Rituals

I miss ritual. My days are dry, especially in winter, being in America without ritual. My nights are hard and long.

My years of living on earth, in Asia, are well-integrated in rituals, as far as my vivid memory displays to me. I am away from my land for a few years and realize that most of my challenging times of adjusting to the new environment, America, Vermont, Burlington, or here in Washington DC, to live without acquiring a sense of having a ritual as a part of my growth. Something is missing.

Ritual plays a meaningful part of my, spiritual, growth. Ritual embraces a time of reflecting, gathering of community in a very sacred space and time. Ritual calms and nourishes my spirit. Ritual advises me to see, think and feel beyond my ignorance. Ritual provokes my sleeping inner child. Ritual becomes an invisible part of my move. Both formal and informal ritual signifies thought-provoking messages.

Simple but refined ritual that I always miss is to “wai”, a gesture of paying respect to the elders by putting your palms together on a chest level, in a lotus shape and bending your forehead to touch the tip of the fingers, my parents before going to school or going out anywhere. What does ritual do to me in this context? Going to school is an exciting and challenging time for kids. When I wai my parents before going to school, they touch my head, smile and often provides verbally support to me. Their hands to my heads send a very warm vibe to my day. It is a time of parenting. They told me to be a good girl, pay attention to classes, work hard, be patient towards things that I don’t like, and be nice to others. It is the blessing morning time. I am ready to face the world. I feel gregarious.

The result of this ritual turns to be a major part of my life. The simple act of wai stimulates me to be humble as my head bound lower, to the earth, observing thoroughly into my unrefined actions. Ritual grounds me.

Identity Through Accent

In June 21, 2005, when I stepped off the plane at JFK Airport, dragging my big refugee bags, full of both Thai and English books, from Thailand, I found in that very first minute that I had lost my voice.

As I speak, my native Thai has been replaced by English. Language and self-identity are always linked. The lack of the first one can lead to the lack of the other. I must use English to negotiate for meaning here. I have a clear idea of my message but the listener often listens to how I deliver it. This leads to several challenges in my struggle to survive in America.

Now, I believe, after all I have been through over three years, that in order to maintain my identity I have to speak English with a clear accent.

Life has its twists and turns. Instead of going to England after getting my Masters Degree, first class honors, in Applied Linguistics, I moved to America with my husband. My first part-time job was as a baker in Burlington, Vermont. I started work every day at 4.30 a.m. In my first month, I was slowly losing my identity.

One day, an old man walked into the shop. I greeted him with my big smile. He returned my smile with a question, “Which part of China are you from?”

“I come from Thailand.” I replied with grin, almost knocked out by his question. I then explained to him about my origins. I responded, for the first time since the airport, with a clear Thai accent.

Now, I am at another turn in my life, in Washington DC, I am a Program Director at a small non-profit called Language ETC, offering English as a Second Language classes to adult immigrants from all over the world. I hear English with beautiful ethnic accents from our ESL classes. It sounds like a song of world peace.

One day, a white woman walked into our school looking for the Program Director. She did not know she was looking for me. We had a long conversation just to find out who the program director was. As soon as she realized that it is me, she paused for a few minutes (to process her thoughts) and exclaimed. “Oh, really, you are. Sorry!”

My accent separates me from being just another immigrant here to something else, an educated Thai woman working in America. I believe the sounds of my accent are their own special background music surrounding the main message.

From Bangkok, Thailand, to Washington D.C, my ears are well-tuned to multilingual accents.

That exposure leads to my belief that my accent reveals the world in me and my perceptions about myself as an immigrant in America. It reflects my roots. My accent is a part of my immigrant experience and I will not have a unique one if I speak English without it.

TAN

The Smell of Transition

The smell of transition, unlike any smell in the world, is ironic, powerfully strong, threatening and nostalgic.

I smell the move blending with the unsettling down of the substances in my spirit and I almost puke. I need a detoxifying process since the smell of transition contains an intense emotional reaction; it is always hard at the beginning, as someone reminded me gently. I hear it.

My transition is like doing a laundry at Silver Spring, Maryland, the temporary bad odor, according to my high hygiene standard, a bucket of sweat from the heat attaching on both second handed and new well worn clothes that I am almost reluctant to reuse them if they are not “clean” again. The medium sized washing machine commands me to put 14 quarters in the hole, and I dump all the stinky laundry, pour organic detergent into the top lid. Sit still but totally stirred by the images of the splashing flow of water combining with detergent. The machine is spinning the clothes heavily. Every pieces of fabric mingles like a group of preschoolers at YMCA, running and tagging around at the public library playground. I had a great time observing them.

30 minutes later, I retrieved a better smell pile of those multi color clothes from the washing machine, preparing to take them all to the giant washer. “Let enjoy the process,” I told myself quietly and feel the smell of a transition; it is indeed not the first time.

14 quarters are required to put in that medium size laundry machine. I exclaimed with disbelieve. “Excuse me, how much do I need to put in the slot?” I walked quickly to the young Spanish speaking woman who is roaming around the long rectangle shape Laundromat. She smiled at me, “14”. I repeated her replied in my highest voice, “14!!” The increasing number of almost everything here is the root of my high voice and the branch of the pain.

I seem to understand the high price of living here but I don’t’ totally accept it. I don’t think that you will have a quality life when you are struggle to pay the rent, work very hard and get a minimum wage to pay for a high rent, spending on costly less nutritious food and extra items in life. I don’t think that we deserve to be a slave of our own colonialism in the 21 century. My supervisor told me that, “fairness and sameness is not the same.” I keep pondering about that.

Living is a reflective process .I learn to appreciate and accept its holiness and wholeness. Pain comes in many forms, including the transition. Transition is transition. Without pain; we will not appreciate the beauty and the temporariness of life. Cleaning is one major parts of this process. After cleaning (with organic detergent!), I feel better and a bit different. Yet, I feel the struggle, I feel the fire.

For immigrants, working hard is a crucial part of developing or capturing (true) identities. No immigrant comes here to celebrate American culture (or they do so by working 60 hrs/week...the line between life is waking up early and going from the first job to the second one and finally home… which I haven’t yet achieved, but very close to that intense stage). Immigrants comes here to search for the unknown American dream, research for the better living condition, working multiple hours each week to pay tax and social security which they might not be eligible to reap their efforts or the benefits might not be there when they are eligible. I wonder whether any immigrants have ever thought that the move to America is wrong, and if they can turn back the clock, they will never move. Anyone?

For me, it takes a lot of gut to relocate, take a whole new brave level to sacrifice my familiarity and a comfortable life, in search of a new unknown one.

Despite those hardships, I believe strongly in myself and human beings. We all want to be a good citizen of the country and of the world. We want to achieve peace amidst war. We want to keep growing even though we might die soon.

Late September 2005, I had the first part time job at the healthy Bakery shop, Great Harvest Bread; 10 minutes walk from my two bedroom apartment was the great incentive for me to accept the job. The second night (my shift started at 4.00 a.m.!), I biked to work, felt from the bike due to a heavy rain, my collective hope was scattered on the ground.

It is for the first time in my entire life to work in an intense labor. I cannot claim that I understand labor workforce than I have been aware of, but I can claim that the physical stamina of standing and doing the same thing for a long time each day broke my thinking cell. I became robot and I love the motion but I don’t really enjoy the monotonous work. This pissed me of the most. This is unacceptable to me. I want to escape America to another country.

However, every time that I go to any bakery, I always put a little bit of tip in a tip jar for the appreciation of the labor movement. C’est la vie.

The great American experience offered me a paradigm shift. It is one of a lifetime experiences. My ego was tested. My struggle soared.

I come to America to absorb the pain, and continue facing the world to experience growth.

I moved on to the next job(for several reasons one of that is because I literally cannot pay the rent with that small paycheck) to work with the homeless family shelter in a small progressive Vermont town, Burlington. It is at the shelter where I had a genuine experience of another slice of American society. A real glimpse of what does it feel like to be a teenager mom, what does it like to be a battered wife, what does it means to be an alcoholic, what does it mean to live without hope?

I feel like I am trying to push a stone mortar uphill, hard to stabilize, very tiring and don’t actually know when I will be at the destination or do I really know where my destination is? I doubt it.

One thing that I always feel certain about myself is the fact that I am a dreamer and a creative thinker. Everyday, I am striving to turn ideas into actions and eventually turn those actions into services to support the vulnerable groups of peoples who are on the top of my list. This mission remains firm throughout my life. This is my pride and goal.

September 2005, my in-laws gave us a car and a pay-check to help us settle down in Burlington, living a new life which my husband called it “an adventurous life” and I called it “an experimental life”. The check helped filled our stomach while the car, taking us to enjoy the scenic rural Vermont’s landscapes. I am relatively physically healthy and I know what does “enough” means to me.

It takes about two years for me (us) to reestablish our “life” in the capitalism world. We moved to America with a saving amount equivalent to a “stipend” and we obviously are in the poverty level according to an American standard. After six months (of a discouraging job search), my husband finally got a job, through a local temporary agency, worked at an IBM factory. He physically has one of the most boring works on earth but trying to put things into perspective.

Life goes averagely o.k. until Vermont winter arrives. The shrewdness cold of winter intensively dragged me down to the hell. I slept for 12 hours each day due to the seasonal affective disorder (SAD). My body was in a depressive disorder mode, I ate tons and tons of food and bad carb. The short days and long nights in Vermont absolutely took away my gung-ho attitude. I was an identical of a zombie. My root is taken up, I feel torn and desperate.

I miss Thailand. I miss the sweat amidst the hot food and Thai warmth. I miss being myself. Still, I keep smell the great transition in me and in America, with Obama's Change and Hope!

TAN