Dear Van,
Today is your second birthday, which feels like a wild thing to say. Two years old — where did the time go?
This past year I’ve watched as your awareness and consciousness have expanded infinitely outward, soaking up wonder like the earth in desperate need for water. But there is not desperation in your growth, only thirst.
Thirst for knowledge.
Thirst for movement.
Thirst for life.
In so many ways are you like the planet upon which we walk: nurturing, giving, destructive, volatile. You are strong in the way a tree rooted in place is strong. You are amenable in the way the ocean waves change by the minute—by the second—crashing and thrashing and sending toys and people alike wherever they need to go, whether they like it or not.
You are kind and caring like your great-grandparents, of whom you’ve met, and will only meet, two. You are radiant, like the sun. My son.
You are demanding, asking questions we don’t have answers, asking more than we can give, asking for the world. Because you deserve the world. Because you are the world. And the way you navigate the world, soaking up wonder, radiating light, demanding our attention, I see a universe filled to the brim with hope, with possibility, with love.
That hope, that possibility, that love… these are the things you’re going to need as your grow and learn and be.
Right now, those things are under siege. People who place profits over, uhh, people have decided that in order to hang onto their power (and keep their secrets safer(er)) they must terrorize people who look like the folks you see every day: your teachers, your classmates, their families, your family.
This isn’t new; our Black and Indigenous brothers and sisters have been experiencing dehumanization of all kinds for at least a few centuries, give or take one (or all of them). Truthfully, if the color of your skin is not the lightest of pigments then you have experienced dehumanization* in some form or fashion at some point in your community’s history.
*dehumanization is when a group of people try to take away another group of people’s dignity and humanity because they believe that group to be less than.
I don’t say this to you often enough: we are Asian.
It’s something to be proud of, to laud, to celebrate. It’s also something I hated for a long time, something I loathed, something I feared. I was afraid to know what it meant to be what I was, so I tried really hard to be anything but. I invested so much of my time, energy, and effort into the practice of being different, that I very rarely was myself. I fought against my own soul in order to be another person.
My reality was always something different. And, as I’m sure you’ve heard me say countless times the past two years, it wasn’t until I was 30 that I even had the thought that I didn’t know what it meant to be Asian. How was I going to raise kids and teach them to be Asian if I didn’t know how to do it first? How was I going to raise you?
Nowadays, I’m so proud to be Asian. So fucking proud. Specifically Asian American, a term that came about relatively recently in our history and did so as both an act of resistance and solidarity. There is so much of Korean culture that I have not (and seemingly cannot) connect with, but this I get. This resonated instantly. It stuck. I soaked it up, just like the earth drinks water.
Just like you.
I retread this history with you again (and again) because the times we’re in right now are, unfortunately, scary. Like, despairingly so. And as you continue to make your way in this world, I need your to know your foundations. I need you to have a solid place to move from. I need you to know you have a solid place to land and come back to, to come home to, whenever you need it.
I’ve always had that. Even when I didn’t have my roots, I had that. I have roots now. And something I’ve realized over the past year is that,
until you were born i didn’t have roots, i had tethers.
When you cry, when you laugh, when you flop into your mother’s arms, I feel the earth more firmly beneath my feet than I ever have before. And in that moment, in those moments, I can see what I have never been able to see:
me.
I cannot wait to see where the world takes you, and where you take the world.
I love you,
Dad
🎙️Today’s Conversation
$3 BILLION?! I sat down with IN House Rep. Carey Hamilton to talk about what she learned about herself on the Appalachian Trail, navigating legislation in a super-majority, and the real costs of projects like the Mid States Corridor.
Insta: @repcareyhamiltonforin
TikTok: @careyhamilton2
Facebook: Rep Carey Hamilton for Indy Northside
