American Woman

Just when Lian is acclimating to life in Oregon, just when a decision on her Green Card application could arrive any day, her nephew Jo-Jo goes and gets his girlfriend pregnant ... which means there's a hurry-up wedding in Bangkok that we must attend. So, six weeks earlier than planned, it's back to Thailand we go.

On the taxi ride from the airport late Saturday night, we look out at the jumble of shops and street vendors and winding lanes and motorbikes and crusty, crumbling buildings and crazy traffic zipping by. "Thailand and America really different," Lian says. "Really different. I never know before."

We arrive back in our working-class studio apartment, three big bags stretched tight mostly with American skin-care products. We drop our load and I watch Lian look around the room after a five-month absence, then at me. Her expression says it all: "Was this place always so small?"

The next day we walk to our favorite lunch place. Lian, who is now accustomed to flat, spacious Portland sidewalks, stumbles badly on the broken, treacherous Thai walkway not once but twice; in three years I've never seen that happen before.

The afternoon is not particularly hot, but Lian looks wilted and even a little sweaty. "I think Thailand is humid more America," she laments. "I like air in Oregon."

But it's the allegedly "fresh" produce in the open-air San Pakoi market that Lian now sees through American eyes: table after table of sad, droopy, oversprayed greens, when we've just spent a summer cruising organic farmers markets and gorging in family gardens. Thai corn on the cob is practically silage, whereas American sweet corn is just about the most amazing thing Lian has ever tasted. "I eat more vegetable in America than I do in Thailand," she realizes this morning over breakfast.

Will I have any trouble getting this girl on a plane back to the US of A, especially come late spring? I think maybe no problem.