Returning Home by Raymond Lau
Raymond Lau
My journey to Edgewater began in Hong Kong, where I was born and raised. As was typical in a British colony, my father gave me both a Chinese and an English name. And despite my Chinese ancestry, I received a British nationality, which I didn’t surrender until I became a U.S. citizen much later. I grew up bilingual and bicultural. But even today when there is no doubt that I’ve been fully integrated into mainstream America, I still ask myself sometimes: Am I a Chinese American or an American Chinese?
I attended St. Joseph’s College—a prestigious Irish Catholic institution in Hong Kong—for both my elementary and high school education. Was it prophetic that, among all the Irish teachers, it was an American who had succeeded in making the deepest imprint on my budding mind? Brother Leo taught in unorthodox and daring ways. He opened my eyes to the beauty I could find through the lens of a super-8 movie camera. He showed me how, if I listened closely, I could hear my own feelings echoed in popular songs. What changed my life, however, was his passion for literature, his stubborn pursuit of meaning hiding in all good books. Brother Leo made me a life-long reader.
Like all other students in Hong Kong, I dreamed about going to Hong Kong University—the equivalent of Harvard or Yale in difficulty of admission. My dream came true! And then it was broken. My father, who could tolerate neither my long hair nor my “hippie” thinking, demanded I give up my plan to major in English and, instead, choose law, engineering (his field), or medicine. I refused. Daily arguments between us ensued, and life for me became unbearable. So, I took the only way out that a stubborn idealistic young man could think of—leaving Hong Kong to study abroad. Two months later, I was on a plane to the United States. It was my first time leaving home. It was also my last, as, from that day on, Hong Kong would no longer be my home.
As I was determined to avoid asking father for support, I did my best to cut expenses and to earn money. I moved from one basement room to another; they were typically cheaper, but often damp and cold. My grade-point average was high enough to obtain tuition waivers, so I didn’t have to worry about paying the higher tuitions for foreign students. To cover living expenses, I worked the “graveyard shift” as a janitor at the university arena, cleaning after special events, mostly basketball games and rock concerts. (Elvis Presley played a concert there right before he died, but he was surrounded by bodyguards so I could only see the top of his head.) I graduated at the end of my second year. I couldn’t wait to get into graduate school with an assistantship so that I wouldn’t have to clean toilets anymore.
I met my future wife on the first day of graduate school. She had just come from Taiwan. As we shared the same major, we took many classes together and saw each other every day. We fell in love and soon got married and became parents to a son. We had both aspired to become professors. Reality disagreed. For three years, we moved from one temporary or part-time teaching position to another; from university to university; from state to state. Finally, we decided that it would be impossible for the two of us to be teaching in the same place at the same time, and that one of us must give up teaching and change to another line of work.
Chicago seemed to be the natural destination for us to relocate to–it offered a larger job market, and my mother and sister were already living there. So, in 1989 we moved here from South Carolina. We rented an apartment in a high-rise building on Sheridan Road. Thus began my residency in Edgewater.
I soon found employment with a social service agency in Chinatown on the South Side. My job consisted of identifying what the community most needed and mobilizing public and private resources to meet them. Every day I walked the streets of Chinatown to interview residents and workers to learn about their experiences and obstacles, and to document their hopes and suggestions.
The stories I heard disclosed a shadowy side of the community that was unfamiliar to me—an amalgam of exploitation by employers (who were themselves Chinese); racial discrimination, especially against children by their schoolmates; and inaccessibility to social and medical services due to inadequate English. My spirits got heavier by the day and would have eventually become unbearable if it weren’t for the daily drives home after work on scenic Lake Shore Drive, which always managed to comfort and quiet me.
Our decision to relocate to Chicago was paying off. My wife soon found a tenure-track position at a local university and my son was admitted into a regional gifted education center. As the stress of relocation faded, we began to enjoy more what Edgewater, our new neighborhood, had to offer.
One snowy night, after dinner, I rushed my wife and my five-year-old son to put on their coats, mittens, and boots, and we skipped and hopped to Berger Park, near our building. There we had our first snowball fight. When summer came, I bought my son a pair of rollerblades and took him to the Loyola campus to learn and practice. One day, while we were taking a stroll along the lakefront, we ran into Father Mike, an activist priest whom I knew from work. He looked about the park, then asked me if we lived nearby; I replied “yes.” “You are blessed,” he said.
Sadly, our good fortunes didn’t last. As I became more successful at work, my responsibilities increased. By that time, I had left Chinatown and was working at an environmental organization. My work hours were long and erratic, and I often returned home only after my son had gone to bed. I also traveled extensively. Due to my frequent absences, my relationship with my wife suffered, leading eventually to our divorce. I moved into another condo on Sheridan Road, less than a block away. After every one of my son’s weekly stays with me, I would walk him home and let him play on the slides and swings in Berger Park. I wanted to stretch the time that we could spend together.
Guilt and the desire to make amends drove me to quit my job; I wanted to devote all of my time to my son. I learned to cook healthy, delicious meals. I attended his school activities. I bargain-shopped for him. We took kayaking lessons together and went on a camping and kayaking trip to Door County. That vacation really helped bring us closer.
I wanted to use this break from work to also reexamine my priorities and to find alternative career options that would allow me to balance family and work. I went to Metropolis Café almost every day to read and think. The solution came serendipitously. At a social event, I met an officer of the Golden Apple Foundation who resonated with my passion for learning and education. She urged me to enroll in their new alternative teacher certification program. By the end of the year, I was a certified teacher.
Over the next 15 years, I taught in different public schools, all in low-income minority neighborhoods. One school, located on the West Side, was considered one of the worst in the city. It was located in a neighborhood that was filled with vacant lots strewn with garbage, broken glass, and used syringes; plagued by boarded-up buildings; and missing all the usual community amenities such as supermarkets, coffee shops, or restaurants.
For many students at that school, I was the first ever Chinese person they had met in real life! Every day I shuttled between two different worlds–the demoralizing, often threatening West Side, and the vibrant, warm community of Edgewater. As when I was working in Chinatown, my daily commutes home became much-needed decompression sessions.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic became too dangerous to ignore, so I applied for early retirement from the Chicago Public Schools. Being with thirty children for the whole day in an enclosed space was simply too big of a gamble for someone my age. During the next two years, the whole country appeared to be going up in flames, consumed by the rising number of deaths due to COVID; the protests and rioting that followed the killing of George Floyd; and the inflammatory rhetoric and increasing threat of violence against anybody who looked Asian. It wasn’t until the election of President Biden and the introduction of the COVID vaccine that there emerged a light at the end of the tunnel.
The pandemic gave me an opportunity to slow down, reflect, and ask some fundamental questions about the meaning of my life. What have I accomplished so far? What are my priorities in life? How should I spend the rest of my days? Afraid to go out, I stayed home mostly. Having no employment, time became plentiful. There was no excuse for me to postpone answering these existential questions any longer.
I developed the habit of sitting out on the balcony whenever it was warm enough, listening to music, studying the ever-changing beauty of the sky and the lake. The elevation of 31 stories brought a different perspective–everything looked different. I felt like I was suspended in mid-air (which, of course, I was). And when I closed my eyes and felt the breeze on my face, I would be instantly transported to a world of peace and weightlessness, seemingly without a care in the world. Everything would, as if by magic, become clear. As the saying goes: “It’s all good.”
Although I have already been living in Edgewater for 35 years, almost twice as long as I had lived in Hong Kong, my birthplace, I had never thought of the neighborhood as more than a place of residence. I was so caught up in the pressures of work or the disappointments in personal life that I rarely let myself stop and really pay attention. Unbeknownst to me, however, emotional stakes took root. I can see clearly now that Edgewater has always been accompanying me throughout all these years, during all my ups and downs. It is the backdrop against which I recollect all my moments of sorrow and joy. In truth, it is an integral part of these moments.
After fighting for 40 years to stay on the bright side of the road, I have finally returned home.
Copyright © 2024, Raymond Lau