The Unadulterated Backend Story of Ed & Julia – Part 1

Ed & Julia’s Story

For the two of us, our story began with “Shoyu Chicken”. My wife now, then best friend, said, “you wanna’ show me chicken?” after I asked her if she wanted to watch me make shoyu chicken.

I owned and operated Tucson’s ONLY Authentic Hawaiian Cuisine. It was late and I had a last minute catering so it was going to be a long night for me. Both Julia & I were good friends developing into more than friends. We both are Christians and met at our singles group at church so we both didn’t believe in funny business before marriage. More on that later.

“Show Me Chicken?

Tired, I wanted her company and asked her if she could stay with me at the kitchen and I’ll make her “shoyu chicken”. Shoyu Chicken is a popular dish in Hawaii, similarly cooked like you would chicken soup but it’s cooked in soy sauce. In Hawaii, we call soy sauce shoyu, the Japanese word for soy sauce.

Inseparable

I told her that I would take her home after if she wanted to stick around and hang with me. We were inseparable at this point. Her and I would stay up till the next morning at times just talking and hanging out. Or we would keep talking on the phone after we spent most of our day with each other.

She worked as a refugee case worker and I ran my Hawaiian food business.  So after our long nights (mornings) we would be working with bloodshot eyes the next day. On the shoyu chicken night we had a great night laughing about how she wondered why I was going to show her a chicken. As she got to watch me make shoyu chicken and got a free plate of shoyu chicken when I was done she then understand what shoyu chicken was all about. It was a tasteful night.

Just Friends

Mind you at this time, we were only friends. Julia had just come back from living in Egypt for 3 years teaching English. She just got out of a bad relationship. I had just had my daughter, who I raised since she was born as a single dad turn 18 and then run off with some guy that I didn’t even know.

Single Dad Life

Before I met Julia, my daughter Ariel was my life. We were really close. When I grew up, my dad was and still is a business owner. The joke said about him was that he was a “workaholic”. Him being a workaholic was no joke, howver. He was and still is a hard worker (and workaholic). He taught me great work ethics but the downside to this was that I never saw my dad growing up.

I love my dad and everything that he provided for us but I vowed to myself that I would never put my work before my daughter. And I made good to my vow.

Fatherless Parenting

Being self-employed has a ton of benefits. One of them being that I never missed any of my daughter’s school and out of school events. It may have been more than she wanted but I didn’t care. I’d rather her be mad at me for being a father to her than not being one at all.

She was on the golf team in high school and I went to every single one of her practices and games. Ariel was in ROTC and I walked right along side her in the crowd when she marched in the Veteran’s day parade.

I had her when I was 17 and 11 months old (My birthday is in December and Ariel was born in November) so everyone thought that I was her older brother. For the most part, she didn’t mind me being around.

I didn’t want my daughter go through an absent father upbringing like I had. It wasn’t easy and many sacrifices were made but I wouldn’t do it any differently.

Although I was always there for my daughter, her mother was the absent parent. Ariel really had a hard time dealing with this in her later teenage years.

A Really Hard Time In My Life

When Ariel turned 18 she decided to move out and “be an adult”. She moved with some guy who I did not know. I was devastated because my plans for her was to pay for her college and then she would go on to her career, find the right guy for her and then move out.

Unfortunately, that is not always how the story ends. It was really hard to let her live her life with her choices regardless if I agreed with them or not. 18 years of loving, protecting, teaching, fathering and guiding your children makes it almost impossible to let your child go through with what they think is right. The reality is all you really care about is the best interest of your child.

Meeting The Love Of My Life

Being a single father of a daughter, it was nearly impossible to date or be in a relationship. Daughter’s want to be the “only” in their life. I tried a few times to date but it always ended in Ariel fighting for her dad’s attention. She was my priority at the time so I didn’t mind the sacrifice.

I believe God worked out for Julia and I to meet at the right time and in the right place in our life and the time was now.

And that Hawaiian, He was so boring…

Julia has a funny version of how we met. And I have the truth. 🙂

All of what happened with my daughter had just happened so I wasn’t really in a social mood. I took it really hard. So when Julia met me at our singles group, she thought I was “boring” and one of the most un-social person’s in the world because I didn’t talk.

Julia’s Egypt Adventures

She’s a heck of a story teller. Even thought she didn’t think I was listening, I was listening. I was intrigued with her adventures in Egypt. She was an American, a woman, and a Christian in a muslim male dominated country where woman are esteemed as property and not human beings.

Julia’s Latina so she’s not your typical frail scared typed girl. She stood for what was right. She stood up for herself as a woman and didn’t let anything get in her way. I had to get to know more about this woman. She’s a very attractive and beautiful woman but what really attracted me to her was her stories, her fire for life, and her passion. I wanted to know more about her. And I did.

First Walk Together

Our singles group decided to do a hike up Tumamoc Hill in Tucson, AZ. It’s only a 1.5 mile hike but it’s a steep 600 feet windy slope up to the top. All of the others in the group were in their 20’s. Julia and I were in our late 30’s at the time. I stayed back to walk with her and encourage her to continue knowing what was ahead because I had hiked it once before.

As we walked up we saw wild deer and all kinds of wildlife just staring at us from the bushes. We barely talked walking up because were winded walking up the steep hill. If you haven’t walked it, it just takes your breath away, both physically and visually.

We finally made it to the top and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. As we walked down, we talked and I shared with her what had happened with my daughter. She felt bad for thinking such awful things about me. :p

Never Apart Since

Since this walk we’ve since got married and been together as life long partners and soulmates. Well, let me back up a bit to before getting married. Our pastor at the time recommended that we do marriage counseling before we got married. We both had been divorced so it we thought it was a good idea to take his advice.

It was one of the hardest but best things we could have done for our marriage. It covered everything from our past relationships, our parents and their influences over us both good and bad, expectations, and more.

And the book. It was a fairly thin but powerful one. It was thrown several times (not by me, lol). But it forced us to deal with real issues in our own lives before getting married that saved a lot of the challenges people who don’t go through marriage counseling face. If you’re getting married we highly suggest going through marriage counseling. We talk to couples who hear about we did before we got married and they all say, “I wish we did that before we got married. It would have saved us a lot of heartache and unnecessary marriage problems.

There’s More In Part 2

This was a fairly long one so I’m going to cut it short and continue this on a later post. I’m normally writing about business or webdesign so I just wanted to take the time to share a little bit about us instead.

Hope you enjoyed it so far. Let me know what you think by emailing me at nextlevelwebdevelopers@gmail.com.

If you loved Part 1 you can find Part 2 at:

Until next time. Thanks for reading and look forward to finishing this up on the next post.

Aloha,

Ed Fong