Chapter Thirty-One
So I’m American
While I was staying at Bianca’s apartment, I booked my flight to Vancouver, British Colombia. It was the first time I had booked my own airplane flight. I was so nervous to move to another country for a year. I didn’t know a single person there.
On the first of July, terrified, I flew Air Canada to the Richmond airport. My first impression of Canada was good; even the airport was breathtaking—huge totem poles and aboriginal art, trees, and fountains. All the signs were in French and English. I collected my luggage and followed the crowd to the exit. Two women wearing Urban Promise Ministries T-shirts walked up to me and said, “Are you Miriam?” They were holding the tiny picture of me that I had mailed in with my intern application. Their names were Sophia and Liz, and they drove me back to the intern house in East Vancouver.
My first day in Canada was overwhelming. I dropped off my luggage at the parish where the Urban Promise interns stay for the summer. It was a large five-bedroom house behind a church. It had a large kitchen, a green backyard, and a huge basement.
It also had a large pile of shoes by the front door. “Should I take off my shoes?” I asked.
“You are in Canada now! No shoes in the house!” Liz said.
I took a quick look at my new bed in the small upstairs bedroom, and then my hosts said, “Well, are you ready to go?”
“Where?” I asked, wishing I could take a nap.
“We want to show you around the town!”
I tagged along on some Urban Promise errands—visiting an elementary school, turning in paperwork, saying hi to a few students. Then we picked up another intern, Will, who was visiting a friend down the street.
“Should we get some ice cream?” Sophia asked with a grin. She drove to an ice cream parlor down the street, called King Gelato. “Over 200 Flavors,” the sign boasted.
“We get to choose your first two samples,” Sophia said. “Then you can try whatever you want.” Before I figured out the joke, I had a spoonful of garlic ice cream in my mouth. I screamed.
“Eew! That is just gross! Does Will have to try it too?”
“I had my initiation last summer,” he laughed.
“Here, try this one, it’s not so bad. This is your last one, then we’ll buy you a cone.”
“What is it?”
“It’s called durian. It’s a Chinese fruit.”
Even though it was cold, it tasted like a garbage can that had been sitting in the sun for weeks. I wasn’t sure I could eat anything after that. But I had to get the taste out of my mouth. I ended up ordering a soy chocolate ice cream cone, and it was delicious.
By that time, evening was approaching, and I learned that it was Canada Day.
“Tonight we will take you guys downtown, get some dinner, and celebrate Canada Day.”
“Are we going to stop at the parish first so I can get my purse?”
“You don’t need it.”
I felt so lost. I didn’t have any Canadian money, and I didn’t have my wallet or my driver’s license with me. We headed straight for the Skytrain station. The Skytrain was like the Monorail at Disneyland, a train that ran on a track above the city. It was one of the major sources of transportation in Vancouver, and it was crowded with drunk people who were already celebrating the holiday.
“It’s not usually this crowded,” Sophia yelled to me from across the train car. I was standing and holding a ceiling bar, pressed in between two large drunk men, who were wearing cowboy hats and shouting at each other.
“Americans!” Liz said under her breath as we exited the Skytrain.
“How do you know they are Americans?” I was offended.
“I just know!”
The rest of the night was filled with more drunk people walking the streets downtown. On one corner, two men started punching each other in the middle of a large crowd of people. On another corner, I saw a man wearing a shirt that said “I Hate Bush.” I saw more red maple leaves than I had ever seen in my life. People had them tattooed on their arms and shoulders, drawn on their faces, ironed onto their bags and clothes. I was in a large city in another country. It was so weird. I didn’t expect it to be so different because they spoke English and they were in the same time zone. But it was inner-city culture mixed with Canadian culture mixed with every ethnic culture all in one place. I had never seen so much diversity. It was very cool and very different—and it made me feel small.
We made it back to the intern house in one piece, and for the next two weeks, our team bonded together nicely. There were eight of us, four of us from the States. We learned pretty quickly that we needed to try to be un-American in certain ways, because the stereotypical American is rude, selfish, unfriendly, wasteful, and overly patriotic. We couldn’t throw away any piece of trash that could be recycled. We couldn’t say our “A’s” with a twang. We couldn’t talk too loudly or wear our shoes in the house. And we could not wear too much red, white, and blue.
Will and I were co-directors of the Camp Peace summer day camp. We had 115 kids and about 12 leaders in the basement of a church. If I were a kid, I would have loved that camp. Songs, cooking, science, Bible, crafts, and weekly field trips. But as a director, a typical day at Camp Peace involved things like cooking 150 grilled cheese sandwiches (which means buttering 300 slices of bread), mopping up a flooded basement, herding 115 children to Trout Lake, playing tag in the sun, and herding them back to camp, and then another few hours teaching a craft or art project.
After one summer of directing camp in Canada, I came home to California exhausted. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go back for the entire year, like I had originally planned. I missed my family and Charlie when I was gone. I missed going with Charlie to get homemade pumpkin pie ice cream, soy of course, from Nana’s, the ice cream shop in Azusa. I missed California more than I expected, and in fact, I missed living in my own country. I didn’t want to be a foreigner anymore. Strangely, I also missed living near Mexico, with the foods and Spanish language that I was used to. I wanted to be somewhere that felt like home. But where was home? Was it with Bianca? At APU? At my parents’ house? Or in Vancouver? Could I ever feel accepted for who I was while I was living in Canada?
I was so displaced. I talked about it with Kelly one afternoon when we met up for coffee.
“I don’t think I will ever go back to Vancouver,” I told Kelly. “The ministry is too grassroots for me. We had too little funding, few resources. It was too difficult. I was stretched so thin. And I felt judged whenever someone found out I was American. I don’t think I could handle staying there for a whole year. So I don’t think I will ever go back.”
“You can’t say that!” Kelly rebuked me. “You don’t know what God could do in your life during that year. Don’t ever say, ‘I will never do that.’ Because if it’s God’s will for your life, you have to do it.”
I stared at her.
“You’re right,” I said.
God did some work in my heart, and by the end of my break, I decided to commit to the year-round program with Urban Promise.
In September I took a shuttle to LAX before the sun came up. I brought Charlie’s guitar as my carry-on item. Once I was on the plane, I gently shoved the guitar in the overhead compartment. I sat in my seat and tried to relax. I was still new at flying. The takeoff and landing always made me nervous. All I could do was pray for safety.
We were supposed to take off at 7 o’clock, and it was 7:05 a.m. The passengers were getting antsy. Suddenly, we heard an announcement over the loudspeaker: “There has been a national crisis, and this flight may be cancelled. We are waiting for clearance.”
“What the heck?” We waited for five more minutes, wondering what they meant by national crisis. A guy a few seats in front of me looked at his watch and grumbled, “I thought this might happen. On my way here I heard that a plane hit a tower in New York this morning.”
The people around me were muttering and questi
oning what was going on. Finally, the announcement came: “All flights are cancelled. Please exit the plane and wait for further information.” Everyone groaned.
After exiting the plane, I lugged the guitar over to the baggage claim and picked up my rolling suitcase and duffel. Then I dragged everything over to the food court. We crowded around TV sets and watched the news. A plane full of passengers had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. It was on fire. The south tower, hit 18 minutes after the first, had already crumbled to the ground. The footage was shaky, and the journalists were nervous and in tears.
“President Bush announced that this is an ‘apparent terrorist attack …’ ”
Then we gasped as live footage showed the north tower crumble like an enormous smoking ash castle filled with people. Our hands were over our mouths.
“Jesus.”
“God have mercy.”
My cell phone had no service. I ran to a payphone to call Charlie; he didn’t answer. I called my parents’ house, and my mom answered.
“Hello? Miriam, are you OK?” I had never been so relieved and thankful to hear her voice. “Are you on a plane?”
“No, I’m here at LAX. All flights are cancelled.”
“This is bad; this is really bad. Did you hear what happened? I mean, did you see it?”
“Yes. I can’t believe it.”
“Oh God!”
“Is Dad there? Can I talk to Dad?”
“Hold on.”
“Miriam?” My dad’s voice sounded strong. “Do you need me to come get you?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on! They said it might just be a delay. But another guy said we might have to evacuate.”
“Give me a call and let me know.”
“OK. I love you Dad.”
“I love you too,” he said.
I waited, watching the news. Both of the planes that had crashed were en route to LAX. Another plane had crashed into the Pentagon, also en route to LAX. Men and women around me had tears in their eyes, and I wanted to wail out of sorrow, fear, and confusion.
Finally, just after 9 o’clock, we heard the announcement. “Please evacuate the Los Angeles Airport. Please exit the building and proceed to the airport buses.”
I didn’t have any time to call my dad back. Soon all the lights shut off, and airport workers hurried everyone outside, telling us to follow the crowd ahead of us. With the guitar in one hand and two heavy bags in the other, I was slower than most people, and the walk felt like a mile.
“Where are they are taking us?” I asked someone in uniform. I was almost in tears.
“Remote Lot B. Keep moving!”
That didn’t sound reassuring at all. How would my dad find me?
It was a while before I pushed my way onto a crowded bus. As we drove to Remote Lot B, the people on the bus were extra polite and supportive of each other. The ride was almost silent. Not one person complained. Only a few people shared expressions of gratitude.
I noticed that the woman sitting behind me had no luggage, and an airport worker accompanied her. They spoke in solemn whispers. The worker’s nametag read “Counselor.” I wondered if the woman had come to the airport to pick up a family member who would never return home.
The bus stopped at an intersection. I glanced out the window and saw my parents’ brown car on the other side of the street. I stood up so I could see if it was really them. Then I saw, on the edge of the road, my dad talking to a police officer.
“Dad! Dad, it’s me! Dad!” I yelled out the bus window as loud as I could. He didn’t hear me. So I started to cry as our bus started up and turned the corner.
“Don’t worry, he’ll find you,” said the man sitting next to me. I looked into his kind eyes and trusted that he was right.
We all sat in silence for another 15 minutes. When we pulled into the Remote Lot B, I could see that it was just a huge empty parking lot—nothing to be scared of. And the man was right. My dad was already there, waiting for me. Dad helped me unload my luggage from the bus and carry it to the car. Then I gave him a big hug. He was my hero.
“Thank you, Dad! Thanks for coming to get me.”
We stayed around for a while just in case anyone else needed a ride. Then we stopped for lunch, drove home, and watched the news for the rest of the day.
God protected me on September 11th, but thousands of people died that day. Young people, like me, lost their moms, dads, brothers, sisters, fiancées.
Our nation was humbled, and our leaders were brought low. Was God judging our country? How could he let this happen? Survivors asked, “Why am I alive?”
The following day, young men and women enlisted in the armed forces to stand up for the United States. One college student in my town taped a banner to his car that said “F--- Terrorists.” American flags waved from car windows and rooftops. The attack was a wake-up call that Americans would never forget.
All flights were cancelled for days. I called Sophia and told her that I wouldn’t be able to fly for another week or so. I couldn’t imagine getting on a plane again. The only fact that pacified me was that I would be flying on a Canadian airline.