I will take anything I bring into family with me and never ask him to help me pay a dime. I will not want to have relationship with a man who says ‘yes’ to everything the girlfriend says because in every relationship boyfriend should also have the right to dispute/opinion. If the man I date tells me that he doesn’t want to have a dog, then explains to me wisely that “rather I have to spend money on a dog, I choose to spend money on you. Look, the money I have to pay for the dog food, I save for taking you out for dinner at a fancy restaurant. The money I have to pay the vet bills, I choose to pay for your new boobs implants. And now I’m just about to have enough saving to take you for a vacation in Paris,” I will love him more. This is the man who knows how to solve the family problem, rather than just says ‘yes’. Keep in mind, you can’t avoid fighting in the family, this guy knows how to say something to calm down his girlfriend’s disappointment. I don’t need to test his skill as a baby sitter because a smart guy can learn things fast. A smart guy will know how to teach his kids reasonably and educationally while raising a dog doesn’t prove this part. A responsible man, not necessary to be a dog walker, should be a good father and a good husband his wife can rely to. With his wisdom, he will be the right guy to lead his family to success.

Finally, you know there are so many things come with the dog: a girlfriend, baby, vet bills, big phone bills, girlfriend’s paranoid, the loss of freedom, a boring life leads to getting out of the house for infidelity, fighting and divorce. However, I don’t want to blame the dog so much but one important point to think is that only one thing you bring into your life, hauls other things to your life as well. Dog is not a commitment of relationship but it can be a start of a new story of your life. In another word, you move into a new house, dog is like a U-HAUL truck which carries so many things into your new house.

Now—what is love? What makes people want to have relationship with someone? Love generally is not a difficult feeling to understand in your sense or sometimes it can be difficult for some. However, let starts simply this way, with the word often heard people say accompanying with love is the ‘love story’. When you ask people about their loves, they often tell you their ‘love stories’.

I choose to start this part with a story of a man proposes a woman. Honestly, before I came to America I had never seen a man proposed a woman. In Thailand, most of the time it happened in the conversation between parents or a respectful person like head of a village helped the negotiation, which was about the bride price, which they didn’t allow kids to hear it. When I knew a couple got marry, I always saw them ready in a wedding party. Until I came to America, I had a chance to see a man proposed his girlfriend. At that time I worked as a wait table in a Thai restaurant. A young White man came to the restaurant in the afternoon during the restaurant closed on lunch break. He explained his plan that he will take his girlfriend to the restaurant for a dinner. He preferred to be seated at a quiet corner, which wasn’t necessary to be a perfect seat, but kept them away from the crowd as much as possible. After they finished dinner, he will give a fortune cookie for us to delivery to his table. The fortune cookie was specially prepared as he cracked it then inserted a message inside asking—“can you marry me?” with a diamond ring, then he closed it with glue. I did as he planed. Then I could hear the sound of happiness from his girlfriend, even working far away. After that I didn’t need to service his table because they needed a privacy for a long while kiss. Impressively, I saw him better-looking than he was. The story he created was simplicity and honest as he didn’t intend to use his love to promote himself. A good start!

Now comes to learn a life in marriage with a story of a couple I am going to tell. A woman, named in this story K, lived in a small town in Thailand. When she was a young girl, she was the most beautiful girl in town. Then she got married to a young man who was the most handsome man in town also. They had two kids together: a beautiful daughter and a son. K didn’t have high education but her husband graduated from a polytechnic school. Since they had married at the young age soon after her husband graduated, K didn’t need to work a day in her life as her husband opened a big garage successfully. He made enough incomes to support the entire family. You may want to be jealous at them as at the start of their marriage they seemed to be a perfect couple, right? However, as K didn’t need to work, her husband expected her to do a good job in raising their two kids but both of them were very bad in school, especially her daughter had changed schools many times as getting retired due to having bad grades. What K did daily was to go shopping and ordering new custom clothes then she told every store’s owners that her husband will come to pay for her spending when he drove past by.

One day a gossip from the neighbors passed through her ears that her husband had an affair with a secret mistress whom he helped her out from a brothel. The time K found out the affair, they already had a child together—a good kid who studied well in school. His mistress understood her situation well that she wasn’t in the marriage. The worry of the uncertainty of her relationship, and the struggle throughout her life in working to service men told her to teach her kid to work hard for himself. Moreover, the mistress asked K’s husband to open a business for her. He helped her ran the business at the beginning until it was stable then she continued on her own; from one business now became two.

Since K had found out about her husband’s affair, immediately she created a job for her. Besides shopping, she and her beautiful daughter drove a car to spy on him every time he got out of the house.

To compare the two women: K and the mistress: K had better opportunity than the mistress to be successful, to be independent, to be able to lead her children to success but the reason she couldn’t be anything because she became like a spoiled kid. Her husband had helped her end the struggle in her life too early. K and her husband’s love story became weak because the difficulty in working together and helping each other to build their future, especially during the tough time of their lives, wasn’t existed, yet the sympathy and empathy as he worked so hard for family wasn’t presented by her enough for him to be proud of. Her extravagant spending insulted his perspiration like fixing cars for cash was every man’s easy job. As Love comes with an impressive story a couple has written it together, K who was the first person walked in her husband’s life, didn’t start writing her story yet to impress him but the mistress who walked in his life years after K almost completed a full love story far away ahead of her.

Love stories are more diverse than people thought. A 70-year-old man said that he was impressive by reading a romance novel which the story was about an old man, a client, falls in love to his young escort.

I used to hear some single men who are older than 40, the age when their parents are feeling hopeless so they begin to pressure their kids to marry, use an excuse that ‘a perfect match isn’t born yet.’ It sounds like a joke but after reviewing it over again, it’s not necessary a joke. The story you have read from the beginning up to this part is the stories of the first round of your love life. The first round happens when you choose to love someone who is born in the same as your generation: it can be an old man and old woman, or a young man and a young woman. But the next part, I will bring you into the second round of love life —it is the love of cross-generations, which has a different story from the first round.

Imagine, an 80-year-old man gets marry to a 19-year-old girl who he calls her a ‘wife’. A 90-year-old man sits on a wheelchair, his wife: a 25-year-old woman, assists him by pushing on his wheelchair to take him out for a doctor visit.

The first commitment you made to your wife in the first marriage as a young man promised to her who was a young girl that you will love her for the rest of your life has a limited time ending. It’s because you have never ever thought that actually there are two women you love them most in your life are born in different generations. The younger one comes to jumpstart your love and romantic memory of the past marriage which was like a low battery of an old car left to dead in a cold winter. An old man said—“my wife’s sex life is non-responsive.” Do not be upset, in case you find no one to marry in the first round, but try to live longevity.

“Old guys like driving fancy cars, in opposite to young men, often seen, driving old second-hand one.”

Now it comes to which way the love story of the second round should be written? Look at the examples again: an 80-year-old man gets marry to a 19-year-old girl OR a 25-year-old woman has a 90-year-old wheelchair husband, the unusual matches should perhaps make other men giggle at them, and make other women post the negative views such as ‘the young girls can do anything for money’ or ‘the young girls try to rip off the old guys’, etc. Even thought the young girls don’t hear the public comments because people behave very polite, they can sense the reaction.

Next, these two young girls are embarrassed. To regain their faces, they choose to follow the public’s opinions which are stronger influence. What they do to stop the embarrassment is to present to public that ‘yes’ people are just right, I [young girls] live with an old guy for money. These old guys are very rich, who doesn’t want to take their wealth seem to be stupid girls. Other girls look! You must learn from me because I am very smart to make a shortcut to my future —this aggressive and impolite say is just to try to change the negative public’s opinions, to favor them. Next, the romantic act supposed to be seen in every love relationship of a husband and wife, turns upside down. Young girls try to behave according to their says in the way that they have no romance at all to old husbands, yet they look at old guys as disgusting to correspond to the public opinions. In contrast, they will present obviously happiness to show off other people to be jealous at them when they can withdraw their husbands’ retirement saving accounts. The embarrassment (or losing face) public lays on them means a loser, in opposite to tricking the old guys’ money and wealth is to regaining their faces as the winner. As the result, the old guys also have to follow disappointedly the public’s opinions too— ‘yes’ she just wants to rip off old guy, she only wants my money, that’s all she wants! My wife had never treated me like this young girl does to me. In this case, the two couples allow public to be the writer for their love story.

The failure comes into the relationship because the old guys try to put the second round of their love stories into the same concept as the first round. They still don’t forget how sweet and romantic when they are young men dating their wives as young girls. They want to replay the old tapes over and over. Like I mention earlier, when you put your life into the same concept, the story won’t be different, except ages of the performers in these love stories make the audients confused with their stories. Don’t blame the young girls because they don’t have long experience/knowledge about marriage to change things better. Think—if this case also happens to your wife that you as an old man marries your wife who can freeze her age from getting older, she may have to treat you the same way as the two young girls do. Now, if the concept of a ‘husband and wife’ as in the first round can’t be used to write a graceful story, which other roles the old guys and the young girls can do role-playing in their relationships?

Look—if the 19-year-old girl gets marry to a 20-year-old man, she knows in her sense how to be romantic to her husband. But let close your eyes, and imagine yourself as a 19-year-old girl, how would she act romantic or comport to her husband who is an 80-year-old man. She may have to force herself to perform romance. But, if their love story is rewritten into a new romantic edition: the 19-year-old girl isn’t put in the role of a ‘wife’ but an ‘adopted daughter’, would she be better understanding her new role how she comports herself to the old man as every young girl knows how to behave to her father? She should be more comfortable and not be put to embarrassment. Or if sometimes they argue each other in public, the argument between a dad and a daughter would make less embarrassment to the old guy as this is a normal act that a young daughter often treat dad with naughty, less losing face than the argument was made between a wife and a husband. In case one day they broke up relationship and are asked, the old guy can find a smooth ending his love story such as ‘his daughter is now graduated, she gets a job far away from home so she wants to live by herself.’ Daddy and a young daughter is one of the sexual fantasies. Treat her like a daughter (let call her: a daughter-in-love) and talk with her like talking with a real daughter—“Do you finish your homework? What time you want me to pick you up at your friends’ house?” Then the girl will tell her friend that “we have to finish homework before five o’clock because my dad will come to pick me up.”—there is nothing unusual. But if she tells her friend that “my husband will come to pick me up”—there will be hundreds of questions to embarrass her. In bed, out of public’s eyes she knows what she had to do. And the old guy doesn’t need to inspire others to imagine their sex life with the term ‘wife’. When sexual activity isn’t a norm, you have to take your sex life out of public.

Should it be better that the 90-year-old wheelchair man introduces his neighbor that “this is my assistance, she’s just graduated from a nursing school.” Then his neighbor might respond that “wow, you have a beautiful nurse. Now I also want to get sick everyday.” A wonderful relationship comes with a proper story. Now the old guys know the way to write a story for themselves, rather than following public’s opinions as a bad writer for them.

For the ‘first round’ of love life, the term ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ is used appropriately in public but think another part in term of sexual fantasy. For example, in the bedroom, a husband plays ‘daddy fantasy’ with his wife who is asked to act innocent and dress like a baby girl. When people find out, they would discuss all over for the couple to be embarrassed. This is because their ages which are considered equal as same generation become inappropriate to the ‘daddy’ fantasy story. However, for the ‘second round’ of love, in contrast, the sexual fantasies can be used in helping a couple to avoid the embarrassment from public while the usual term ‘husband and wife’ can cause the embarrassment and misappropriation. For the second round of your love life, sometimes you have to turn the fantasy inside out (the fantasy happens inside the bedroom out to public). Why the story you create to tell public need to be appropriate all the time? It’s because sexual activity is so nasty and sinful. An old guy who dates a young girl don’t want to use the term ‘husband and wife’ to inspire public an image of ‘having sex together’ to emphasize their sexual activities. Normally people can quickly get attention to kinky fantasy sex. Appropriated sexual fantasy stories can be used to close the door of public’s imagination to intrude in an old guy’s bedroom.

Besides these two fantasies, there are other fantasies for old guys to choose a role-play such as a boss and his secretary (if a younger wife has a professional look), a wealthy man and a housekeeper, a mistress and her mature dog, a retirement police officer and a young female robber, etc. Love is art stories so don’t be afraid to fantasy with it. Old ladies can also create fantasies: an 80-year-old woman should tell other people that the two young men who assist carrying her wings are her bodyguards. Or they can be as a mother and two young sons. Don’t tell anyone that an 80-year-old lady has two young husbands because thousands of question and negative comments will bury her alive! Like two crossdressers often use the term ‘two sisters’, instead of ‘wife’ because in their sexual fantasy no any crossdresser wants to be served in the role of a husband.

Now after this it comes into another kind of love story written in a difference theme. Normally love should be happiness and romance but Chinese’s love story is unique. I am a big fan of Chinese traditional movies and that makes me curious all the time why most of the love stories of the Chinese traditional movies are depicted in love triangle, unsuccessful love life: one man loves a woman but the woman loves another man… The stories of Love, especially of different cultures, are sometimes complicated to understand that why a certain type of story, even though it’s sad, can impress someone.

When I studied in a college in America, in one of my classes I got to know a male student from China. Every time I came to the class, he liked talking with me. It seemed like he paid attention to me more than other classmates. Besides that class, I also took another class which the Chinese man didn’t study with me, but I got to know a Chinese woman who I often chose to sit next to her. One day I told the Chinese woman about the Chinese man, she listened attentively. Then her face quickly changed the mood. Soon after the class ended, the Chinese woman rushed to leave the room while I was still in the classroom to short note homework. Suddenly, I heard a man’s and a woman’s voice, yelling at each other, extremely loud in mandarin. I walked outside as be ready to leave, I saw both of my classmates: the Chinese man and woman, actually were boyfriend/girlfriend from China. Embarrassingly I quickly walked away to avoid eye-contact to them.

My grandparents also came from China and they also had a love triangle story. My father told the story. My grandfather was married to my grandmother through arranged marriage since they had lived in China; we believed that they were around nine years old at that time and were too young to take the marriage seriously into their lives. My grandfather actually didn’t love my grandmother from the beginning so he had a plan to move to Thailand alone. The reason he told his parents and his wife to allow him to go was general, like other immigrants did, was to earn more incomes to support family. But actually there was another reason kept in his mind which nobody had thought about he wanted to run away from his wife. He hoped he could build a new family there and remarried a woman he chose.

My grandfather sat in a cargo in a shipping boat along with other Chinese from the same village. My grandmother was still left in China with the expectation to hear attentively good news from her husband’s success so that she could move there to live together. Years after years, she only waited without a trace from her husband. Impatience and worrisome urged her to make a decision to find him in Thailand. After getting off the boat at Bangkok port, she walked without knowing where her husband was. Adding more difficult to her, she didn’t speak the native language and especially in the country she had been the first time. Her way—all the way she walked she asked Chinese people who used to live in the same village in China and came by the same boat with her husband. Some guided her to walk this way and that way to ask another person as no one knew for sure, and that’s the only thing moved her from mile to mile. They gave her free food and a place to stay overnight as she brought nothing with her. Then she continued walking, walked and walked and walked. She had walked more than 60 miles on the outdated bumpy roads until she finally met him. My grandfather had never thought in his life she would be able to find him. Her unexpected arrival was devastated him because by the time she found him, his life had already moved forward without her. He was married to a Thai woman and they had one little boy together. My grandmother and the Thai woman fought tough each other everyday. She chose to be selfish and be as aggressive as she could to restore her love. She refused to walk away from him because he was her destination that no more mile for her to walk further. Finally, the Thai woman volunteered to walk out of the house. Since then my grandfather had never seen the Thai woman and he lost contact to his son. He didn’t even know where they were and how their lives would be.

My grandparents had seven kids together; my father was the firstborn. Their lives were difficult at the beginning. My grandfather loved investment. He opened a rice mill successfully. At that time he had my father who was a little kid walked following his father from field to field everywhere to negotiate purchasing rice. His success made a lot of money for family, but in the same time being cheated on a lot of money as well. As people knew the weakness of his background status: having low education, undocumented and didn’t speak the native language, they tried to take advantage him. Some bought rice from him with a note to pay back within time but never paid anything. His accountant also stole money from the mill everyday. Finally, his native partner took his mill away. That day, he locked himself cried out in the bedroom alone for three days and attempted to committing suicide. My grandmother stood outside the room to console him and reminded him to think about his little kids they had together. Without the leader of the family, she was unable to raise them all alone. Finally my grandfather decided to walk out of the room; they helped each other to start their lives all over again. Somehow I thought he was a lucky man in doing business. After the rice mill, he opened a grocery store and it quickly became the most successful grocery in the area. Since the grocery had been stable, my grandfather wanted to do more investments in other kinds of business. It often happens that instead men are afraid of the failure, they take it as a challenge. But my grandmother always yelled at him angrily every time he had an idea of a new investment because the bad incident, the failure of the rice mill, still haunted her as she had almost to lose him.

Because my grandparents had different dreams, they always had conflicts together. Their relationship was very cold; unromantic I had never seen them talked nice together. Even worse, some days I didn’t hear them talked together a word. Two people had different dreams. The dream on the masculine side wanted to go as far to the top as it could be. Like other men thought, he wanted to be a proud leader of the family, power and success which was resulted to him as happiness in seeing his young generations had comfortable and wealthy lives—it’s worth for him to sit in the cargo miles away from home. My grandmother, on the other hand, didn’t look for wealth or luxurious life. She could see herself live in poverty the same way as she used to live in China. What was in her dream was one thing, it was to live with someone she loved, even in the cold relationship—and that’s worth enough for her to walk for miles to nowhere.

My grandmother woke up from 3 a.m. the time she started working everyday, while everyone still slept. She cleaned vegetable and prepared things ready before the grocery opened around 6 a.m. From there she continued working all day nonstop until 10 p.m. She worked everyday, seven days a week without a day in her life for holiday/vacation. This was because she truly understood her husband’s dream of having great success but her being paranoid since the mill’s failure destroyed his dream, barred his opportunity from moving further. The guilt was conceived in her mind to think that his life without her would be better off—and that was the reason she chose to be the hardest worker in the family without complaining a day in her life. She also taught her kids to live economically and learned to save pennies in hope some days her way could brought everyone to success—it was the only way she could do to compensate if her husband’s new idea of investment was not her option. Although, she had known for a long time she had cancer, she kept it secret from everyone to hide her weakness so that her family will allow her to continue working. She worked to the last day of her life when she collapsed in one afternoon while working in the grocery and was rushed to the hospital. Short time later she passed away. At that time my grandfather was also ill. Everyone in the family tried to keep her passing away secret from him but some way he found out. He asked one of his sons to take him to her funeral. I sat in a short distance from him when I turned my face to look at him. The strong man and a good leader I’d ever thought who could overcome all the difficulties in his life, traveled miles away from home since nine years old to start a new life alone, wrote the last chapter of his story ending with ‘a cry without shame’ to the woman he once tried to run away from her and to the woman who he had treated her with cold feeling throughout her life. I saw my uncle used his hands to cover his face to protect his father from being embarrassed to all the guests came to her funeral. Every drip of his tears explained to me clearly—all the time in his heart he understood all the difficulties she took in her life was intending to sacrifice for him. Only she never had a chance to know it. This kind of love is hard for younger generation to understand because now their lifestyles and ideas have changed.

Still there is another kind of love story. Next story happened in Thailand long time ago. The cause was the loss of a wallet. It was my brother’s wallet he lost it one day but luckily one of his friends called him not to be worried that a person found it.

My brother’s friend named— A. It might be an unfamiliar name for American but the letter A was used widely as a male nickname in Thailand. Inside the wallet, my brother wrote all his friends’ contact numbers in a small piece of paper, there were around 15 numbers. Because A was the first letter, his contact number was the first on the list. As my brother didn’t include his contact number on the list, A was easy to be picked as first to be randomly contacted.

My brother asked A where he could meet the person who found the wallet. But A kindly told him he will go by himself to meet the person and bring the wallet for him. As my brother didn’t want to bother A to waste time for him because this was not his business at all. He tried to convince A to change his mind that he wanted to be the person who took responsible to go and get it. However, no matter what my brother said, A insisted strongly he must be the person to bring his wallet back for him. My brother told A to thank the person for him and keep the money as the reward; he only wanted the wallet and all the cards.

A studied in the same university as my brother. He was considered an unattractive man as during school years he tried very hard to date many female students, unfortunately no any female students loved him until he had to give up finding love.

The day, A brought the wallet back to my brother, A revealed. As the person who contacted A was a woman, yet her voice on the phone sounded sweet and a nice talking gave him a thought of seeing her. That was the main reason A insisted doing the job. If the person who found the wallet was a man, he would not be so kind wasting time to bring the wallet back. At the first sight he saw her, miraculously this was like an angel flied from the sky. A described, stunningly the woman was very beautiful like an angel. Adding to her beauty, she was a very good person as when she found the wallet, she tried very hard to contact the owner. She was allowed to keep the money as the reward but she never took anything from the wallet. Since then A had dated her and now they make a good family and having kids together.

What is love and where is it? A may once cry out complaining to his unfair destiny. Love is an important matter of life, a need in his life he deserved it like everyone does. So, he ran around searching everywhere even if he had to run more miles he could but in the end it gave him only exhaustion. Still he had never found love once. Who would know that—when he already gave up, one day unexpectedly love just came easily to right in front of him.