I asked Dad to bring the ring I would use to propose when he came to visit, which was the first time I ever hinted to anybody that I was going to ask Sarah to marry me. It wasn’t the entire reason dad came to visit me in a different country, but it probably helped.

I don’t know if my parents…approved of my living in South Korea for as long as I did. Mom certainly thought of South Korea as a place that wasn’t even worth visiting, but after she died my Dad came to see me for about a week, bringing the ring along with him, and booking a hotel near where Sarah and I were living.

It was during a rough time. For all of us. I was coping with my mom’s passing by turning from a heavy drinker into an incredibly heavy drinker, and my dad’s plotted course was along much the same vector. South Korea was perfect for us in that regard — their drinking culture is tremendous and vibrant. It’s easy to drink and be drunk at any time of day, and they don’t care if you do it in public. They encourage it. It’s a source of national pride.

I think Mom never approved of South Korea simply because I’d moved there and she couldn’t abide any country (or city or person or philosophy) that “took her boy away.” Mostly, though, South Korea wasn’t what she considered to be an “easy” country to travel in. It wasn’t a place for packaged trips or guided tours, which was how she preferred to travel.

Dad, though, figured at least one of them should visit me. I’d been living there for over 10 years at that point, and after Mom died, Dad bought tickets.

One of my strongest memories of when dad came to visit — besides the wicked hangovers — is of drinking martinis and playing Yut Nori at a hotel bar in Yulyang-dong.

He stayed at one of the fanciest hotels in town at that time (which wasn’t saying all that much). It was right above Homeplus and had a pretty decent bar on their top floor. My father had this thing he would do where he’d ask a waiter if they knew how to make a martini (they usually didn’t — martinis aren’t as common in Asia) and then would get all in a huff when they made it wrong. “Well I suppose I’ll have to speak with the bartender.” I guess he thought he was doing the world a favor by ensuring every barman he met across six continents knew how to make a decent gin martini.

Anywho, we got pretty toasted one night and were playing this traditional Korean game called “Yut Nori,” or just “Yut,” which is sort of like the board game Sorry! only instead of rolling dice you throw four sticks to see how far you move your piece across the board.

The fact that we were playing in a fancy hotel bar was unusual — Yut Nori, in my experience, is usually played by old gamblers in public parks or by families on particular Korean holidays. Playing it where we were, in a fancy hotel bar, was kind of like playing hopscotch at The Plaza. The bar was empty, however, and I explained to the servers that I was just trying to teach my dad how Yut Nori was played. (It was a cultural exchange more than anything else. Certainly not just my dad and I getting plastered and throwing sticks across a bar…)

Part of the way into the night, I realized my dad was cheating at Yut Nori. The trick was in the way he threw the sticks. Instead of tossing them, as was protocol, he would sort of roll them across the carpet of this fancy hotel bar in such a way that they would all land flat side down.

“You can’t do that,” I said. “If you roll them like that, it makes it more likely that they’ll land flat side down. It’s cheating.”

“It isn’t cheating. Look. I’m tossing them just like you said.”

Instead of tossing them, he once again rolled them. All four sticks landed flat side down. To this day, I don’t know if my dad was trolling me or if he really didn’t understand how the sticks were supposed to be thrown. Either way, he wouldn’t listen to reason, and did not seem to understand no matter how much I explained.

So, I called the waiter over. There were no other patrons at that hour, so it wasn’t like he was busy or anything, and I asked him if the way my dad threw the Yut was legal.

“Legal?” he said.

“Allowed,” I said.

“Oh, yes, yes,” he said, smiling at my father. “That is allowed. The way he throws. Very much allowed.”

After the waiter left, Dad said, “See? Perfectly fine throws. Perfectly fine. Very much allowed.”

I said, “The waiter is only saying that because you’re older than he is and it’s customary not to go against your elders. If you weren’t such an old bastard, he would have told you the truth.”

“You’re just bitter that I’m winning.”

“Oh, am I? Fine. I’ll start throwing the bones the way you do. Then we’ll just see who wins. We’ll just see.“

So, I, too, started rolling the Yut. They continually landed flat side down, all four sticks. It was like playing an American board game and only rolling sixes with the dice. All game. On every throw.

“See how dumb this is?” I said.

“It’s not my fault they don’t have good games in South Korea,” Dad said, tipping back the rest of his martini and, no doubt, wondering how best to explain to the Korean-speaking bartender that vermouth ought to be sprayed on the ice rather than poured.

We didn’t talk much about Mom that trip. There was only the part where Dad gave me the ring that Mom had made before she died, which was a simple, modest golden band in a red box. The most remarkable thing about that ring (besides the person who now wears it) is that it’s made of the melted and reforged gold from the wedding rings of my mother’s mother and grandmothers.

I carried that ring in my backpack for months before I used it, and when I did, absolutely nothing went according to plan.