Modern love. The pod cast a supported by before the work messages begin to pour in let's gift ourselves a good morning, a good morning as a moment to pause and ease into the day. It's I meant to run and chase the sunrise or to gently settle in routine a good morning is a moment to be present to find clarity and beeg. as for the day ahead, good days start with good mornings and good mornings start with yogi tea. Yogi tea tease me to do more than

it tastes good, oh from the New York Times and WB? You are Boston. This is modern. The stories of love loss and redemption. I'm your host magnetron puberty, the love is a leap of faith and some people take a bigger jump than others. This week cure said which star of tea aunties the closer and the new aid be see. Show ten days in the valley reads: Ellen grow, As a are joy, was no bounds or lanes my knees friend, Ujiji invited herself over for a serious talk. Her English is poor and she struggled to convey her message, but she was concerned,

she had noticed. I was lonely. Her there in China Young. Why was lonely to maybe he and I would like each other she for offered to send me to China to find out. But if you don't like him, it's ok her vocabulary, exhausted she drew a deep breath and said: okay, all done. I was supposed stunned by her offer and strangely open to it at forty six, I had been burned to ash by divorce and had crawled back toward life. Sometimes and knees the car wisdom is that people in seeking love risk losing themselves, but I did not fear this loss and I

that not choosing for myself might work better than choosing. I didn't wonder about what my perfect person would be like. I was way beyond that kind of amusement. Four months later, I found myself in the Beijing Airport amid a surge of people, politely pushing shuffling and nudging past one another This was unlike an american crowd where you feel harried even accosted there. I sailed comfortably through a sea of humanity. I saw one solid figure standing absolutely still. He held red roses and beads of moisture clung to his jaw. He wore an expression of contained expectancy, the temperature.

Ninety nine degrees I immediately felt com in his presence. Our courtship had already occurred in the form of our shared anticipation, though we hadn't communicated hadn't even exchanged pictures, but his being open to me sight unseen meant a lot. We tried so hard in previous marriages only to fail, so I travelled to him with an eager heart and he welcomed me with the same during our three weeks. Together the absence of spoken words, let things be themselves, I felt the air glowing and warm without companionship, sheltered from Smalltalk at our first dinner he placed each delicacy on my plate and watched without making eye contact or smiling. He gave me just a little taste of local

and sea slug then nodded once encouragingly as if to say, try. He saw I love shrimp and piled more onto the plate out of necessity. First phrase I learned in Chinese was, I am full, when he asked do you want to marry. I said yes, I was surprised actually that he could say the words he must have practised later we had a simple ceremony and I IRA and the United States to wait eighteen months for him to be granted a visa. During this time, we communicated as best we could by phone and letters. his voice was balm to my nerves and the monthly Rice Parliamentary were always from quote the brought him of his heart.

In return, translating with a dictionary, I sometimes real characters that had been out of popular use in China for centuries, when I about his father. It probably sounded something like I prithee how fair the honorable ancestor. he had to devote many hours over several days to write one short letter in English, so I come to write in Chinese, and I would find someone to translate in one letter he wrote in my imagination, I see your slim figure buffeted by icy gusts of wind, and I want to cross the street and stand next to you I long to shield you from the cold, but I am across the world not across the street. We must both be patient. I will come and be with you forever.

Finally, the day arrived when I was waiting at the Albany Airport for him it was winter. As I took him into my house, he made himself at home at the woodstove. He took off his business pants and stood there in his baggy quilted long underwear, very comfortable. He said one of the few phrases he knew it time after our meal, he rummaged in the bathroom until he found the mop bucket and Murphy oil soap. He. Suited to scrub all the floors and silence upstairs and down, then what out on the snowy porch in his black business shoes and long underwear, looked up at the starry sky and had a smoke as is common in China, there were no random smiles, no effort at small talk, no hand squeezing or gentle pats, my husband,

No sooner pat my hand or kiss my cheek than pat his own hand or kiss his own image in the mirror. I had to feel the air to know. If everything was ok or not, I decided it was ok and went to bed leaving him in the snow When he came to bed, he held me or something long lost and precious that might not live until morning. The first task was to find him more. A friend kindly hired Jung why? To help on a painting job great, I thought, but back home he had been This man- and I didn't know that many post now urban Chinese have complicated feelings of shame about performing paid manual. Labor. He gamely went along, but it was a disaster that ends with a friend

seeing two hundred dollars into his hand and sang he didn't need to help her for the next day. I also didn't know that as a child Chung, why had endured huh labour, far more grueling than house painting. He had worked side by side with village farmers. standing bare legged in icy water for hours, scooping out silt fertilizer, his parents ravaged by part Eddie and famine often did little more for him than count his head, as you safely returned at night for her First, nineteen years my husband endured such hardship and deprivation that by adulthood he had cultivated and internal equilibrium that was not easily upset soon, another friend in the job at his natural foods tore jungle, I had no driver's license so the owner. Miles out of his way to pick him up and take him home at night. But how long could that last I needed to teach him how to drive

in China. He had driven a motorcycle but not car. How different could it be First of all, The central line had no significance to him and I had to instruct I'm the car on the main road has the right of way and a red light means stop Excel trading through an intersection. He said I don't think so. Yes, that's the law in I know who can go just go big role. Small road left turn right turn. This doesn't matter. Also, people drive side of road. Another car is coming no problem just not hit. car is ok. Watch out guys passing you passing you on the right. You should be in the slow lane stay in your lane. Grasping and holding onto the ceiling my feet braced against the dash.

I said I must ride in the back, because I was making him nervous, and this was quote very danger, He pulled over and I got out took a few deep breaths and reposition myself rigidly in the back seat. Pressing my mouth shut, accepting help state your lean. Do you know what a lane is? I was in the habit of drinking alcohol, but for several weeks upon each safe return. I sedated myself with chinese wine the kind that numbs your lips for a full hour barren winter trees, allowed our elderly neighbors David and Flippy to keep a watchful eye on events at our place and often Dave would telephone to offer assistance. Hey I wasn't doing anything and I wondered if you want me to bring my tractor up, I can pull back. Are out of the ditch. Easy, no sense in you, two hurting yourselves.

one night returning home through a blackness laden with spring snowflakes, my husband pulled up to the kitchen door to drop me off. I was so grateful all that practice was finally paying off. He reappeared in the doorway minutes later sorry, he said and started quaking in silent laughter, looking down king, his head. Sorry, yes, very sorry. You see he pulled me out to the garage I looked in where the car should be, but nothing was there Then I lifted my eyes and saw the taillights going west through a gaping hole in the garage I ran around the back and beheld the front of the car hanging in mid air over the stone embankment. The AAA tow truck, came and pulled the car back into the garage. No questions asked we patch together. The garage wall the next time,

it happened a week later, the same AAA driver arrived. I know what to do ma'am during that first year used. Our full allotment of AAA service calls Jung, Hwa advance from mistakenly pouring transmission, fluid into the crankcase To being able to install alternators timing belts, electrical components and an automatic transmission, his method, If repair generally requires two days of sitting in front of the problem cooking and smoking old gold's before he touches anything but his driving troubles persist, the police trail him other every shake fists at him. He can't really, the rule about not turning left from the right lane and recently put us in the path of a lincoln zooming up fast.

screamed and Jung, while was looking into quivering jowls of the red faced driver who chapped at him with a meaty forefinger and stuck his face out the window and sputtered it's killed us, yes, I said you almost killed us buddy. Do you? Yes? Yes, What do you have to say when I say you almost killed us thank you very much, I'm yelling at you. Why do you say thank you I don't know I just think thank you. Okay, you're welcome the guy before wearily proceeding? Chung waved and thanked him again. And so it goes. Sometimes I remember our car grinding in slow motion off the gravel shoulder and totaling itself against a rotten tree stump. DS, climbing out of the wreckage distraught but unhurt,

and wonder if we were gently nudged off the road and saved from some other horrible highway fate by the gold cupid pin my husband bought at a garage, sale and wears on his jacket for good luck. Somebody I be looking out for us, a few years ago, my it was roadworthy, but lonely. I'd out for an intervention now every day feels like a wild car ride with young law lurching an unpredictable but rich with humor. Determination and devotion. I don't question it like my husband. I just think.

thank you, the Sedgwick reading, Ellen Grafts essay, our joy knows no bounds or lanes. It's been ten years since Ellen wrote, this essay will catch up with her after the break. The Carmax gives you the freedom to share However, you like you, can shop for a car online and on the lot, once you find the right car you can buy. However, you want buy a and get home delivery in select markets, or buy online entries express pickup at Carmax and no matter how

you by your car comes with a thirty day. Money back guarantee up to fifteen hundred miles, learn more and start shopping at car. Max Dotcom Car MAX Carbine reimbursed And I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed in salary it may have happened again. I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something me and my dad. We liked the first time together and I wish her out out forgot. It J, J, C K, p o t it's a jackpot yeah nice

I'm same as earth's sky? The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com slash games were back, it's modern love, the podcast A magnet, Chakrabarti Ellen map says that learning to drive was the least of her worries when it came to the challenges she and John Wall faced in their unusual marriage when husband and I married- we were full of hope and probably both thought we knew ourselves, but I don't think either of us could have imagined all the obstacles and how different are cultures really are. and what that means on a daily basis. Before husband came to the. U S: Ellen was an artist. A mask maker and a sculptor. When John Wall

first arrived. He helped Ellen with her ours and I started a business together, but it didn't go according to plan It was a hard scrabble life of an artist which is our privilege to live really, but then he became and this wasn't very long after he came, and it turned out that I needed very massive surgery. It took him a very long time to recover from that, but he started to paint and he did it day in and day out and that kind of saved him not long after her husband's illness, their house burned down, they lived in upstate New York and Helen had to take a new job as a mental health case manager to support them. Young law took any job he could find. He worked lots of different jobs here,

worked natural Foods grocery store, we worked in people's gardens, but We decided, you know you, we really have to do something to get you are a regular job, so he went to the community college, He enrolled in an M training course. But the language just got him and it was there discouraging for us Julie, John, why and Ellen decided that he should focus on his art, though he still does odd jobs. Despite the challenges they faced. Ellen says that her marriage has made her see her whole life differently, while she and her husband or from vastly different backgrounds, they have come to a shared understand. of what they both want from life. The fact that Stella is an artist- and I am an artist- is probably why we've been able to make this work because you have to abandon

you think, is correct. What you think makes sense. All the time, and by doing that you can you somehow reach a much more basic common ground, writer and sculptor Ellen Graph she's, the author of the natural laws of good luck, a memoir, of an unlikely marriage, Daniel Jones. Editor of modern love for the New York Times says that the times grappled with if deal with John, was broken English. In the paper we had to figure out if the language written by her is my him or if it's Deering and had to come down on the side of it being deering in this case and that this contributed to sort of their new his of English them learning about.

each other, it was true to who he was at it. Review the personality him being in this phase of learning, so many new, things in this sort of joyful way after the break Dan talks about how the lack of a shared language can bring people closer. This pod cast is supported by the new Showtime original documentary. Cyprus, hill insane in the brain part of show times hip hop. Fifty celebration, Grammy nominated Group, Cyprus, Hills, unique ability to blend hip hop in ROC, had icons from all over the map, praising them as profits of illegal we'd movement, Cyprus, Hill defied the stigma of the nineties and cemented their legacy as hip hop superstars Cyprus Hill. insane in the brain premiering this for twenty? Only on Showtime,

I love spelling bee my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together. I mean sitting next to each other playing individually and not cheating. Sometimes, when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own- I feel a little betrayed in salary they may have happened again to I have one friend who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I always get nervous. I sent it to my parents or something Me and my dad we likes this time you together and I wish cuz it out. It J, a c k, p, o t jackpot Yeah, nice I'm same as earth's sky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times dot com, Slash Games, Dan Jones says

this, as I made him realised that a language barrier can sometimes lead to an unusual kind of freedom. Fairer, to romanticize because they're not confined by. by knowing the same language. I just thought that was so refreshing how that freed them from the protocol of tip see how you get to know each other in a relationship there was just so much that's refreshing about. This peace and so many lessons about how to open yourself up to love. a lot of joys and risks that come with that. Thanks again, if Kira Sedgewick, curious, She chose Ellen's peace because she thought it was romantic in a very different way. I just love the fact that she thought well. Maybe my chinese friend, with whom I can't really have much of a conversation

knows better than I matters of the heart. The fact that she goes all the way to Beijing completely out of her comfort zone and that they both have that beautiful, abandoned and willingness to share each other's lives in these very bold and courageous ways. Curious Sedgwick, you can see her in the New ABC show ten days in the valley. Premieres Sunday October. First, the next week, Peter Gallagher read the story about the promises we make in marriage. Sometimes I think about the. as my wife and I made to each other twenty eight years ago and then again last summer, we're different people than we once were. Does that make breaking a promise easy, last summer I said you can trust me.

I'll always tell you the truth about what's happening today I tell her small comforting, Modern love is a production of the New York Times and W. You are Boston, NPR station it's produced, directed and edited by Jessica, Alpert John Parodi, Emory secrets in an Caitlin Oki there for the modern love podcast was conceived by LISA. Are Adler executive producer, Daniel, is the editor of modern love for the New York Times and adviser to the show music for the past thirty see if I make an attacker body, see you next week.