Seoul
Kathleen has just left, on a trip to Seoul that will bring her home on Friday. Not until late tomorrow morning at the earliest will I hear from her.
Kathleen and I are wired very differently, which is a good thing. Kathleen is focused and low-key. I'm widely curious and high-strung, easily irritated by small things. If we were both like Kathleen, the bills would never get paid. If we were both like me, we'd have flipped each other out years ago. Kathleen likes to fly. I hate flying so much that I'm miserable when she flies.
Kathleen is going to Seoul to speak at a convention. I ought to know more about it than I do, but my magical thinking about the trip more or less precluded finding out. I see now that I really hoped for Kathleen to cancel at the last minute, something she would really never do. There was no pressing reason for her to accept the invitation. It's good for her career, I suppose, but I don't think that she'd have gone just for the self-promotion. Her hope was that her father, who did a lot of contracting work in Korea, would go with her. She wanted to treat him to a trip to a country that he has always admired. She wanted to have a time alone with him. But she ought to have asked him before she committed to making the speech. For reasons all too foreseeable, her father pleaded this and that reason why he could not go.
I offered to take his place. I swallowed hard and offered. We talked about it for a while. But it didn't take long for Kathleen to decide that I ought to stay home. My value as a companion would be limited. She would worry about me as much as I'm going to worry about her. As it is, she'll have a chance to read Horse Heaven in peace, followed by a day or two in Seoul, followed by more Jane Smiley on the flight home. A very quiet week for her. (Needless to say, she'll be escorted everywhere in Korea, more or less like Bill Murray's character in Lost in Translation.)
We'll see if I can swing a quiet week, too.
