view from here

I knew as early as third grade that I would be sent abroad to the States for higher education. Like other “parachute kids” in Asia, my acceptance at an elite Western college became the project of my parents’ entire lives. It would eventually pave the way for my family to immigrate to join me. As soon as middle school started, I stopped following the regular track of my English classes and began studying for the TOEFL, an English proficiency exam for aspiring international students. I read English literature while my peers studied the present perfect tense. I missed school frequently to take extracurricular English classes and to meet with my education counselor.

In a recent Netflix comedy special, Hasan Minhaj, a writer for the Daily Show, describes watching Fox News’ heavy hitters, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Bill O’Reilly, walk to lunch. Minhaj sees all of them leave their glossy midtown offices, those epicenters of American Islamophobia; cross the street; and get in line at a street food cart for halal chicken over rice.

“What are you?” people would ask me. And when I was too young to answer, they would ask, “What is he?” and await my parents’ reply.

For the nearly three seconds that I sailed down the world’s tallest raftable waterfall––a 40-foot curtain of water gushing over and around my arms and legs, the guide shouting at us to cover our heads, nothing but a rock-strewn river below us––I had time to think. About that TLC song, of course, and how suddenly painful its wisdom was, but also about my strange new habit of extreme adventure sports. I’d greeted the day on a rickety mountain bike, careening down a sheer cliff face the width of a shopping cart, punctuated by boulders and the occasional aggressive ram. The next weekend, I would leap from a glorified gondola off one of the highest bungee platforms in the world, plunging 440 feet into a rocky canyon. My quest for adrenaline had led me here, to this waterfall. But it had also led me here, to southern New Zealand, the unofficial capital of adventure sports and about as remote of a relatively comfy place as you can find.

“THE MCBAIN FACADE IS UNSTABLE AND UNSAFE,” the poster read. Then, in bold underline: “SO AM I.”

It’s 5:35 a.m. when my alarm goes off. I roll over, switch it off, and force myself to sit up. I hadn’t gone to sleep until almost 1 a.m., and I hadn’t slept very well. I inch my feet over to the side of the bed and turn on my lamp. As much as I want to sleep—as much as I should sleep—I get dressed. I glance down at the reading I haven’t finished yet and tell myself that it isn’t a priority at the moment. Before leaving my room, I take a long look at my body in the mirror. The hatred I feel reminds me why I am going to the gym.

No matter how lost and confused I was during my undergraduate years, I always thought that I would be ready to seize control of my independence when the final hour came, that I would, somehow, “figure it out.” But as my graduation neared, I wasn’t and hadn’t. I was a final paper painfully past its deadline.

“John,” my mom says slowly to my dad, her lips starting to twitch. “Maeve set her own hair on fire.”

I don’t remember much about the movie Sully, in which Tom Hanks plays the heroic pilot who crash-landed a plane on the Hudson River in 2009, but I do recall the thrill of watching the flight attendants do their jobs so well. As the plane nosedives, they leap into action in unison. They issue impossibly calm instructions and usher the passengers onto the wings while the cabin fills with ice-cold water. Everyone survives.

The night before NSOP, I spent an entire dinner explaining a TED talk to my parents. I think that offers a kind of karmic explanation for the rest of the evening.