Saturday

Feb. 16: Slept late today, as usual. Because it was such an inviting day, sunny and in the sixties, I took a long walk the old-fashioned way, with the dog, rather than on the treadmill. We walked to the docks and back. The water was at medium tide, and the gulls and egrits were sunning themselves on the dock boardwalk. Over the years, I've seen many different types of animals on the woodsy path to the docks, including deer, raccoon, rabbits, possums, storks, eagles, and some creature that looked almost like an aardvark from a distance (no way!) but fortunately, no alligators. Not long ago, a woman on Wilmington Island was killed by an alligator that crept up out of the water into the water-front yard. I remembered as I walked along when P. and I collected hermit crabs from the dock area to use for a middle school science project. That must have been at least a decade ago.

Just an ordinary Saturday, we picked up, threw in laundry, L. studied for his P.E. test in April, and I read some senior research papers. P. asked me to go with him---in his car, this time---while he took a load of our garbage to the landfill, so I rode along, and helped him heave a useless shredder and microwave into the metal bins, along with other odds and ends. Usually when we go out together, I insist that I drive and we take my car, because I fully admit it, I'm a nervous rider with P. since he's only had a license for a couple of years and I remember the days of white-knuckling it around town when he only had a permit. But today I told myself to get over it, and we set out for a pleasant trip. I found myself feeling very relaxed as we drove along. P has developed into a competent driver.

Last night, we watched one of the best movies I've seen in awhile: Journey of the Fall. My eyes were heavy and I was on the verge of falling asleep, but as this movie unfolded, I woke up fully. The story began in the seventies, after the U.S. pulled out of Viet Nam. The movie was in Vietnamese with subtitles, which I always like because the original language makes any story more genuine. The two plot strands involve a wife and son escaping Viet Nam on a boat, while the husband, who has been taken prisoner by the Communists, escapes from the prison into the jungle. There was no Hollywood-ization in this one. It was well-crafted and thought-provoking. In fact, it made me recall my early teaching days in Baton Rouge.

When I was at LSU in the early '80's, I had many Vietnamese students who had been boat people. The movie stirred my memory of Baton Rouge. When I think of Baton Rouge, I think of those sweet-olive and honeysuckle scents in the air; the pink, red,and white crepe myrtles and camillas coloring every yard; the musty smell of the English Department in Allen Hall, and the earnest international students I taught. What a contrast between them and the students I have now. The ESOL students, especially the ones who had escaped Viet Nam, fell all over themselves trying to learn the language, and worked harder than I've ever seen students work since. One summer in Baton Rouge, I managed to land a three-week job teaching an enrichment course to teenage American students---in those days, remember, there was no summer pay, you fended for yourself in the summertime!---and I invited a Vietnamese student from my previous semester class to come as a guest speaker for my enrichment class. She spoke English well enough. I remember how she stood at the front of the class and said, scoldingly, "You American students are so lazy. You take it all for granted. Well, you wouldn't if you'd lived in my country! One night, a group of soldiers came to the house and took my father away. I never saw him again. We never knew where they took him or what happened to him. Then I escaped on a boat and got over here. . . "
The American students, being self-absorbed teenagers, did not seem overly impressed, but I was! Before moving to Baton Rouge, I was very limited in my exposure to people from other countries, cultures, and ethnic groups. But at LSU, my personal education was enhanced a thousand-fold when I worked with students from every country around the globe. In teaching them, in hearing their stories, and observing their customs, I gained far more than I gave.
The Vietnamese couple who runs the nail place I've been frequenting for the past decade are smart and interesting people. I enjoy talking to them when I'm getting the old acrylics (in the South, it's required that you have "done" nails, and I finally surrendered to it). Several nail sets ago, the husband was telling me about being raised in an orphanage in Chicago, after arriving in the states as a boat person. He didn't say where the rest of his family was. It's hard not to notice the burn scar on his arm, and one wonders...Last summer, he returned to Chicago for a reunion with the boys he'd grown up with in the orphanage. The place closed in the early '90's I think he said, but the boys, now men, kept track of one another. His eyes misted as he told me about the reunion, how they sat up all night talking. And all of them had turned out very well because the strict but caring teachers at the orphange had taught them to have strong work ethics and good characters. The wife told me last time that all her siblings came to the U.S. as boat people. Their mother sent the oldest two siblings first, and when they arrived, they sent for the next two, and so on. By the time the wife, who was the youngest, and her mother came, they were able to fly over. Can you imagine sending your oldest two out onto the ocean in a rickety fishing boat, into the unknown? The sad thing is, it was better to have them take their chances out on the ocean than to worry that the North Vietnamese would arbitrarily kill or imprison them. The daily worries that eat at most Americans are miniscule compared to the magnitude of the problems people in many other countries face at this very moment.