The cake was a red-white-blue one. The gift (pitched in by everyone in the Bureau of Child Welfare, Indian Town Gap, PA) was a College Dictionary.
And the birthday boy: me. Time: 35 years ago, exactly. Cast: John, Bureau chief, Mary Ann Pinskey, Greg, Steve and three others in a make-shift operation.
Mission: trying to place displaced Vietnamese children into foster care..
My pay: zero. Just a volunteer. But when I went to court as a freelancer, I got paid. So my first pay check all went to the purchase of a tape recorder. Sony.
And I started to peer-to-peer record all the songs we thought would never reappear. Just like the currency which was no longer honored, then, buried under the sea.
Loss. Bewilderment. And for me, that aching nostalgia.
But through helping others, I ended up helping myself.
Life, in short, is an endless cycle of giving-receiving-giving.
Life is a loop.
Not linear, but cyclical.
Don’t let the banks and the quants fool you with their compound interests.
Life just happens. One force acts on another, creating reaction, which creates a chain reaction. A shot started here yet it rang somewhere else.
Unintended consequences.
My birthday will be celebrated here in Saigon. I thank people who help make it possible. Just as I still am thankful for people who made it happen
35 years ago in Indian Town Gap. Those social workers were my first friends, taught me play football, and collegiality (John, not bossy, in jeans, and bridged the gap often found in office politics).
Mary Ann Pinskey, lawyer’s wife, but obviously cared for her job and the unaccompanied minors.
And Graig (and Beal, his wife) who set me up with their friends in Penn State,
so at least I knew someone in that vast College town.
So we picked up a hitchhiking student on the way to campus. He looked like the guy who sang Alice Restaurant.
And I got my firs lesson in the US. And in life: it’s an adventure, full of people of good will and ill will. What you give will end up being what you get.
Law of the universe, law of the land.
When the Pilgrims first arrived in N America, they met Native American, who offered them turkey for dinner.
I got my cake and geography lesson in one scoop (US-map shaped). To this day, I still keep that picture of me cutting that cake. In Vietnam, we commemorate the dead. And birthdays have recently become popular among the upper- class in Vietnam.
It’s OK to reflect on how much water has passed under the bridge.
But I know myself. I remember well, both good and bad memories.
When my “inbox” is full, I will delete the bad, and keep the good.
Selective memories.
And for the good part, I give Thanks, with or without the turkey.
Thank God I am alive (And still look up a word now and then from that very first gift I received from my office mates.) Hate the automated spell check.
Thang Nguyen 555 