[Magdalen] Mike & Everett face a demon.

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

Reminds me of the story my brother told of the Korean population in the Dc
area.

The men got great jobs, and moved their families to DC.
The women followed, and found everything was hard and different.
The language is impenetrable, there are no servants here, and they need to
do everything for themselves, despite hubby having a six figure or more
income.
They have few friends, are horribly bored and angry as all get out.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 8:03 PM, ME Michaud <michaudme at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm always fascinated by these stories.
>
> My mother had a friend who fled China with her husband in 1950. Until she
> came to the United States, she had never dressed herself. My mother taught
> her how to button her blouses, how to shop, a bit of western-style
> cooking. She was very intelligent and eager to learn. What frosted us was
> that both she and her husband were trained physicians, but they were
> advised to adopt traditional roles here. So he did orthopedic surgery and
> she became a housewife. He was trained to do the work he ended up doing,
> she had to rely on resiliance and pluck and the support of her new
> neighbors.
>
> One of my friends was sitting for her grand-niece one weekend and the
> little girl followed her around like a baby duck. She was eager to learn
> and happy for the attention and, by the time the weekend was over, this
> five-year-old had learned how to fold laundry, how to boil an egg, how to
> make a sandwich, and was picking up a basic knowledge of knitting.
> -M
>
>
> On Sunday, January 10, 2016, Marion Thompson <marionwhitevale at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > In my strange life, age 11 in the late Fifties in Montreal when I was no
> > longer at boarding school and lived just east of  McGill University, a
> > Chinese laundryman came every week to collect the outgoing stuff and
> bring
> > back what had been done.  What an utterly wretched life this man must
> have
> > had!  Down the block from our apartment was his little laundry, always
> > completely steamed up and with numerous sansevierias and jade plants on
> the
> > sill of the large front window.  It was a hell-hole of heat and humidity
> > inside. Sometimes I was sent to pick it up, otherwise the clean laundry
> was
> > returned in neat brown paper parcels tied with string and with a slip of
> > paper with Chinese characters slipped under the string.  I guess that
> said
> > who we were and how much.  I don't know.  Stuff that he washed was
> > permanently marked on the hem with a neat O in laundry ink.  He was known
> > generically as 'Sam' and he was forever trudging along with a huge grey
> > cotton bundle over his shoulder.   Even when we moved elsewhere, Sam
> > followed us. He called me 'May-ling' and at Christmas he would give us a
> > box of lychees which I loved.  At the time he was just part of the rich
> > passing scene, but I came to know he was another part of our sorry
> > treatment of immigrants.  Shameful.
> >
> >
>