If you were to ask me when I was a teenager, “Is life worth the living?” I would have said, No.
My formative years through most of high school were years of a quiet, desperate search. A search for love and acceptance at a young age and a deep insecure feeling that haunted me until one day my life changed forever.
I. The Journey of Sights and Sounds.
Chapter 1: One Penny Less
My older brother, Kenneth, told me that when I was born, my mother placed me into a dresser. That was my baby crib. I have no recollection of that, but from what I can reconstruct my parents were poor, very poor.
My parents fled from a small village from Southern China when Japan invaded. Like so many Asians, they wanted to come to America. My father was able to come here, claiming US citizenship through my grandfather. He came on a student visa from what I was told. My mother came later and was delayed in Angel Island. The only place for them to live was in Chinatown, San Francisco.
My parents sent us to St. Mary’s Catholic School. I had an older sister and three older brothers and one younger brother. I’m not sure how my parents managed to pay for all of us to attend that Catholic School. My Dad worked at Fisherman’s Wharf as janitor cleaning the restaurant floors and bathrooms, but he had another job as well. My Mother stayed home to care for all six of us. As a child, I remembered seeing my Dad and Mom peeling and sorting shrimps for extra income.
In that shared bedroom, all my worldly possessions were in one draw of a pale green color dresser. My underclothes, socks, shirts and jeans. My other brothers also had one draw in that dresser. Lots of hand me down clothing was given to me as I was the third son. For a lack of a penny back then, we couldn’t buy bread or milk. My parents would send us up to the corner grocery to see if the owner would give us that bread or milk for one penny less and more often than not, he gave it to us. At times there wasn’t much to eat for breakfast and lunch. Peanut butter and jam were on our sandwiches. Dad would buy slices of “ham” or more like spam for our sandwiches. Eating pancakes was a special treat. Dad and Mom would take us to a warehouse to buy dented cans of fruits and vegetables for us. It was exciting to bring home those can goods. That’s how our family made it through the 1950’s.