April 1975: Children are being airlifted out of Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. My parents, bearing diapers and baby food, take us to meet airlift flights at SFO. I am 9 years old. I don’t understand what’s going on, although I have seen newsreels of people piled onto ships or scrambling in desperation to reach helicopters as they take off.
The airlift flight is delayed by several hours and my siblings and I fill time by running up the down escalators until aggravated adults turn the escalators off. We are chastened and told to be still. I sit in angry silence, wondering who these refugee babies are that have stolen my Saturday.
November 1978: A new girl enters the classroom. She is tiny, possibly the only other seventh grade student my height. She stares at her feet as the teacher attempts to say her name.
“Qu-ey-en? Na-guy-en?” All eyes are on Quynh Nguyen as she shyly corrects the teacher. “Are you from Vietnam?” I don’t understand how a history teacher can be so brazenly ignorant, but she continues. “Are you a boat person?”
We’ve studied the Vietnamese boat people in current events and the teacher appears to be excited at this teaching opportunity. Quynh nods. I want to sink through the floor in embarrassment when I hear the teacher’s next question.
“Do you want to tell us about your experience?” Students throughout the room flinch in sympathy; it’s hard enough to be a new student without having your name mangled and your recent past exposed.
At lunch, we talk about how much we hate the teacher. We are indignant at her prying questions, although we all admit to a secret curiosity about what it’s like to be a boat person. We make a pact to befriend Quynh Nguyen and promise to share any details we find out.
July 2014: Protesters in Murrieta, holding signs and hollering, block busloads full of Central American migrants. The children aboard these buses have traveled alone from Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.
My own children worry about these refugees. They ask me what it would be like to be on a bus, terrified and alone, while red-faced, shouting adults let you know you’re unwelcome.
We walk around the corner to the San Ysidro Border Patrol Station where the buses are expected to arrive. There are people gathered there as well. They are fewer in number, but their signs read “Welcome” and “This land is your land.” We scurry home to make our own signs and join them, waiting to welcome the refugee children to our neighborhood.
The atmosphere is celebratory as more people gather. An ice cream seller hands out popsicles to us and journalists ask for interviews.
The Border Patrol station is not accepting donations of food, clothing or hygiene supplies, so we donate our support, our welcome, our otherness from Murrieta. I briefly consider taking a refugee child or family into my home, and then make a mental list of all of the reasons I can’t.
November 2015: It’s been two months since Aylan Al-Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian refugee, fell off a boat and drowned.
The photo of his little body washed ashore on a beach hurts our hearts. We want Congress and the UN and anyone powerful to do something.
When Paris is attacked, drowning refugee babies are forgotten. The iconic photo of little Aylan is replaced by red, white and blue Facebook profile pictures and Jean Jullien’s Eiffel Tower/peace sign drawing. I weep for Paris, for young people who went to a concert and won’t come home. I am still weeping for small drowned refugee babies though, even as nations close their borders against the millions that flee for their lives. Suddenly refugee is synonymous with ISIS operative, suddenly we forget that most refugees are fleeing the very violence we also fear. Again I briefly consider taking a refugee family into my home; again I convince myself of the reasons that would be impractical. It’s not fear of infiltration by ISIS; it’s annoyance at having to share a bathroom.
My lifetime has been punctuated by refugee crises. I want desperately to be part of a society that welcomes the immigrant and the refugee, yet my own contributions have been superficial and cost me little. Unless I personally welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, I can’t exhort others to do the same. I wonder how many more refugee crises — how many photos or newsreels of buses, boats, or planeloads of displaced people — I will need to witness before I am ready to finally lift my lamp beside the golden door.
