Where the Wind Leads

by Dr. Vinh Chung

  Leisle wouldn’t be allowed to visit me because in her parents’ eyes it would have made her look cheap. She was a respectable young woman with her virtue to consider, and only a loose woman would go chasing after a man. Just as important, their daughter had not been accepted to Yale yet, and her senior year of high school was not the time to take her eyes off the prize.

  When I left Governor’s School, I knew I would miss Leisle, but I never expected to miss her as much as I did. We started corresponding as soon as we got home, though we had to hide our correspondence from our families. That wasn’t always easy when we stayed up all hours of the night, composing the next day’s magnum opus:

  Dear Leisle,

  My brother Thai left the room because he couldn’t sleep with the lights turned on. See the problem with sharing a room? I’m surprised he didn’t threaten to beat me up for staying up writing to you . . . It’s 3:47 a.m., and I’m done responding to your letter. I better sleep now. Do you know that I haven’t taken a shower yet? Yeah, I have mud and dirt all over my arms and face and my bed right now.

  We wrote to each other several times a week, and some of our letters were thirty pages long. I wrote to Leisle everywhere: at home, at school, even on the bus on the way to football games—and writing love letters was not the ideal way to mentally prepare for a game.

  The art of writing special-good-friend letters was new to me, and at first I was a little awkward at finding the right words to express my heart. Sometimes I sounded more like a mathematician than a poet:

  Leisle, I really would like to see you. Yeah, I really miss you. I miss everything about you. At least I’ll be talking to you this Sunday. Yeah, I really, really, really4 (to the 4th power) enjoy being with you.

  And sometimes my words didn’t come across the way I intended:

  Leisle, I believe you are more “masculine” than most, if not all, of the girls I know. Weird! I like a “masculine” girl who likes politics, scores higher than I did on the ACT, argues with me constantly and has the last name “Chung.” . . . Leisle, if I were to have dreamed about a girl like you a year ago, it would have been a nightmare.

  But Leisle was always patient with me and was much better at expressing herself:

  Dear Vinh,

  If a year ago, I had a dream about a guy like you, I would have been in anticipation all year to meet you.

  Through my long-distance relationship with Leisle, a whole new side of me was emerging, and I struggled to understand what was happening to me. Sometimes I was afraid Leisle was changing me into someone I didn’t even recognize:

  Dear Leisle,

  I need to stay away from you. You’re taking away my sleep. You’re entering my thoughts during the day. You’re “harassing” me! Oh, but I asked for it, didn’t I? I, well not my logical side, my emotional side wants to think about you. It wants to have you around all the time. My logical side says, “No, Vinh! She’s making you sensitive, too emotional.”

  Leisle, I think my emotional side has won.

  We kept encouraging and challenging each other through our letters. We both had SATs coming up, so we checked out test-prep books from our libraries and tried to include as many SAT words as possible in our letters to each other. I once wrote to her, “Because of my state of ambivalence (SAT word), I sometimes don’t know what I really feel.”

  And Leisle kept challenging me to be more ambitious, which was beginning to annoy me because I had already told her my goals: to apply to the University of Arkansas and also Hendrix College, where Governor’s School had been held. Hendrix offered a prestigious financial award called the Hays Scholarship, and U of A had its own version called the Sturgis. I planned to apply for both of them, and whichever scholarship I was awarded would be the college I would attend. Both were good schools, and either scholarship would have completely covered the cost of college and allowed me to graduate debt-free. What was wrong with a plan like that?

  But Leisle always thought bigger:

  Dear Vinh,

  You want to live your life safely, retire in ten years and relax. No way. Really? Wouldn’t you get bored? What about a Nobel Prize or something like that?

  I wasn’t opposed to winning a Nobel Prize, as long as I could pick one up on the drive back to Fort Smith. But Leisle kept encouraging me to apply to schools like Stanford, Georgetown, and Yale. She kept challenging me to go for more, to think beyond the school of convenience just down the road, and the more I caught her vision, the more conflicted I felt:

  Dear Leisle,

  Before AGS, I was quite content and happy because I basically accomplished everything I wanted. Only I didn’t want very much so I really didn’t accomplish much. After meeting you, I was shaken. I realized that I haven’t pushed myself hard enough. You shared with me your goals and I . . . I had basically NO future goals. I wasn’t sure which college I’d go to, what type of person I’d marry . . . etc.

  So you talk me into “aiming high” like apply to Stanford/Yale. All of a sudden, I say “Yes! I’m gonna try to be all I can be.” So now, I’m afraid I can’t make it. As a result, I argue against strong ambition because it has caused me to fear / to be challenged / to be discontent / to be insecure.

  I felt tortured. Before I met Leisle, I was complacent but happy, and now, thanks to her, I was ambitious but miserable—not exactly my idea of a good trade. I found Leisle’s ambition infectious, but I was already suffering from a long-term disease of my own: the fear of failure. The higher the ladder, the greater the fall. Did I really want to set myself up for that? I was on my way to being a big fish in a little pond, but in the ocean I could get eaten. What was I supposed to do?

  But as always, Leisle was the voice of encouragement and reason:

  Dear Vinh,

  It is good to reach for things, even if they are impossible because the higher you reach, the higher you’ll go.

  Don’t let your fear of failure hold you back but let it be the reason that you would try so hard . . . so that you never have to face that failure. So basically, I’m glad you have decided to reach high, even if it brings disappointment.

  I knew she was right. Neither choice seemed good at first: ambition with the possibility of failure or mediocrity with the certainty of success. But there really was no choice; once Leisle raised my sights, I couldn’t lower them again. My old goals now seemed flimsy and pathetic, and I knew I would have to choose bigger ones even if it meant I might fail.

  For the entire fall we kept our relationship a secret, though our parents were gradually catching on that there was something going on between us. But around Christmas things changed for us; Leisle was accepted to Yale that December, and at that point, as far as her parents were concerned, Leisle could do no wrong—she was even allowed to come visit me in Fort Smith.

  Leisle was nervous about making a good first impression on my parents, and I was worried that my family would look impoverished to her. Leisle wanted to know if she should bow to my parents since that’s what Koreans would do. I told her that the Vietnamese might nod, but they don’t bow; she should just be very polite and shake their hands.

  The first meeting went well. My father was already favorably disposed toward Leisle because he had seen some of the envelopes her letters came in, and he thought her handwriting showed strength of character. When he first met her, he was surprised that Leisle was so small, but he was impressed by her firm handshake; he was even more impressed that Leisle was going to Yale.

  My mother liked Leisle, too, but later on she voiced some of her concerns: “Her hands are so little; they’re like baby hands. How is she going to cook for you? Is she going to cook Korean food? How will you eat that?” By the time Leisle left, my mother liked her a lot; she even told me that she hoped I would find a nice Chinese girl just like her.

  For Christmas Leisle gave me a gift I will never forget. It was a small leather portfolio with a pad of paper and a pen inside. She said I should use it when I went on interviews for colleges or schol
arships. Inside the portfolio there was a packet of twenty-nine–cent stamps—that was the real gift. She knew I was poor, and she knew it was costing me a lot to mail her all those letters, and she wanted a way to help me without making me feel ashamed.

  In the spring of our senior year, the theme of our letters changed. In the fall I had been inspired by Leisle’s vision to apply to four colleges that I never would have considered before I met her: Stanford, Georgetown, Harvard, and Yale. Now it was spring, when acceptances and rejections were beginning to arrive, and we had a new topic of discussion: Which college should I choose if I’m accepted?

  I was accepted to both U of A and Hendrix, and I was awarded both the Sturgis and Hays scholarships—my ultimate goal fulfilled. But by the end of the spring, I was also accepted to Stanford, Georgetown, Harvard, and Yale. Before long I had narrowed the choice down to Harvard or Yale, and at that point our topic of discussion changed again. The question was no longer “Which college should I choose?” but “Should I choose the same college as Leisle?” In one of her letters Leisle asked me if I would choose a different college just to avoid her, and I immediately gave her a firm answer:

  Dear Leisle,

  You asked, “Would you go to a different college just to avoid me?” The answer would be yes, probably . . . I guess . . . not sure. Maybe . . . I guess . . . but not no. It is possible.

  Later on in the letter I added, “Do you know what the heck I’m talking/writing about?” But then I gave the subject a bit more thought and wrote back to her again:

  Dear Leisle,

  You know what? I think it would be BETTER for me if I were to go to school with you. YES!!! If I were to go to school with you, I would not have to spend time writing. I would not have to think of you so often. You’d just be right there. I can talk to you anytime. BUT . . . this leads to another problem. What if you’re always around? What if I spend the whole day talking to you instead of studying? It was all right at AGS because no grades are given. If I spend as much time with you as I did at AGS, I’d flunk every class. Spend too much time writing to you or thinking about you VERSUS too much time with you.

  Both are bad. Which is worse? I believe both are or can be equally bad. However, I do enjoy the second one more. Yeah, I’d rather be with you than write to you or think about you. If, in either case, I’m being deterred from school, I might as well be deterred in a more enjoyable way? What is your opinion?

  Leisle wrote back:

  Dear Vinh,

  Okay, I’ll start by saying that this is absolutely ridiculous! I could see someone going to the same college because he/she is serious with someone but not going to a different college to avoid becoming serious. What is it you’re trying to avoid?

  If it’s for your sake, I will ignore you for four years if that’s what you want. I won’t even “exist.” If it’s for my sake, don’t worry about stuff like this with me. In college, especially the first two years, I have more important concerns than becoming serious about anyone.

  I care about you too much to let you base such a crucial decision on something like this. Base it on atmosphere, scholarships, academics, or even cafeteria food, but not on avoiding me.

  So Leisle set my mind at ease. If I went to Yale, she promised to ignore me for four years, and if I went to Harvard she had more important things to worry about than me, especially in the first two years. Two years of indifference or four; Harvard was starting to sound good to me.

  Leisle graduated valedictorian at Lincoln High and in her senior year won the Arkansas state debate championship a second time, with her freshman brother as her partner. I graduated valedictorian from Northside, and we were both on our way to college, though Leisle and I didn’t know what that would mean for our relationship or where our paths would take us in the future.

  But in the summer, as we were both preparing to leave for college, she wrote me this:

  Dear Vinh,

  Once upon a time, there lived a cute little prince named Vinh in the bustling metropolis of Fort Smith. He had a beautiful smile that could melt anyone’s heart and an adorable southern Asian accent . . .

  In another land, in a palace nestled in the Ozark Mountains, Princess Leisle played silly games with her younger brother. Although she had pet bears and deer to keep her company, the lovely, compassionate, kind, sweet, intelligent, talented Princess Leisle felt lonely and in need of a special, good friend.

  Prince Vinh grew up to become a very handsome young man. During the fall, he knocked people on their butts for a ball that wasn’t even round, and all year, he labored in kitchens and delivered royal feasts in his trusty car. Hardly a job befitting the handsome prince, but Vinh was a charming prince with a noble heart.

  One summer, Vinh decided to get away for six weeks to study natural science at a program called Arkansas Governor’s School. Meanwhile, Princess Leisle decided to attend the same school to study social science (the good science).

  There, the prince and princess met. They shared the same last name, a mailbox, a dislike of jazz music, and a liking for star-gazing from the top of a library. So, in a week, Vinh became the special good friend that Leisle had wanted . . .

  All too soon, AGS came to a close. Prince Vinh returned to the bustling metropolis of Fort Smith and Princess Leisle returned to her palace in the Ozarks . . . So, although apart, the prince and princess remained special good friends and tried to visit ever so often . . .

  However, in order to become individuals befitting to inherit their crowns, both Leisle and Vinh chose to part once more and battle dragons, cross rivers, and ride giant silver birds to distant lands for four years.

  Prince Vinh chose to face his challenge in a land that harbors Harvard, while Princess Leisle chose to confront her dragons in a land that havens Yale.

  So, once again, the prince and princess bid each other farewell and parted for distant lands . . .

  To be continued . . .

  Forty-Two

  HARVARD

  IT WASN’T EASY FOR ME TO DECIDE BETWEEN HARVARD and Yale. Since so much of my future depended on my choice, I wanted to take a careful, rational, and objective approach to the decision-making process—so I decided to flip a coin twenty-five times and go with the winner. But when Yale turned out to be the winner, I sensed a gut-level feeling of regret that the coin toss did not go to Harvard, and that was how I knew that Harvard was the place I really wanted to go. So much for rational and objective.

  There was another criterion that I carefully considered that swung the decision to Harvard: Harvard had a lousier football team. Selecting Harvard over Yale based on their football teams might sound like choosing a BMW over a Mercedes because the BMW had a full tank of gas, but it was more than that. In my senior year of high school, I had been named to the All-Conference and Arkansas All-State football teams at offensive guard, and I entertained the possibility of playing college football. At five foot eleven and two hundred pounds, I never would have made the team at a Southeastern Conference school like Arkansas, but Harvard and Yale were much smaller colleges, and I thought I might have a chance of making the team at one of them. Harvard had the weaker team at the time, so off to Harvard I went.

  When Leisle and I enrolled at Yale and Harvard, the annual cost of both schools was around $35,000 per year. When Leisle first opened her acceptance letter from Yale, she looked at her father and asked, “How will we ever pay for this?” Her elated father said, “Don’t worry. We’ll sell everything we own if we have to.” That was a generous offer, but even if her parents had sold everything they owned at the time, it wouldn’t have been nearly enough to put Leisle through Yale.

  When I saw the cost of tuition, room and board, and fees, I suffered a serious case of sticker shock myself. The market value of the house my family was currently living in would have barely covered the cost of my freshman year. The cost of attending Harvard gave me second thoughts about turning down Hendrix and Arkansas because I had been offered a full ride to both of those scho
ols, plus spending money on the side. But both Leisle and I spent our senior years applying for every scholarship and grant we could find, and by fall we were packing for our first semesters at Harvard and Yale.

  I couldn’t afford suitcases, so I packed everything I owned into two cardboard boxes and a backpack. My mother brought me a few extra clothes to fold in, which meant that Anh and Hon would have less to wear to high school that fall, and she handed me some pencils and a plastic cup and said, “Here. You should use these.” The only thing my parents could afford to contribute to my college education was a one-way bus ticket from Fort Smith to Alexandria, Virginia, where Jenny and her husband were to meet me and drive me the rest of the way to Boston. The one-way bus ticket was symbolic of what my parents had been saying to me all my life: “All we can do is get you there; after that it’s up to you.”

  The bus trip from Fort Smith to Jenny’s home in Alexandria took thirty-one hours. Jenny’s husband, Hung, took me to an army surplus store and bought me two canvas duffel bags to upgrade my cardboard boxes, and Uncle Lam bought me my first watch and an alarm clock. When Jenny’s husband dropped me off at Harvard, he asked, “Is there anything else you need?” The Harvard Independent had a list of suggested items for incoming students that included a desk lamp, wastebasket, bed linens, fan, laundry money, computer, calling card, bicycle, camera, umbrella, duck boots, mittens, guidebooks of Boston, and formalwear.

  I shook my head. “I guess this is it.”

  In my first days at Harvard, I was overwhelmed. The student body included movie stars, sons and daughters of famous politicians, students whose dormitories were named after their grandfathers, and even a princess from a Middle Eastern country—and there I was with my two army surplus duffel bags. In Fort Smith I had been a big fish, but Harvard was like Sea World. All my classmates seemed to be brilliant; some of them had won national competitions in math, science, or geography, and some had already published papers. I had won statewide math contests back in Arkansas, but when I took my first math class at Harvard, I thought, This isn’t math—this is something else.