taking the fourth

Tonight, I took my parents to see the fireworks from the panoramic outlook just north of Dana Point Harbor. It's too bad Vicky couldn't be here - she heard about a place along the south county coast where a 360-degree view was possible. I found such a lookout point on my San Clemente ride. Just a bald clearing, flanked by the ocean on the southwest and PCH on the northeast. And walking a few yards to the south, you'll overlook the harbor and the marina. Perhaps you'll see a replica of the Pilgrim, which carried Richard Henry Dana as a seamen on a hide-gathering voyage from Boston to what was then Alta California.

That was then. This is now. But "then" reminds us that not all the land was America at once, nor all Americans. But this - who and what we are now, and have come to be - is what counts only. In first or second grade, I learned the words to "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and every time the words "land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride!" I shuddered a little. They were serious words. But my ancestors did not die here, and they definitely weren't Pilgrims. We only sang one verse. I never learned those lines in the third, "Let mortal tongues awake, let all that breathe partake."

For all my political passion and cultural angst, I do believe America is different from every other place that came before. There is no literal "American race" or "American language". Here, citizenship confers nationality, not the other way around. The poet Shirley Geok-Lin Lim wrote that "If you come to a land with no ancestors/to bless you, you have to be your own/ancestor." That instruction confronted my parents even more than it affected me. Sometimes I forget the distances they travelled, and chasms they leaped, in so many ways, to have American children. And the person who has American children, they're Americans too.

Here's a poem by Ms. Lim which I really like.

Learning to Love America

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline
because the water of the ocean is cold
and because land is better than ocean

because I saw we rather than they

because I live in California
I have eaten fresh artichokes
and jacarandas bloom in April and May

because my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows
my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don't know

because to have a son is to have a country
because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind
because it is time.