Dateline: Northwest flight 20 from Tokyo to Minneapolis/St. Paul, 27 August 2004
We had a two-hour layover in Tokyo (Narita) and while Vonne shopped around, I played with Mei while catching a chunk of the very exciting womens’ soccer game between the U.S. and Brazil on a big-screen.
Then we got aboard our huge jumbo jet for the 11-hour flight from Tokyo to Minnesota. Here the biz class seats were the newest high-tech recliners that adjust 50-ways from Sunday, plus come with their own movies-on-demand personal screens.
Mei slept the first couple of hours on this flight, but then was up and active the rest of the way, which meant no sleep for either of us. But the stewardesses were very nice through the short evening (only about 5 hours of night as we raced toward the dawn—recatching the 27th of August on its backside, so to speak), holding Vonne Mei frequently and cooking up some noodles special for her, so it wasn’t hard to pass the time. Still, feeding that kid non-stop pretty much had me convinced she’d go down for the count at some point, but it never happened.
It was like Vonne Mei simply couldn’t go to sleep, she was so wired up by the activity of being on a huge jet like that, with so many people and so much activity going on (the food was especially good). Problem was, of course, that she lost it near the end, giving us the one time so far in the trip where she was the inconsolable screaming baby. It was only the last 15 minutes of the plane ride, but she gave us all she was worth in terms of screeching. Actually, she’s more of a yeller than a screecher, but she’s just as piercing.
Once on the ground and moving again in her stroller, Mei quieted and finally fell asleep, missing the entire drama of her becoming a new American citizen. That process was pretty boring anyway, as all we did was hand over the sealed paperwork in the “brown envelope” from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou to the Homeland Security people at the immigration office there in the airport. They looked everything over, said it was in order, and then sent us on our way with nothing more than a piece of paper saying how we could get Mei a U.S. passport (she traveled in on her Chinese passport under her original Chinese name).
Our grand collection of luggage in tow, we exited out of the secure area only to be met by my Mom and my two sisters, cameras at the ready. They had put together a welcoming sign, which was nice, and my Mom insisted that Mei touch the ground in the grand tradition of immigrants, so we took her (still sleeping) out of the stroller and touched her feet on the tiled floor, snapping photos of her holding a small American flag brought by my Mom. It was all very neat and cool to capture for posterity, and I thank my Mom for thinking ahead on all of that.
Funny, but at the time we came out of security both Vonne and I were so tense and burned out from the combo of the long flight and the lack of sleep, plus the tension of all that screaming at the end (when you inevitably get all sorts of offers of help from stewards, etc.) that when my Mom urged us to take Mei out and have her touch the ground, neither of us were really in the mood to do so. But we did, because it seemed to have so much meaning for my mother. When I thought about it later, I wondered if I was just being the obedient son and realized I was not. It was really the urgency in my Mom’s voice that told me this simple act simply had to be done, as her pleading tone just tripped something in my memory about how—in my youth—she would often speak so emotionally of relatives coming here from Ireland and being so grateful for the chance to be an American. After hearing those stories so many times over the years, I finally understand their meaning. At the time, it seemed silly, but every time since, when I've described it to others or just thought about it myself, I find myself ready to cry from the emotion of it. Don't really know why that connection seems so strong with this small child, and yet there it is.
And in some ways, I'm already so grateful to Vonne Mei for giving this to me: this sense of participation (albeit vicariously) in becoming a new American. It's like we're not only now a Chinese-American family, but somehow likewise an immigrant family in part, meaning I feel connected now to this country in a way I never have before. By acting as Mei's guardian in this manner, I got to choose something I've always taken for granted in this world: American citizenship. And you know what? Participating in that decision with my wife was a pretty powerful experience, a nifty sort of public variant on the usually very private act of faith that all parents engage in whenever they bring a child into this world. We didn't just walk out of the hospital with a native son, we chose to bring our daughter to America. It didn't happen automatically, we had to make it so.
It not only felt amazingly good and meaningful, it reminded me of why I wrote the book—that sense that America needs to open up to the world more than ever after 9/11, and not close itself off as we have done far too much in the months following those tragic events. By adopting Vonne Mei, we chose to make China a new source code for a family that previously had none in that part of the world. We chose to connect and—by doing so—we made the world a little smaller.
A quick nap at my sister Cathie’s house in St. Paul in the afternoon was followed by a family dinner, and then we repaired to our nearby hotel room where we slept away the night. Breakfast at my sister Maggie’s followed this morning, and then we boarded another Northwest jet to Indianapolis, where we are set to land in a few moments, so I sign off for now.
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