The Fortune of Sixty Years
And on her second full day of life, little baby E had her first Michigan Wolverine football Saturday. :-)
Little baby girl E joined our family this past Thursday. Daughter of my older cousin M, baby girl E is the first great-grandchild born to the nine of us. And wrapped up in a little Maize snuggie, on her first full day home and her second full day of life, she got to experience all the excitement and tradition of her first Michigan Wolverine Football Saturday.
Nine of us grandchildren grew up together along the same stretch of Interstate highway 94 -- myself, Gauss, and seven of our cousins. For thirty years our extended family had gathered at my Aunt and Uncle's home in Ann Arbor on almost a monthly basis, for Thanksgivings and Easters and Memorial Days and Labor Days. And in this exact living room, for the last thirty years, the children and grandchildren of my father's parents had gathered on autumn Saturdays to cheer on the Maize and Blue (and boo the Buckeyes), ever since I was a little boy.
The oldest of us nine first enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1984. Five other grandchildren followed. For twenty-five continuous years -- and counting -- one of us grandchildren has been a full-time student at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, including my own time in MD/PhD there. The years have seen four bachelors, a Masters, and four Doctorates from U. Michigan - Ann Arbor, as well as an Aunt and Uncle who were faculty researchers and lecturers, and one of us nine who is currently on faculty. The roots of our Michigan Wolverine fandom run deep.
So that Saturday, as a family, we rose to our feet and cheered wildly as Navy came within a single play of toppling the Ohio State Buckeyes (may they suffer defeat and humiliation forever and ever, amen). Groaned in disappointment as the Buckeyes barely escaped ignominious defeat at the hands of the Midshipmen. Broke into cheers again as the familiar The Victors fanfare roared to life and the Wolverines took the field. And cheered again as Michigan swiftly crushed their overmatched opponents into rubble, ground the rubble into dust, then smelted the dust into glass for tasteful souvenir coasters. Overall, a satisfactory start to the Michigan Wolverine football year -- and a welcome change from last season's Year of Unending Pain (tm).
As newborn babies tend to do, baby E. spent the afternoon mostly sleeping quietly, with brief bursts of waking up and looking cute. She actually seemed to be more comfortable during raucous cheering, as if the excitement lulled her to sleep. At one point, when she got fussy, my oldest cousin Paul rocked her back to sleep in his big strong surgeon arms, gently humming the famed Let's Go Blue fanfare. He also helpfully gave baby E her first lessons about football ("See the guys in Maize and Blue? Those are the good guys." "See the guys in Scarlet and Grey? Those are the bad guys.").
Now, it's by no means certain that little baby girl E will grow up to become a Michigan Wolverine. After all, among the nine of us grandchildren, Stanford and Harvard offered admission slots. MIT offered three times, and one of us took the whole ride from high school to PhD. Northwestern's BS/MD offered twice, and littleholly took a full-ride scholarship to fortuna_juvat's Kalamazoo College. But when mommy is not just a U. Michigan alum but a current U. Michigan faculty member, and mommy's three brothers are all fiercely proud Michigan Wolverine alums, and grandma and grandpa are formerly U. Michigan research and teaching staff, well, let's just say I see a lot of cute Maize and Blue outfits in little baby girl E's immediate future. :-)
By sheerest coincidence, the same week that little baby girl E joined our extended family was the same week Gauss bent knee on a beautiful outlook over Lake Michigan, and asked the question of his college and medical school sweetheart. And so this weekend was his fiancee's first opportunity to meet the extended family she herself had just become a member of. With littleholly's engagement just a few months ago and Gauss' now, five of the nine of us grandchildren have now taken that next step forward. (And added by marriage four more doctoral degrees to the eight us grandchildren already had.)
The nine of us grandchildren are descendents of my father's parents. My father's parents, who along with their children were one of the vast throngs caught in the bloody meatgrinder of the last stages of the Communist takeover almost sixty years ago. Untold millions died admist the upheaval between the Imperial Japanese, the Kuomingtang, the warlords, and the Communists. Countless killed by mortar and bullet, starvation and disease. Death which my grandparents and their children repeatedly managed to escape by the narrowest of margins. Right up to the very end of their escape when it was the *other* transport ship making a break for the open sea that took an artillery strike amidships and went down with all hands. Almost sixty years ago, my father's family fled mainland China with nothing but the pitiful little they could carry. My mother, the daughter of a coal-miner, a similar story of survival against odds.
From mainland China to impoverished Taiwan. Through famine and flood and combat duty. From new immigrants in a land alien to them to where we are today. Along the way, they raised with unflagging love nine children, now deeply embarked on lives of their own. From childhoods spent together on Michigan Football Saturdays, the years had already come to have been marked by a long succession of graduation marches and eight velvet doctoral hoods amongst nine grandchildren. In recent years, the first weddings as well, with more to come. Now our first birth, our first second-generation American-born.
The future is uncertain, as it always is. Disaster might await in the next breath, as it does for all of us. And the challenges some of us have chosen to accept, the causes for which we have chosen to fight, weren't the easiest we could have elected. The road ahead may be long and hard. But considering where my parents and aunts and uncles began, sixty years ago, we've already hit the jackpot many times over just to get this far.
Frankly, that my parents or my aunts and uncles should have survived childhood at all was a miracle. To make it to America, even more so. The nine of us grandchildren shouldn't even exist, let alone have the chance to be born in freedom; and let alone to have had the chance to achieve all that we have, in letters or in love. From beginnings as refugees sixty years ago, to celebrating the lives of their children and grandchildren, in peace and comfort and love; this is the stuff of fortune beyond measure. And so it is with humility and gratitude that we look back on how far our family has been blessed to been able to come over the last sixty years: from refugees fleeing the war-torn hell of mainland China, to where we are now.