Marrying My Dream Girl

2057 words

Marrying My Dream Girl – A True Fairy Tale Romance

         I have often thought of my true love story as a true fairy tale. It all started with a dream. The dreams started when I was a senior at Berkeley High School in 1974. About a month before I graduated, I fell asleep in a physics class after lunch and had my first dream:

A beautiful Asian woman was standing next to me talking in a strange language. She was stunning – the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was in her early twenties, with long black hair, and piercing black eyes. She had the look of royalty. She looked at me, mesmerizing me, bewitching me, her love mojo working overtime as she stared at me with love blazing from her dark black eyes, sparks flew from heart to heart, and then disappeared, beaming out of his dream-like in "Star Trek."

I fell out of his chair screaming, "Who are you?" She did not answer.

Later that day I told my best friend, Robert S, who was in the class with me, about the dream. I also told him that I knew that I would meet her someday and that was the woman I was destined to marry.

Robert said,

"Man, which is crazy shit, dude. You had best quit smoking weed before class man. You be high. Have any of that shit?”

"Nah, I smoked it all up. But dude, the dream is real”.

" Whatever, dude,”.

I told Robert’s parents, Bob, and Ruth about the dream. Bob and Ruth were close to I. I hung out at their house a lot to escape my parents as he had grown up in a very dysfunctional family.

Bob said,

Well, that is the craziest love story I have ever heard so it must be true.”

Ruth said.

Follow your dreams. You will have to meet her someday, but you may have to go to Asia to find her. Where do you think she is?”

Maybe Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Thailand, Vietnam? The Philippines? But not China because whatever she is speaking is not Chinese.”

One day I was late for my summer job working in the parks department. I had the dream again at about 6 am and it woke me up. The same thing occurs. She is standing there talking to me and she has love in her eyes for me. She reaches out to touch him and then disappears. I felt electricity flowing from her as she touched me. I got up and accidentally broke the mirror in the bathroom.

I told my mother who said I would have seven years of bad luck as a result of breaking a mirror, someday my dream would come true. It was fate.

         I later thought that I had endured seven years of failed relationships and missed romantic opportunities because fate was conspiring to prevent me from getting seriously involved with anyone else because the universe was saving me for one true soul mate.

A few days later, I am hanging out with my friends Matt and Mark playing pool at his house downstairs in the basement. I tell them I had the dream again.

Matt says,

"Dude! That is just too creepy to believe. You should not be telling people that shit, they might think that you are some sort of nutter. I mean we know you are nuts but in a good way and we love ya for it bro, but others well,l they might think you are certifiable.”

Mark looked at me, and said,

"Yeah dude, this is crazy shit, I mean shit like that ain’t real you know what I mean?”

"Matt, Mark, I swear to God it is too. I had the dream again. And I know I am going to meet her and marry her someday.”

" Right on dude. Party on! We believe you.”

About a month went by and then I started having the dream as he called it, repeatedly. It was always the same pattern – early in the morning, she would stand next to me talking, I would ask who she was, and she would disappear. She was the most beautiful, alluring woman I had ever seen, and I was struck speechless every time I had the dream.

One day in late May, about a week before I graduated from college, I had been accepted into the Peace Corps. I had a deadline to respond to whether I would accept the proposed assignment. I had a choice of going to Korea as a TB control worker in August or to Thailand as an ESL teacher in a rural school in October. I was leaning towards Korea. I had taken Japanese and Chinese history classes in college, and I was fascinated with the region and was curious about Korea. And besides, I was ready to get going.

On May 18, 1979, at 5:30 I had a slightly different dream. In the dream, she told me when he asked where she was, “Seoul, Korea.” And smiled at me. And disappeared as she usually did.”

In August 1979, I arrived in Korea. I look around and sees thousands of women who look like the girl in the dream, but none of them are her. I knew I was going to meet her. I started having that dream monthly. Usually near the end of the month and always first thing in the morning. The dream was always the same. She would repeat the word Aka which I later learned was the Korean word for baby and became her pet’s name once we met. The rest of the conversation he could not understand at all.

One winter while I was in the Peace Corps, I went to Taiwan on a personal visit. He met a famous fortuneteller who made three predictions – He would marry an Asian woman; he would marry when he was 27 and he would become a diplomat. All three predictions turned out to be true.

After the Peace Corps, I took a job in Korea and decided that I would give it one more year. If I did not meet her by then I would return to Seattle to go to Graduate school at the University of Washington in Korean studies. I moved about the entire country. I was lonely, dissatisfied, and. Felt that I was wasting my time. I kept having the dream though.

On September 7, 1982, I got on a military bus at Camp Casey near where he lived in Tongduchon in a rented room. I was living very basically those days out of a suitcase in a rented room as my employer kept sending him all over the country. I must have moved at least ten times that year.

That morning I had the last dream. And somehow felt that I was about to meet the girl in the dream. In the dream, she came to me again, but this time, I understood her Korean.

She said, "Don't worry, we will be together soon and once we are together, we will be together forever. I have been waiting for our last life together. And now I have found you.”

That night, I got off the bus in front of Camp Red Cloud where I was teaching. I got off the bus and the girl in the dream walked off the bus, out of my dreams, and into my life. It was the moment I had been waiting for all my life.

The class went by in a blur. I was still stunned that I had met her. I came up with a lame excuse that I wanted a language partner, and she could help him with Korean, and I could help her with her English.

She spoke English well as she was an English Education major at Sungmyeong Woman’s University and was a senior. She was 23 years old, and I was 25 years old. I was born in the year of the goat, and she was born in the year of the pig. According to fortune-tellers they had a perfect astrological chart and were soul mates.

That night I called his friend Robert, who had been in the room when I had first dreamt of meeting her, and told him that I had met the girl in the dream. Robert had visited me in the Peace Corps and was familiar with Korea and my fascination with Korean culture.

Robert, “I have big news; I met the girl in the dream. The girl I have been dreaming about for these last eight years. She is real. I met her on a bus. She is stunning. She is a college senior, and we are meeting tomorrow. “

         "Dude. That is unreal. But whatever you do not tell her about the dream, at least not right away. That might freak her out. It would freak anyone out. Shit like that does not happen you know man. Are you all, right? Been taking drugs? Drinking too much?”

"Dude. It is all good. It is real. And I am going to marry her!"

"Whatever dude. I believe you because you believe in the dream, I sure hope it is real.”

"It is real, dude.”

The next night she was waiting for me at the army base where I was to teach a class. She told me that she had to see me as she had something to tell me. I signed her on the base and left her at the library to study. She was a college senior, she told me. They went out for coffee after class at a classical music cafe. She told me she was madly in love with me and that I was the man for her. I told her not to worry as he felt the same way.

On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we met each day and went for a long walk in the mountains near the base and had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. She made him kimbap (Korean sushi rolls) every day.

We talked further about her life and my life so far. Her English was far better than my Korean, so we mostly talked in English. She was a senior at Sungmyeong Woman’s University majoring in English Education. But she wanted to work for a corporation rather than become a high school English teacher. She was also going to start a graduate degree at Seoul working on an MBA degree in a new program that was taught in English.

I told her that he had been accepted to go to the University of Washington for a MA degree in Korean studies but would start that in about a year. I would be teaching for CTC for a few months but wanted to find another teaching job somewhere in Korea as I was tired of teaching on base and the pay was not particularly good. I told her that she could come to Seattle with me and study there. She looked at me and said that she would love that.

She said,

“It is obvious we belong together. You are mine and I am yours.”

“ I agree. Let us get married, October 29th is my legal birthday. We can do the paperwork then and have a wedding later. What do you think?”

“Sure. That will work. You have to meet my parents though soon.”

"Okay”

In any event, we agreed we would do the formal paperwork through the embassy on Friday, October 29th, 1982, which was my birthday.

We married two months later after a Buddhist priest told her mother that our astrological match was a perfect fit. Her mother did not want her to marry a foreigner. One day about a month after we had met, she invited him to meet her parents, but she did not tell them I was a foreigner. I bought brought a bottle of Jack Daniels for his Father-in-Law and Uncle-in-Law and drank the entire bottle with them. He approved of him, but my Mother-in-Law still had reservations. After the Buddhist Priests told her it was a perfect astrological combination, she agreed, and we planned our marriage..


As she put it, “Who am I to go against the will of heaven?”

         And so, we got married.


PS

We married in 1982 and are still together in 2025.