Just for fun...

[Marlys]

This has always been one of my favorite threads. So many newer people are here and I would love to know more about You!!!
Love & Hugs, Marlys

[Jackie07]

Indeed a 'fun' thread. Wish I had found it earlier. Be prepared, since it's going to be a long one...

I was born in Taipei, Taiwan at the beginning of the Sixties. My Father, the colonel, is a very, very strict and conservative, 'Ching-dynasty' (ancient) type of guy. He married my Mother who is 8 years his junior at the end of WWII when the Japanese surrendered after the atomic bombs.

However, they ended up having to fight the communist in the 'impossible' civil war. They lost contact when the Nationalist Army collapsed (there's no way to fight the 'war' because the communist army forced civilians to the frontline.) After the communist took over the Mainland, my parents were reunited in Taiwan. After having 5 healthy children, they had a sickly premature baby who was constantly having health-related issues. He was 45 then, and she was 37.

The 'spoiled'(as my Father always calls me)baby girl grew up to be the tallest among three sisters. I had been labeled as a 'very bright, yet also very lazy' child. I was on the ping-pong team and the hand-ball team in elementary school, the track team in junior high, and the basketball team in both high school and college. I love music and was given a brand new piano from the family when I was admitted to the top college in Taiwan. Several of my nieces have used that piano since I left Taipei in 1984.

I was the 'ugly duckling' because the brother right before me has been dubbed 'the handsome little prince' since he was born. He was so good-looking and popular that even my junior high school teacher couldn't help making fun of my pimples and questioning why I was not as good-looking as my popular brother.

But the 'ugly duckling' went to the best college in Taiwan and ended up getting a master's degree from Texas Woman's University. I married a good-looking young Texan who was born 4 days after the handsome 3rd Brother. Amazingly they are of the same height, same built-up, and even wear the same size of shoes. 3rd Brother commented after the engagement was announced: "I didn't know that you had 'worshipped' me so much...". One of my college basketball team members (with a Ph.D. in English from Boulder, Colorado) asked how come a handsome American like 'him' would marry a not-so-good-looking Chinese girl like me; and how come a smart, capable woman like me would marry a country boy who didn't care about getting a PhD or making a lot of money...

Well... it is because God has brought us together. I was singing in the choir at First Baptist Church just a little more than two months after I had moved to the Central Texas town to take a reference librarian's position. The salary was so low that no self-repecting American would apply for that job. This handsome (my colleague assured me) young man drove 1 hour to town and sat in the pew and saw the only Asian girl in the all Caucasian choir in the all Caucasian church... I was nice to him because I thought he was just a college kid... He was curious because he just got dumped by his Filipino girl friend who had moved out of state... During our first dinner out I was basically 'analyzing' for him why the physical therapist chose not to stay in the small town near where he lived...

Less than two years after our honey moon trip to Taiwan, I was diagnosed with a life-long brain tumor (love is so blind that he never suspected there's anything wrong with his girlfriend/wife)and underwent a 23-hour brain surgery. My oldest Brother came and helped (drilled me) with my rehabilitation while the groom was finishing up his college courses. My In-laws parked their RV by the hospital for the 40 days and then took me home for another month after I was discharged from the hospital.

I lost my job as a mid-level supervisor a year after the surgery and was very, very depressed. Staying home and closed up to the outside world, my neurological function dwindled quickly. By the time I got a hostess/cashier's job at a Chinese restaurant, I was so weak then I wasn't able to stand behind the cashier's counter for more than 30 minutes (I was eventually allowed to sit on a high stool when there's no customer around.) I made mistakes in balancing the account... I forgot what customers had ordered off the menu...The only thing that had saved my job was that my English was fluent enough by then and the new owner couple who had just emigrated from Taiwan could not handle the phone orders without me...

After 3 years - with good, nourishing Chinese food in the restaurant, I started back working part-time at a near-by college library and taking some college courses in the local community college (a self-prescribed rehab.) A couple of years later, I picked up another part-time job at the local college library. Then in 2000, after the library expansion, my position became full-time. Barely half year later - boom! my doctor said I had to get Gamma-knife Radiosurgery because the residue tumors suddenly doubled their size... (I am pretty sure I was poisoned there because the new director scheduled me to work the Saturday after the library got a new 'tar' roof Friday afternoon and I was the only staff 'constantly' working under that roof afterwards...)

A little more than a year after the GKRS, I lost my newly promoted full-time Reference Librarian's job (the library had built a new wing and expanded opening hours just 6 months before my Gamma-knife) at the library where I had worked 7 years.

I was on unemployment when we found out my first bout of breast cancer. I entered teacher training program with the scholarship from Texas Workforce Center and a travel stipend from Texas Rehabilitation Commission while I was undergoing the radiation treatment. I worked at three schools after substituting the first year. But none of the schools would renew my contract - the wig, the note-taking,... it's not hard for people to figure out that there's 'something wrong' with me.

So here I am again, battling another recurrence, trying for another line of work. I am taking 'medical coding' class on-line and hope to get through the program soon to get a job in one of the hospitals in the area.

'Life is not fair but God is good'. With helps from both sides of the families and our friends from the church, we have 'sailed through' all the obstacles so far. Truly, since we have been down to the Valley of the Shadow of Death several times, we 'have no fear' because His 'rod' has been protecting us...

And this website, to me, is heaven...