Dad and America
My dad texted me “happy July 4th” the day of, and it prompted me to think about what it means to be an American.
Dad grew up in post-war Vietnam and was relatively better-off than many of the kids around him thanks to my grandfather’s involvement with the U.S. as an intelligence operator (think liaison between the U.S. CIA and the Southern Vietnamese government). However, when the war ended, the Southern Vietnamese cut all of their ties with the U.S. due to safety concerns. It wasn’t long before Northern Vietnamese troops started pillaging homes, imprisoning, interrogating and torturing suspected freedom fighters, and violently enforcing the communist regime.
My grandfather began looking for ways to get the family out of the country. It took years before any solid leads were found, but eventually the gamble was made on a man who took Dad to the coast of Vietnam, where he was “packed like a sardine” on a tiny fishing boat and cast off into the ocean. It was too risky to bring the entire family, so they stayed while Dad left. He was no older than 10.
The boat drifted aimlessly at sea for 7 days. Then, on the 7th night, Dad heard a low whirring sound in the deafening stillness, and it grew louder, inched closer until suddenly he was engulfed in the bright beam of a floodlight. Above them loomed the large hull of a US Navy Destroyer. They brought the Vietnamese on board, fed them, and provided warm showers. They were safe, at least for the moment.
A few days later Dad was sent to a refugee camp in Cambodia. He spent a few months there and was then sponsored to come to the US by a family in Michigan. He finished high school, moved out to California, met my Mom, had a brief stint in the Air Force, left, got married, had a daughter and a sometimes infuriating son, raised us alone after my Mom died of an aneurysm in the brain, I age 2, my sister 1, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I asked him what he thought about the problems America is currently facing. While he was somewhat more complacent regarding his perspective on things and what could be done, he couldn’t deny the fact that the fate of this country rests in the hands of its people, and that the opportunity to make things better was always there, unlike in other countries. America had taken him in as a child and gave him the chance to build a life of his own. That was certainly worth celebrating.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. That has always been the promised ideal for all Americans, however short we have fallen at times aspiring to these heights, particularly because of our ongoing struggle to expand the notion of what and who Americans are. Yet when considering the grander scope of history, the circle has widened to encompass more and more people.
To be an American is to never lose sight of these ideals, and the fact that our democracy enables us to act in accordance with them. That freedom to act is the greatest privilege of all. It is the opposite of what psychologists call ‘learned helplessness’, which manifests as despondence, depression, and nihilism. It is the real reason to celebrate in hard times - the fact that we can fight for better, and care enough to do so.
