Words Never Spoken: Chapter II

This is chapter 2 of my story, ‘Words Never Spoken’.  These entries will appear from time to time in addition to my regular blog posts.  I hope you enjoy them; they are a compilation of memoirs from my father’s life in the United States that I’ve gathered, along with stories from my classroom.  To read the prologue and chapter 1, click here.

Chapter 2 – Ms. Dornan

Each year our school puts out a yearbook that contains class pictures.  In order to insure that there are no mistakes, teachers are given copies of the class pictures to make sure that names are spelled correctly and the right students are in each class.  A few weeks ago, we received those copies in our mailboxes.  Lindsay, a 23 year old first year teacher, came to me after looking at her copy of the class picture.

Lindsay:         “I look like one of the kids.”

Me:                 “C’mon, I doubt that.”

Lindsay:         “Seriously.  If they wrote ‘Lindsay Dornan’ instead of ‘Ms. Dornan’ as the caption, you’d think I was IN the class, not TEACHING the class.”

I looked at the picture; she was right.  It was difficult to discern her youthful face from the beaming smiles of the 10 year old students that were in her homeroom.  I couldn’t help laughing a little.  I also couldn’t help but think of what it would be like if, in 30 or 40 years, I came across a picture from my first year teaching.  Would I remember how excited and nervous I was on that first day?  Would I remember all the incredible stories from the students that I had that year?  And, would I remember how the year was filled with difficult and unexpected challenges?

***

In the summer of 1966, my father found out that he had been accepted into the University of Missouri doctorate program for metallurgical engineering.  3 years of hard work, careful planning and saving money had come to come to that moment.  Now it was time for the second part of his plan to take effect.  He began packing and preparing for America.  Finally, in November, he boarded an airplane to Seattle, Washington.  He was 23 years old.

When he exited the airplane on November 30, 1966, it was the first time my father had set foot in a different country.  As he told me about that day, I recalled the day I left for college.  That August, my parents drove with me to Boston ease the transition.  When they left, I recall the thought of ‘Oh man, I know no one here, and my family is 500 miles away!’ I was scared, excited, and everything in between – and my friends and family were only a phone call away.  I would see them on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and even some long weekends in between.  Can you imagine the magnitude of emotions that must have been pulsating through my dad?  Not only did he not know anyone, but he didn’t know the language well.  On top of that, the only communication he would have with family is through mail – and in 1966 international mail took weeks – and sometimes even months – to get to its destination.  The next time my father would return to his native Taiwan, he would have a wife and two young children with him.  Not that these thoughts would be on his mind.  He had other things to think about.

The plan was for him to work for a few weeks so finances wouldn’t be as tight when he started his graduate program at the University of Missouri.  My uncle, the 2^nd of the 6 sons that my grandmother bore, had a friend in Seattle that my father would stay with.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to find a job for those weeks so it was off to Missouri without any additional money.  While he didn’t leave with any extra cash, he did come out of Seattle with a strip of black and white photo booth pictures – the only artifacts that remain from his short stay in Seattle.  He stumbled across these pictures during the last week he was in the United States while he was packing to leave.  It seems poetic that he would find pictures from his first week in the U.S. during the final week he was in this country.  These photographs are now a fixture in the mirror above my dresser. He looks almost exactly the same as he does now.

My father, about 1 week after coming to America.

If those pictures could speak, they might tell me that my father was excited for the opportunities that awaited him, but also nervous because of the unknown.  But these pictures don’t speak.  All I see is a confident young man that is in high spirits.  I don’t see the stories this man has to tell about leaving Taiwan or Seattle.  These stories would stay unearthed for 46 years – the first I heard them was the day I drove him to the airport on that final day in the States.  It isn’t because the men of the Lin household are notoriously bad at communicating.  It is because in the grand scheme of things, his time in Seattle was but a flash in time – a minute detail in the great story of his life.  The 23 year old man in those pictures is naïve.  He is unaware of the spectrum of challenges he would face in the next few months.  And, he would learn that he was impervious to all of them.  

Next chapter - An Asian in Missouri, 1967...