Jamie Vue
I am a worst-case scenario, catastrophic-thinking kind of person, but hope is never a memory too far out of reach.
One image comes to mind. My grandmother floating across the Mekong River, buoyed by two plastic bags, one tied to each arm to keep her above the murky waters, holding on for miles before reaching the refugee camps of Thailand.
Four decades later, and she’s nearly a century old, if not already. She is the element that carries the exhale of hope throughout the generations.
But amid the COVID-19 pandemic, some politicians have been entertaining the idea of saving the economy over human lives, offering up the older and elder generations.
I’m a byproduct of two cultures, one in which the sacrifice of life was given in the name of freedom, and one in which is now considering the sacrifice of life in the name of greed. I know what it means to be birthed out of honorable sacrifice. To know a generation was devastated, lives lost, so that the younger generations could have a future. That is hope that sustains me. That is hope that not even a virus can outlive.
But to snuff out the light of my elders in exchange for money, that doesn’t resonate.
Growing up, on some days, I watched my parents survive on less than a few dollars with six kids. I know it’s possible. Times were not easy, but we do look back on it as a small fraction of our lives that taught us some big lessons.
It seems a lifetime ago when my siblings and I were sharing a pack of uncooked ramen noodles, as if breaking bread, on the kitchen floor. Now in self-isolation we catch up over virtual chats on the weekends. The nieces and nephew run abound in the background. We share photos of our favorite dishes. We clink beers through a computer screen. The six of us once at each other’s throats now closely bonded by the times we have survived together. Hope was hard to imagine as kids, but it must have planted itself, an intrinsic antidote to the hard times we’d face later in life as adults.
Now the children are watching. And one day when they’re older, they may need to rely on the history we have created to find a semblance of hope. And I know that while we are divided in some ways, they will find it in the compassion we give to others. In the lives we save. Because if given a fighting chance, it is likely that people will not give up on themselves.
Jamie Vue is a Writing Coach at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.