Fiduciary duty

I’ve been working on an email to my dad for his birthday. Turns out I’ve been accidentally rewriting one from years past. Somehow, I still think I can’t out-do this one. This past year I read Ha Jin’s A Free Life. It has profoundly influenced how I view the period of my father’s immigration journey and his intellectual interests. Curiously, I find the seeds of these thoughts in this old letter, too. Many things have changed since writing this, though I am ashamed to say that I still can’t write a proper letter in Chinese. Dear Dad, ‎16 years ago today, I came to this country with two English words in my vocabulary ("ok" and "airport”, both of which I learned at the airport), puke on my shirt, and a deep craving for KFC. Oh, and also it was your birthday. Do you recall the sensations and hopes and desires of your youth? Did leaving your native land armed with a college degree and a rudimentary multicultural education already under your belt fill you with a tentative thrill, a freedom…