Lily didn’t arrive in Warrensburg, MO until October 1976, a full month after Henry. Her student application had been misplaced, so the university could never start the enrollment process. Henry found this strange, as they mailed their applications together in one package. Then, he had a thought. He went to the Admissions office one morning and asked them to check if the first and last names were reversed in her file. Indeed, they had misplaced her file due to that very reason.
“Try to find the earliest flight out of Taiwan,” he would say on the phone to her later, “Over here, they say the family name last.” Silence on the line; Henry could tell she was confused. “I’ll explain when you get here, but they finally found your file.” The conversation only lasted 3 minutes since anything beyond that would encroach upon his living expenses. International phone calls were expensive, and they usually felt rushed. Half of the time, their calls just involved them repeating themselves since the connection was never very clear. Another hiccup in this whole process, but they were learning patience together.
A few months after Lily arrived, winter arrived in Missouri as well. It was nothing like they had ever experienced—Taiwan keeps a tropical climate year round. The temperature hardly ever went below 50. Now in this new country, the temperatures dropped to the 30s. Winter coats and gloves were acquired from the local Goodwill, and Henry’s mom mailed them scarves and hats she had knitted. They did their best to stay cozy in the trailer. Their new home became infused with elements from their previous life—a rice cooker bubbled away on a small counter, familiar kitchen smells filled the space, patched socks and shirts hung on makeshift clotheslines (Lily’s handiwork, Henry’s fortune), newfound Chinese friends invited themselves over for dinner and talked loudly over the clamor of chopsticks and each other’s voices.
At church, an older couple befriended them, Robert (“Bob”) and Geraldine (“Jerry”) Schildknecht. They were truly kind, and it was in the most simple of ways: they treated Henry and Lily like regular humans, no different from anyone else in the congregation. Bob and Jerry looked at Henry and Lily not with curiosity, but with genuine concern and care. It was a kindness that was effortless. Every Sunday, they would ask Henry and Lily how they were doing, if they needed anything, sometimes even inviting them over to their house for meals. The Schildknechts lived on their own land, a sprawling farm on the side of a local highway. Bob was a postal worker, and Jerry was an elementary school teacher.
One Sunday in November, Bob asked Henry what they planned on doing for the holiday break. Henry mentioned that they didn’t have any plans.
“The church sponsors an exchange program for international students over Christmas. You can visit a sister city and spend a few days there, stay with a family, and experience something different. All you’d have to do is pay for your transportation,” Bob told them.
When they got back to their trailer later that evening, Henry talked it over with Lily. It seemed like a good idea to explore another city, and they had nothing else planned. Chances are if they stayed around, they may even have to do some extra grocery shopping to cook for additional guests who liked to invite themselves over. It was decided then. They would spend their first Christmas in the US in Denver, CO.
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The Greyhound would take close to 12 hours. If they took the main highway without any stops, the trip would have been shorter by 2 hours, but the bus didn’t take the main highway. It would cut across the center of the country on the frontage roads next to I-70, stopping at Kansas City and a dozen other small towns along the way. At Kansas City, they bought hot dogs at the station; Henry ate quickly as he was used to the high sodium American diet by now; Lily tried her best to make sense of the tubed meat and the yellow, vinegary condiment on top. They did their best to sleep after Kansas City, but were jarred awake by frequent stops. Soon, they adjusted to the rhythm of the road: the whine of the brakes as the bus approached a stop, the pneumatic hiss of the bus lowering itself, the momentary blast of cold air as passengers got on and off the bus, then everything in reverse as the bus pulled continued towards the next stop. As they rolled further west, the acrid smell of nicotine and cigarettes seemed to intensify. The skies turned from black to deep indigo to winter gray and then brilliant orange, ash and snow one in the same. Their lungs and necks ached.
When they arrived in downtown Denver the next morning, they stepped off the bus and could not be more excited to breathe in the cold mountain air. Lily spotted a young couple standing in front of a car holding up a sign, “Lee.” They would take Henry and Lily to their host family, a short drive away from the bus station.
Daniel and Colleen Sexton lived in a typical house that matched most upper middle class Denver neighborhoods at that time, a ranch-style 1-story with front and back yards. Dan was an insurance broker and Colleen was a stay-at-home mom; their 2 children were older and had since moved away. Later on in life, Colleen would dabble a bit in interior design, opening her own business to help others add a bit of style into their homes. Dan helped Henry and Lily with their bags and showed them around the house.
After some small talk, Dan took them down to the basement where they would be sleeping. Even though the small space heater didn’t have the power to fill the room, they slept well that night. The thick blankets helped, and any sounds from the nearby frontage road behind the house were dampened by the snow that had started to fall.
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The next few days, the sister church in Denver organized a variety of activities for students to participate in. Everyone would gather at the church in the morning, and buses (thankfully, nicer ones, Lily would remark) would take them to the activity for the day. Henry and Lily continued their adventure of “firsts” in Denver, including tubing down the side of a mountain, eating at Captain D’s and pairing fried fish with malt vinegar, and traversing the Eisenhower Tunnel, which they would do again the following year in their own car. They were about to experience another “first” that had more impact on them than they knew at the time.
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In March 1974, a businessman by the name of Bill Waugh opened Casa Bonita in Lakewood, CO, his maximalist vision of what most of America was missing at that time: a sprawling restaurant-slash-entertainment complex where people could go for more than just a meal. It would be eatertainment. A magazine ad at the time declared, “Delicious Mexican and American food is the fare, but you get so much more…a SIGHTSEEING and ENTERTAINMENT extravaganza for lunch or dinner.” Below that, bullet points dared the reader with what “so much more” meant—”Cliff divers. Magicians. Gunfights. Puppet shows. Mariachis. 1,100 seats.”
On Christmas Eve 1976, Henry and Lily visited Casa Bonita with a bus full of other bewildered international students. The front of the restaurant had a faux-Mexican pink stucco tower and a fountain, but nothing beyond that gave away its cavernous interior. As soon as they walked in, they were greeted by a row of mariachi players on a staircase, playing “Feliz Navidad.” It didn’t look or feel like any restaurant they had been in before. Everyone was quickly shuttled into a line that snaked several times through a dim cave-like structure; the wintery world outside could not be further from their minds. When they placed their order, they entered into a larger space with palm trees, multicolored lights, and the faint smell of chlorine. It was an overwhelming sensory experience. As soon as they found their seats, the lights dimmed and a booming voice from above narrated the risks of cliffside diving, and that what they were about to witness involved trained professionals. Henry and Lily thought they saw two people leap from a great height into a pool, but it was hard to tell amongst the chaos.
Moments later, their food arrived and it was unlike anything either of them had ever seen before. They weren’t quite sure how to approach the strange half-circular shells in front of them. They looked around and saw people pick them up with their hands, their necks craned at an angle, so they followed along. What Lily experienced was also overwhelming, with multiple textures and flavors and temperatures. But she liked it immediately. This was better than the bus station hot dogs. This was even better than McDonald’s. The flavors were very different from any American food she had experienced up to this point, and it tasted fresh, not processed. The cheese tasted like cheese, and the tomatoes tasted like tomatoes. And, there was spice! She had missed that since moving to the US, any sense of boldness or heat in cooking. It didn’t seem to exist, until she tasted the salsa on her plate. The chaos quickly turned to calm as she focused on the food in front of her. She didn’t even acknowledge the mariachi band circulating between tables. She ate both of her tacos with glee, still surprised up to the last bite.
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All my early Christmas memories centered around the gifts I received, or didn’t receive. I remember wanting the hottest Nintendo game of 1988, which was sold out everywhere in the Dallas/Ft Worth metroplex, where I grew up. My Dad happened to be in Chicago for a business trip that year, so I was confident he would be able to find it there, in a bigger, more sophisticated city. He couldn’t find it, so I was filled with disappointment. I managed to survive without Double Dragon, but it’s always easier looking back as an adult vs seeing things from the perspective of a child.
I do find myself losing sight of the magic year after year. I remember years back feeling more festive as soon as the calendar changed to December, enjoying hearing holiday music on the radio and in grocery stores, the excitement increasing as it got closer to the 24th. But, that magic has become more dim. I guess it makes sense that some of our more beloved holiday stories all center around depressed characters: Ebenezer Scrooge, the Grinch, George Bailey, Old Man Marley. Each one of those characters eventually find redemption, so there is hope.
No ghosts have visited me, and I don’t expect them to, but hearing about my parents’ first Christmas does stir a bit of my coal-hearted soul.
They moved from across the globe to start a new life, hoping to start a new family.
They studied and worked hard to ensure I could have a better life.
That is a gift in itself, one that is sometimes easy to forget.
How do you remember where you come from? How do you recapture the magic of the holidays, how do you see things like you did the first time?
The first ride in a Greyhound, the first hot dog…
…the first time experiencing mustard, the first time seeing snow…
…the first time having a hard-shell taco.
It seems like an impossible task, to evoke and remember all of those feelings.
It’s hard to remember, it’s hard to see things like a child would…
…or even ask ourselves to treat every experience like it’s the first time.
Some of us travel home across various distances, the exhaustion of the year draining our spirit…
…and it is not easy to talk with family, or find ourselves in a place we used to call home…
…and it is tiring. We are tired.
So, we must rest.
And while we rest, we will dream.
We will dream about the past, remembering where we come from.
This dream is marked by traditions, including those that my parents made after living 43 years in this country…
…and the new traditions that we’ve decided on together as the years pass.
One of the more recent traditions my Mom set a few years ago was eating Tex-Mex on Christmas Eve.
She never mentioned Casa Bonita as the reason, but hearing about their first Christmas from my Dad, I can see how it may be a formative memory for her.
You stir, and the dream may be close to over. Do the best that you can to hold on, knowing that arriving to the place you find yourself may have been a longer journey than you knew. Hold on to those traditions that came before, and make promises to create new ones as the years pass.
Know that warmth can come from the strangest of places, perhaps even from a plate of hard-shell tacos and a bowl of queso. And know that when you wake, you may feel refreshed and ready to see the world anew.