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VAD Nation

Well I was born in a small town
And I can breathe in a small town
Gonna die in this small town
And that’s prob’ly where they’ll bury me

- Small Town, John Mellencamp -

American soldiers nicknamed the country of my birth ‘The Nam’. As far as the average joe was concerned, it was a country filled with VC, free fire zones, kill ratios and POW/MIAs. As far as a Vietnamese adoptee like myself was concerned, that same country became a fairytale kingdom where I could act out all my forlorn fantasies of a black-haired mother who missed her son and only wanted to welcome him back into her arms one day. However, America came to see me as the cast-off, the war orphan, the dust of life; the war trophy, the charity case, the Saigon street urchin. Before I knew it, I was given one mission and one mission only: prove my worth.

As I look back on my youth, my status as an adopted person from Vietnam was very rarely announced in public. Subtle remarks or comments about my anomalous genealogy probably floated through my ears, but the hardened perception of myself as a normal red-blooded American kid smacked away any doubts or inconvenient truths about the mismatch between me and my community. My adoptive parents were very adept at concealing reality from me (when it was convenient for them) and avoiding drawn-out discussions about my past that could have resulted in meaningful dialogue which, in turn, would have strengthened the brittle bond between us. I guess it was less taxing for them to convince themselves and me that I was simply their son and had always been a part of their family. I was stuck with them, and they to me, for better or worse. Just one more happy family in the ‘burbs.

However, my vision sharpened and I started seeing cracks in everything around me – cracks in the mirrors, cracks in the kitchen table, cracks in friends’ faces, cracks in school walls and cracks all over my body. Layers of paint and polish started sloughing off the identity inside of which I had been locked. I began holding people accountable for my shitty attitude toward feeling displaced and disoriented. It felt as though I was not only confronting missing chapters in my life, but whole volumes of history that encompassed innumerable stories and facts about momentous events connecting me back to my adoption. Inexplicably, the bottom fell out and I was left with a contemptuous void, down which I kept throwing question after question. No traceable answers ever seemed to crystalize.

Today, as I orbit the core of my existence, I am coming full circle, coming back around to the beginning of one teensy little life that was born somewhere in South Vietnam in December 1973. No longer am I content, no longer am I at ease. As I take account of lost time and memories of an era that I dare not relive, and yet am inextricably drawn to, one undeniable truth no longer eludes me: It was in Vietnam where brutish violence, angelic redemption and pure indifference had blended together and created me. It’s now up to me to piece together this self-portrait. What it may reveal about myself is still anyone’s guess.

Far be it for me to tell other war-era Vietnamese adoptees what to think, but I do believe that each one of us will eventually be made to face the facts and long-term effects of that specific time period in American and Vietnamese history, as intertwined as they are in our cultural and political consciousness. As we embark on our own personal journeys of self-realization, we shall hear more and more proclamations about how we had been saved from a lifetime of deprivation and wretchedness. Especially from elders who lived through that war, we will hear how much gratitude we owe them for not abandoning us to languish in the chaos, violence and retribution meted out to those who were left behind, and how lucky we are to be alive in the greatest nation on the planet.

Yet, these platitudes work. No matter how rebellious or contrarian I wish to appear, sometimes I must admit that our benefactors’ words strike at a layer of truth, however thin it may be. For the sake of argument, let’s give the people who facilitated my departure from Vietnam their just due. I will concede that they held an on-the-ground perspective that caused them to clearly act on my behalf. Knowing what they knew, they could foresee that any delay in my removal from the perilous situation unfolding before them would result in a five-fold increase in my imminent death. To think of the odds stacked against me and the high likelihood that I could have been just another corpse for fleeing people to step over on their way to planes, helicopters and boats still weighs on my shoulders like anvils. When I contemplate just for a moment the death toll among children my age and the wasteland awaiting those who survived, pangs of guilt wrack my conscience and I have to second guess my attempts at raising doubts about the institutionalized myths of the Vietnam War and our insistence that they be maintained. I have to pause and ask myself whether I would want my life any different than it is now, considering all that I’ve been given, all that has been offered me and all the years I’ve been fortunate enough to celebrate. The sense of betrayal of everything I’ve known and loved grows stronger after every step I take toward the dark unknown. The choice becomes starker between accepting the comfort and ease of just letting go or the sheer grind of pursuing enlightenment. It doesn’t seem fair that I would have to choose between these two outcomes which I know are not guaranteed.

That brings me to my younger sister. She was one of the hundreds of children flow out of Vietnam on the wings of Operation Babylift. From what I know and what I’ve experienced, my sister belongs to the majority of adult Vietnamese adoptees because she refuses to discuss her adoption or anything tangential to Vietnam. Thus, out of a sense of protectiveness I shield her from my struggle for the truth and understanding of the circumstances that caused me to be an orphan. Instead, I actually admire her resolve not to contemplate what was done to us in the name of “saving” us. She has the remarkable ability of putting disappointing ventures behind her and appreciating her accomplishments and the people she gathers around her. She lives for the here and now. In the same vein, my sister has never implied that my writing is a betrayal of our parents or the country that took us in and raised us. When I told her of my decision to return to Vietnam for a visit, she was genuinely happy for me, although she knew she probably would not contemplate such a trip.

The relationship and understanding my sister and I have developed with regard to adoption serves to remind me that adoptees of differing opinions or outlooks can remain compassionate about each other’s decisions to search or not to search, to wrestle with the past or not bother with it, step out of our skin or remain comfortable within it.

Keep in mind, though, that these stages of coming-to-terms with our adopted selves are not static. The desire to explore our adoption stories can wax and wane according to many factors and with the passage of time. I may get to the point where I feel I’ve done enough probing and finally put down my hammer and chisel, exhausted, and yet feel all the better for it. My sister may very well come along and pick up her own hammer and chisel and start working on her very own cliff face. Our interests and motives may intersect and we could come to the same satisfactory conclusions. Or, our viewpoints could diverge so sharply that we will never see eye to eye.

All I know, right now, is that I am not content with letting bygones be bygones. People can say that I was saved. But, I’ll be damned if I let them have the last word.

For The Love O' Children

While cruising around the adoptee blogosphere, I made a pit stop at living, laughing, whining...as a korean adoptee's blog and mine eyes fell upon a table listing in ascending order the salaries of top officials at some popular "non-profit" adoption agencies. This table originally appeared in a blog called Pound Pup Legacy.

Let's see:

In 2005, the CEO at The Children's Aid Society made $387,683. [Hm, McMansion anyone?]

In 2006, the Executive Director at Chinese Children Charities made $169,162. [Me thinks the board of directors at this "charity" has been a little too charitable to its top brass.]

Now, for some big name brands:

• The President at National Council for Adoption made $150,104.
• The Executive Director at Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute made $132,653.
• The President at Holt International Children's Services made an even $132,000.

Am I being a little too judgmental about pointing out the salaries these executives make at supposed non-profit adoption agencies/advocacy groups?

Don't their salaries appear a bit disproportionate to their agencies' mission statements about 'finding families for kids' or 'providing much needed assistance to special needs children'?

Sure, employees at these agencies and think tanks deserve a living wage just like the rest of us. And, obviously, seniority and hiearchies will persist in any business, and monetary compensation will be tapered accordingly.

But, a single person making $100,000 or more at a self-professed non-profit organization? I don't know, I guess the first word that comes to mind is "absurd".

Softening The Edges

So, I was looking over my review of Katy Robinson's book and came to the realization that I was out of line on one main, very important, thing:

I've never conducted a search for my first parents and I haven't even been back to my country of birth, Vietnam, let alone with any intention of searching for them. So, what the fuck am I doing presuming what and how Katy should have felt or done while she was looking for information on her mother and grandmother?

Even in just a cursory manner, I can't imagine what kind of highs and lows Katy experienced while getting started with the search and actually going through with it, and finally acknowledging that after all she's done she hasn't come any closer to knowing her mother's fate.

I started putting myself in her place and thinking of what I would do and feel if I were on the hunt for remnants of my past in Vietnam. If the same amount and kind of obstacles were placed before me, as were with Katy, in my search, I can't say for certain that I wouldn't react similarly to how Katy did. If I were to be reunited with my first father and other extended relatives, I couldn't say for certain that I would have the self-confidence to either persuade or demand as much information as possible about their lives in relation to mine. I also couldn't possibly know how dejected I would feel if they started making up shit to throw me off the trail or just to get me off their backs. Finally, it's quite possible that I, too, would want to resign myself to the unknowable past because to keep beating my head against the wall would benefit no one, least of all me.

In other words, I believe I came off as haughty and full of myself with that book review.

Something Happened On The Way To Golgatha

This has been bothering me since Sunday afternoon when I had lunch with three other TRAs. Reliably, the talk turned to race. The guy sitting to my left turned to me and said, “Then you have ‘Mr. White Guy’ here.” I gave him a perplexed look and quickly retorted, “I’m not White.”

I felt as if he were typecasting me right off the bat without even knowing me, much like many White people I’ve come in contact with have done throughout my life out of unabashed ignorance. I took his flippant remark as an insult because this guy committed one of the cardinal sins of TRA-dom: reducing a TRA’s personal history and complex self-identity down to a mere reflection of his adoptive family unit.

This guy continued to insist that because I was taken in and raised by White people there was no way I could be anything other than ‘Mr. White Guy’. He seemed to be arguing that no matter how much I protested or broke the argument down, I was simply a byproduct of the white cocoon I had been wrapped in from the day I arrived at my parents’ home. And, according to his reasoning, even though I may have left the confines of the cocoon, my mind still eats, sleeps and breathes lily whiteness.

Fantastic.

Not only do I have to put up with some fellow TRAs who can’t wait to tell the world how lucky they feel to be alive in the greatest nation on the planet, but I also run into these other TRAs who can’t wait to tell me that there is no such thing as race conscious self-determination, and that I might as well get used to the fact that I’m no different, and no better, than Beaver Cleaver.

Gah, pass the hot dogs.