A Memoir for "Fred"

    Last week, I was babysitting two children in the quaint town of Davis, California. As I watched them run around their posh backyard, I noticed they lived the dream life I had desired as a child: a two-story house, a pool in the backyard, granite countertops, modern and luxury cars in the garage, and a sense of belonging in this country. The way I envisioned my “dream future” as a child was immensely similar to the “Average Life Goals” Twitter page, dedicated to desiring basic and practical things in life and being content with it.

Screenshot from @AverageLifeGols Twitter Page

    Regardless of not living out my dream childhood, I was a really happy kid. My active imagination and ambition to bring to life any of my goals kept my brain preoccupied. However despite the happy feelings I associate with this time, I remember the sources of my anxiety too. It is a bit odd to think about a kid having anxiety, but I am now recognizing those feelings for what they were. 

    One of the earliest sources of my anxiety was being picked up and dropped off at school. My parents would pull up in a 1985 Chevy Astro van colored in gray and black paint. The van was surrounded with manual doors that closed with such a force that they might as well have served as the school bell to go to class. If the appearance of the van alone wasn’t enough to capture everyone’s attention, it would often break down at the school pick-up and drop-off station. For an immigrant child and one of the only people of my ethnic background growing up, this attention was the last thing I needed from my peers. I saw other children staring and laughing at the car and noticed the negative association attached to it. Everyday that I got closer to getting dropped off at the school, my heart would beat fast and my face would get warm. I would not tell my parents how I felt or ask them to drop me off farther away because I did not want to embarrass them and knew they were working hard enough to give us a decent life in this country. Therefore, I would get dropped off, duck my head down, and try to get away from any association with the van. 

    Even as a child, I was aware that the van was a sign of my socioeconomic class. It blatantly stood out next to the Honda Pilots and Toyota SUVs that the other children were getting dropped off in. I almost felt that if people associated me with the van, they would not see me as an equal, that all of my positive qualities would be diminished due to my economic background.

Picture of a Chevy Astro van similar to the one I had growing up

    In order to prove that the van was not an indicator of what my peers may have assumed of me and my family to be like, I tried my best to excel in a plethora of activities as a child. I made it a point to be kind to everyone, make friends, get good grades, and behave as a well-mannered student. Granted, my parents also had a lot of influence over the way I behaved during this time. It has been found that parents can have an influence on making their children follow similar occupations as them, but that wasn’t the case for me. I did not follow my parents in their careers but I did follow them in the work qualities they exhibited. In whatever difficulty that they faced raising a family in a foreign country, they dedicated their whole lives to put me and my siblings in a position where we could succeed. I witnessed firsthand their relentless dedication to work, constantly having to make the right sacrifices, and staying true to our culture and faith through it all. My father has never pressured my siblings and I into pursuing a certain occupation. His only ask was and still is that whatever we all choose to do with our lives, to make an effort to be near each other. My parents witnessed firsthand the pitfalls of being so far away from relatives since both of them had to experience a large portion of their life in a country separate from many of their relatives. 

    The van played an integral role in my father’s goal in keeping my immediate family close together. It moved my family from state to state as we tried to find a place to settle down, it served as the vehicle for long drives to destress, and it was the only time where we could listen to popular artists on the radio like NSYNC and Britney Spears. The van would serve as the best outlet to experience my daydreams and make plans for my future as I looked through its wide windows while driving down the highway. Ironically, one of my more consistent daydreams was owning a different, more modern car.

    However, as much as I was ashamed to be seen in the van, I never actually hated the van. In fact, I loved it. I essentially thought of the van as a member of the family and even named it, “Fred,” inspired by the character in Scooby Doo. The anxiety I had from being associated with the van didn’t only come from the fear of being seen in the van but also the fear about judgment towards something that I loved.

My father dropping me off at school with my little brother in the van (2006)

    The time did come when my family had saved enough for a new car. We all went together to trade the van in at the local Toyota dealership in Torrance, California. However, as my father was speaking to the dealer about the van and the great shape he had kept it in, I suddenly started to sob in the backseat. My little brother followed suit and we created quite the fiasco at the dealership. The crying was so intense and relentless that my parents had to keep the van to get us to stop. I was not sure where these emotions came from but in that very real moment of having to let the van go, I could not imagine giving away this integral part of my childhood for something so meaningless as a shiny, new car.

    This was a time when I realized that some of my dreams were not actually something that I needed or truly wanted. Oftentimes, the things I already have in my life are more than enough. My experience with the van taught me that there was beauty and joy even in things that weren’t deemed that way by society. As individuals, we have the choice to bring this beauty into our current situations. 

    Eventually, new cars did come into my family’s household but the van always held a special place in my heart. Instead of being ashamed of the van in any capacity, I made it something to be proud of and even convinced my peers of how “cool” and “vintage” it was. I have tried to use this mindset whenever I come across instances where I may be ashamed of something in my life or when I want something unreachable for me at the moment. I consider whether the addition of that desire in my life will truly make me happier. Moving up the ranks of social class can come at the price of leaving behind the life you used to know. I see the importance in contemplating the sacrifices that need to be made and deciding if they will be worth it. Personally, I am in no rush to speed-up the process of upward mobility because I fear that I may forget the life I lived before. My goal is to carry the experiences and positives of the life before me into the one ahead of me, even if it finds its way up the ladder of social mobility.