Sad summer days

When Bonjour Tristesse came out, I was too young to grapple with its significance. But French youth, and by way of colonial extension, made its way to my upper classmen as well (Buon oi! ta xin chao mi).

A lot of suicide after the publication of the book, as I was told.

“My heart has no address…and letters I wrote, addressing to Tristesse – ” existential loneliness. What do you do when you already had everything, except your selective memory.

Can’t repeat last summer, that summer, sad summer.

Students enjoy a summer and a sabbath away from the school. It’s safer that way.

Until doors are re-enforced.

My kid and I talked about “living together and dying alone” (a 4th grader already contradicted me by saying ‘but sometimes people die at the same time’ – I then deflected by saying, it’s true, as in war – all the while, trying not to bring up Uvalde).

Sad summer days, high temperatures low morale.

If I had to keep one summer, it would be summer of 75 in Wake Island/Indiantown Gap, PA.

Half-and-half. Middle of nowhere and can’t wait to get somewhere.

Island and mainland.

Isolated and insulated but always inside an Army barracks.

All the way from “bombing halt” to 444 days of hostages, to holding out on Ukraine defense aid package. Somehow, America and its elections affected multiple countries throughout its short existence. I am thankful we’ve got a “Ford” and not a “Lincoln” during our “caravan” exodus.

Stagnation was rampant. Very much like this summer’s inflation.

Color kids went to Nam and came home in flag-draped caskets. White ivy-league students also died on campus and elsewhere (as human chain to stop the National Guard on May Day 71 “If the government doesn’t stop the war, we stop the government”, in banners and on buttons).

Summertime was supposed to be breezy with Seals and Crofts, not Bonjour Tristesse.

After many years of being apart, I now realize that summer was a blessing in disguise. When our families were together. Just sun, sand and some sadness. But together.

The only summer I can recall. First summer without my Dad (prelude again to next week’s Father’s Day).

We cherished what was lost, was behind and would never be put back: a sense of belonging to our origin, the contour of a city whose name got changed and the nuances of a culture of misery and mischievousness.

So mythical that years after the US came home, broken and defeated, it still studied and suffered “Vietnam syndrome” as President Bush put it.

We’re lucky to have our lives intersected with President Ford’s. Albeit clumsy, he was what we all needed during post-Watergate, post-Vietnam: good in character. Same way we love Chevy Chase who portrayed him. He controversially pardoned Nixon, then the hundred thousand defectors and draft dodgers (to Canada)

Today, if we were to do it again, we wouldn’t go beyond Subic Bay in the Philippines. Heck, the supply chain problems of world migration.

Every administration has to deal with its own legacy and leaves behind its unfinished agenda.

Our lives are intertwined, from the French re-colonization of Indochina (Chennault Affair) to the MIA and Agent Orange lingering issues.

Although there no longer is a sense of urgency with the Vietnam Memorial casts a long shadow on the Mall (where people are marching today en masse for our lives), we still feel that unspoken sadness of summer 75, for us on Wake Island and part of it, in Indiantown Gap, PA where those “deer hunters” of old Pittsburg, PA. were later portrayed (ducking past his welcome home party).

“Do you know, where you’re going to, do you like the things that life is showing you.”

No, I don’t like it. Not one bit, when people are cruel and unkind. When kids have to take longer summers not because of the academic calendar, but because school is closed with “crime scene” tapes.

Long ago, we put the yellow ribbon on the oak tree (if you still want me to come home). Now it’s yellow cordoned tape so Federal Law Enforcement can examine to the teeth how damn door was locked and where the janitor was nowhere to be found.

Summer on Cote d’Azur, summer on the run, summer on lockdown. We’re always on the quest to be outside of the box, yet often times found ourselves in the box of our own making….”prisoners of our own devices”, like a line in Hotel California. No wonder, even at a young age, I was struck by the title of Francois Sagan’s book.

Just by touching deep on that subject, was enough to drag down a bunch of youth. Suicide. Die alone. Just don’t take people with you. Especially the younger ones, who like me at an impressionable age, were looking up and out onto the world, trying to figure out the shape of reality and whether people in general, were good or evil, kind or cruel, magnanimous or Monterious.

Glad we found in Ford, a president, a steady Ford, with character and forthrightness. Those qualities have been of late in short supply.

That summer, we had no address. Our hearts also had no address. Only letters written, addressing to sadness. And every morning, I now remember saying “Bonjour Tristesse” although not in French, but something very similar to it. Almost “buon oi, ta xin chao mi”.