My First Thanksgiving
in America
By Andrew Lam
A
week before Thanksgiving 31 years ago, my father
showed up on our crowded apartment's doorsteps
in the Mission District in San Francisco. He was
in his civilian clothes, and had a small traveling
bag in which he kept his South Vietnamese army
uniform, practically all that he'd brought from
Vietnam. He was haggard and thin, someone I barely
recognized, but he was alive.
My mother, grandmother, sister and I had arrived
at that same apartment only a few months before
him, fresh from the Camp Pendleton refugee camp,
having fled Vietnam two days before the war ended.
We joined my oldest brother, a foreign student,
and my mother's sister and her children. My aunt,
who was not a refugee, had been married to a career
diplomat who had divorced her. With us showing
up, there were 11 in that apartment.
During my first few months in America I suffered
a recurrent nightmare. In dreams, I would be left
behind in Saigon. Except for myself, the house
is empty. I frantically search for my father when,
suddenly, a few Vietcong enter through the metal
gate. I scream and run upstairs. They give chase
and one catches my ankle and again I scream --
and wake in cold sweat and tears as I stare out
onto that dimly lit parking lot with the fog drifting,
feeling confused and lost.
My mother, who looked careworn, whose eyes were
hollowed, didn't say it to us but it was easy
to read her mind. There had been no word of father
or his whereabouts. Father, a South Vietnamese
military official, who opted to stay behind, out
of his penchant to be patriotic and loyalty to
his men, would fight on regardless of the outcome.
I had heard her whisper these words to my aunt
-- "Tu thu": defending to the death.
Some nights I went to sleep, weeping; "tu
thu, tu thu," I'd hear the words echoing
ominously in my head. In Vietnam, father was the
center of our universe, and his absence left a
horrible void.
Across the street was the parking lot of the supermarket.
My cot was by the dining room windows: I went
to sleep every night watching the fog drift by,
watching the soda pop machines glow in their eerie
and seductive lights, listening to the wind, and
fearing sleep.
But then one afternoon the phone rang at the restaurant
downstairs. Mother picked up the phone. On the
other end was father's voice. She gasped. She
cried. She was speechless. Then she laughed. When
she hung up, she and my aunt hugged each other
and cried. I watched from the counter, feeling
both fear and elation. Father had survived and
he would soon join us.
In school, a few weeks before father showed up,
I'd learned the word Thanksgiving. "Ssshthanks
give in," I repeated after my teacher, but
the word tumbled and hissed, turning my mouth
into a wind tunnel. A funny word, "Ssshthanks
give in," hard on my Vietnamese tongue, tough
on my refugee's ears.
But Mr. K., my seventh grade English teacher,
was full of encouragement. "Very good. Repeat
after me. Thanksgiving."
As I helped him tape students' drawings of turkeys
and pilgrims and Indians on the classroom windows,
Mr. K. patiently explained to me the origins of
the holiday. You know the story: Newcomers to
America struggling, surviving and finally thriving
in the New World, thanks to the kindness of the
natives.
I could barely speak a complete sentence in English,
having spent less than three months in America,
but Mr. K.'s story wasn't all that difficult to
grasp. But before my father showed up, I had no
reason to be thankful.
But that thanksgiving, my first in America, I
did. After Father, another aunt and her children
showed up, the apartment was now filled pass its
limit. There were 17 people in all.
That Thanksgiving we ate on the floor, with newspapers
spread out as our table. We wore clothes and ate
turkeys donated by a religious charity. We talked
and laughed and told stories of our escape to
one another.
There will be heartbreaks, of course, disappointments,
and disillusions. There will be trips to Disneyland,
to Europe. There will be marriages, divorces and
births and deaths and family quarrels.
Our thanksgivings these days are elaborate, celebrated
in grand suburban homes with expensive cars parked
in front and replete with wines and champagne.
But the Thanksgiving I remember with the greatest
fondness is the first one, when my father was
returned to me, and we ate on the floor and wore
oversized donated clothes, and I was just learning
to pronounce the word. - New America Media
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