THE ISOLATION JOURNALS - DAY 12 - SECOND CHANCES

Today’s prompt:

Write about your blessings. About what it was like to wake up today, about the people you love, about the songs that have lifted your spirits. Write about the wind in the trees, or of rebirth in spring, or of freedom. Write about whatever gives you life, which—especially in troubled times, we remember—is so precious.

Second Chances

For the past couple years, ever since my brother died, I’ve made it a practice to fly from San Francisco to Northern Virginia every two months or so to visit my parents. My 85-year-old father always picks me up at Dulles airport even though I tell him I can take a Lyft. It used to be that my mother would have one of my favorite Korean dishes waiting for me at home – spicy soft tofu stew, tender braised short ribs, savory sliced rice cake soup – but in the past year, her health has declined, and she hasn’t felt up to cooking. Now, we mostly order in.

One of the blessings of these past two years is that I’ve had plenty of time to ask my father about his life and to hear his stories. Most of them are sad stories, although Dad never exhibits any self-pity. Stories of growing up as a second-class citizen during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Of losing his father at a young age. Of having his high school education interrupted and his life turned upside down by the Korean War. Of being sent to the Vietnam War the same week that I was born.

Out of the many stories Dad has told me, though, one is particularly memorable.

My father had been the head of a MASH (mobile army surgical hospital) in Vietnam. Day after day, he was responsible for overseeing a team of doctors and nurses who tended to bodies ripped apart by bullets and bombs. Most of the casualties were young. The US government paid Korean soldiers for fighting in the war, and in a country still suffering from desperate poverty, serving in the military was one sure way to put food on the table.

There was a lot of down time in between waves of the injured and dying. During those down times, my father wrote letters to my mother about how much he missed home. About how sorry he was to leave her alone with a four-year-old and newborn. About the tragedy of these young men shooting at one another – in some cases, South Korean against North Korean – and for what purpose?

Little did my father know that his letters, like all outgoing mail, were being monitored for pro-Communist sympathies. And what could be more pro-Communist than questioning the purpose of the war?

Military command sent an officer to the MASH unit to inform my father that he would be sent to the front lines immediately. It was a certain death sentence. Moments before my father could be called into the office to receive the news, a fresh wave of injured arrived. My father leapt to service, directing his doctors and nurses to do their jobs while he himself performed surgery on dozens of patients.

When all the soldiers had been attended to, my father was told to report to the main office. He walked into the confined space, surprised to see his unit commander joined by an unfamiliar officer.

“Who is this man?” the officer asked.

“This is the man you came to talk to,” the unit commander said. “The man who just saved that group of injured soldiers.”

The officer looked my father up and down. The fate of this skinny 30-year-old man was in his hands. The officer shrugged and shook his head. He decided to change his mind.

By now, word had leaked out in the MASH unit about what was happening in the office. Doctors were ashen. Nurses were crying. When my father walked out of the main office and into the group living tent, he asked everyone what was wrong. He was oblivious.

My father received a second chance at life that day. That second chance came about because a tragedy – dozens of poor young men grievously injured in war – intersected with pure whim.

I’m sure there’s a lesson I can draw from my father’s story, particularly today as people around the world celebrate Easter and Passover. But I’m not a priest or rabbi, and that’s not the reason I started writing this anyway. Today’s prompt is about blessings, and I can think of no better blessings than my beloved parents, the sharing of stories, and the second chances we all get every day…even if we don’t realize it at the time.