Together>separated

This morning, I learned that five more had died in a chase at the would-be Trump wall.

The other day, in 100-degrees heat, I saw a homeless lady standing under a tree wearing everything she had on her. They could all be my mother back in 1975, when she was left behind in a PA refugee camp all by herself. Only that it was September cold, in a military barrack. Meanwhile, all three of us, sons and daughter (with 4 of her kids) got sponsored away into the four winds: divided and defeated. We were in a hurry to unburden ourselves from the Federal system, after three previous stops: Subic Bay, Wake Island and then Camp Indian Town Gap.

I understand separation well. Especially when it comes to family separation.

And mostly, when it is separation due to immigration.

I was 19. Debut as janitor by night, freshman by day. Yet I still cried my heart out. For being so helpless. For self-recrimination and for survivor’s guilt.  We could not defend South VN. We could not hold our families together ( refugee sponsorships were voluntary, not a Congressional or Executive Order). And I could not work myself up to fill my first grocery card on my $150 government one-time allowance while my mom, retired teacher and fellow escapee, being left behind in the camp without any hope of resettlement (reminds me of team picking, when the opposite captain decides who to be on his/her team: survival of the seemingly fittest). When in graduate school, I was quite motivated to be among the first few to fly back and help fellow Boat People in their plight and resettlement process.

I still held dear to my mom’s discharge paper, dated a few months after all of us had been relocated into neighboring North Eastern  States. Despite the now “happy ending”, our refugee tale has never been told in detail. We “‘bragged” on facebook about my sister’s 80th birthday, with bleached-teeth kids – but not dark tales, model minorities but not about betrayal and skin-shedding, very much like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks ( rack-focus shot from a perfect middle-class green lawn, but once revealed- full of insects and bugs underneath).

My Dad joined us a decade later (1985) while my Mom got picked up after much deliberation by a Jewish D.C. lawyer consortium to reunite with my sister and her family.

I meanwhile worked my way through each Student Union bathroom (where Bruce Springsteen once made a stop to grace us with “Born to run”) at night, and each course reading assignment by day. The campus Jesus freaks figured me for an easy sale, dialectically worked their rehearsed pitch about heaven-hell, Yes-No proposition on how to get to heaven stair-less-ly . To date,  no Christian friends ever asked and learned about my hidden secret: I brave myself enough to ask for my name be put in a separate file, with my newly issued Social Security, so I wouldn’t be a burden to our band of nine, 4 of whom children. Self-separation was painful, gut-wrenching and necessary for survival.

I was that immigrant child that had been “forced” to come of age in a hurry, to re-learn what it means to be human in a world that got tired of giving out spare change. I was initiated into the world of work from the ground up: to wipe others’ toilets waiting for my ship to come. That tale involved voluntary/forced separation (only a few hundred millions appropriated for the evacuation of thousands), while being together would depend on sheer determination and decency in a post-Vietnam society already weighed down after a decade of war and division. I cut my family ties to move on from “Kent State” to Penn State, to find my own voice and my own identidy. The youngest and weakest link would wipe away involuntary tears to become a man of hope and helping hands. I did not know at the time what was awaiting me in Happy Valley, but I know now that I would not be silent when others are going to step into the same deep hole.

“hey, that’s not right!”.

Separation of families always brings horror, and togetherness hope.

Together>separated.