“By the end of the program, I managed to convince her to move to America with me,” Nat says with a laugh.

“It didn’t seem so scary at the time,” Keiko adds with a laugh of her own. “Since on the map, it was ‘just’ an ocean away. How brave I was back then!”

“Mind you, San Francisco in the seventies was not the same city it is now,” Nat continues. “The civil rights movement had just happened ten years ago. But SF still seemed like a better place for us to live together at the time, especially after the Pride parades, newspapers, and rights ordinances started popping up.”

“Meanwhile in Japan,” Keiko says. “My parents were very upset when they found out about Nat. Even today, same-sex marriage is not allowed there like it is here, but I am hoping it’ll happen soon.”

Celeste tightens her grip on the camera, thinking of her own parents and how Korea has also yet to legalize same-sex marriage.

“We’d already been together for about forty years when we got legally married here, in SF,” Nat says with a laugh. “But it was nice to finally have that slip of paper. Our kids got a real kick out of it, since they got marriage certificates of their own around the same time.”

She and Keiko share a smile, and Celeste captures the moment with her camera.

When Gemma asks about their biggest challenges, Keiko answers, “Living far away from home was always the most difficult thing for me. My parents, my brothers, and my cousins… they all eventually accepted my relationship with Nat. But by then, I already had a life that I didn’t want to leave here. I don’t regret my choices, but I wish I could have spent more time with my family while they were still alive.”

Tears fall from Keiko’s eyes, and Celeste thinks about the last several years of her own life. She can somewhat relate to Keiko, since, after a childhood of constantly being told something was wrong with her, she’d thought she could just never look back after moving to the US. But she still gets a pang of homesickness whenever she leaves Korea and lands back in LAX. She misses her family and wishes she could see Min-joon and the rest of her friends in Seoul more often.

In an ideal world, she could live the life she wants and be accepted by her family back home. But of course, that world doesn’t exist, and it probably won’t for a long time.

Her eyes glistening in the light, Nat squeezes Keiko’s hand. “She gave up so much to be here with me. And I’m grateful for it, every day.”

“That’s so sweet,” Gemma says. She wipes her tears away before asking the next question. “Have there been any changes within your relationship throughout the years?”