OPINION: A Thanksgiving story

Spring’s journey to this point in her life has been long and often arduous, beginning with her growing-up years in the mountains of northern China, very near the border of North Korea. Her parents were “intellectuals,” and when Mao Tse Tung launched his Cultural Revolution that was a very bad thing to be. They fled with their five children (four daughters and a son) to a remote frontier area and, along with other refugees, established a settlement, living in caves until they could manage to build houses and a school.

Spring’s resourceful father bred dogs that were half wolf, and trained them to guard his family and to help him hunt. He raised mushrooms in some of the caves to help feed his family. Eventually his energy and initiative got him elected to the position of village headsman. But Spring still remembers what it was like to live on the edge of starvation, and prides herself on the ability she developed, to eat absolutely anything. And the presence of a crystal radio helped her develop another skill: she learned English by listening doggedly to the Voice of America.

So when the Voice called, she was ready. But first her own country called. The year she turned 18, China went in search of the “lost children of the Cultural Revolution,” tested them, and educated them in accordance with their abilities. Spring was educated as a physician and micro-surgeon, and the latter specialty meant that she often operated on children. She did a second residency as a result, and became a pediatric psychiatrist.

And then San Francisco called, and asked her to come and do child and family counseling for Mandarin-speaking residents. She worked in the same outpatient psychiatric center where my son was in charge of maintenance, and their romance made her realize that she would stay in America. She had already converted from Confucianism to Christianity; now she became a citizen, and she began a third residency so she could practice medicine in the United States. And this Thanksgiving we, her American family, are grateful for all the twists and turns in her life that brought her into ours. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Susan Harper is retired, lives in Commerce and volunteers with the Commerce Public Library and the Jackson County Literacy Program.