By Andrés Acebo
On my office windowsill sits a tribute to perseverance, to the triumph of the human will and to hope in the unseen. It’s an heirloom that charted my family’s pursuit of a better life in America. It’s the nautical compass that guided my father, a Cuban farm boy, as he risked his last breath to breathe free.
This summer marks more than 55 years since my father manned a small craft to freedom through an unforgiving sea. It’s a story that I think about often. It’s given me a lasting perspective on the privilege that my life was afforded because of a young man’s dogged determination to make more out of his.
I’m in constant awe of his courage, grateful for his sacrifice, saddened by the trauma that he’s only seldom shared about leaving everything and everyone he loved behind and inspired by his faith in America.
When I first became a father, my father’s story took on a new meaning. I then knew what I had perhaps only peripherally appreciated — the way first-generation children often do — that I had inherited the virtues that only hardship and sacrifice forge and that I could only honor them with responsibility.
In a single generation, the Cuban boy who found refuge working as a laborer and service worker in his new adopted country would scrap and save to affirm that his son’s future would not be limited. He resolved that hard work coupled with an education would deliver me what had evaded him.
No life is without hardship and adversity, but few are as burdened to persevere as those who must start their lives anew and defer comfort for the chance at a better life. There’s a special quality that emerges from that sort of challenge - an unrelenting strength to never quit. That has been my inheritance.
My father uprooted himself because oppression dimmed the light that life needs to survive. He then resowed his roots in a new place where ideals stretch individuals toward something more perfect. Yet there’s something in that, that has always fascinated me.
My father’s faith in America and its promise never gave into doubt — even as he found himself exiled in a country that didn’t always embrace him and that was often in turmoil by social unrest and upheaval — because what he found was a country that reckons with its failures to live up to its ideals. America repents not just because of the redemption of those who sin but because of the will and resilience of the afflicted, marginalized, and the privileged who join in solidarity to not give up on their country. That’s what makes America great.
I’m the father of sons who are further removed from their family’s original struggle and that brings a special obligation to cultivate our roots and to foster a devotion to the nation that gave it a chance to flourish.
We’re witnessing an awakening of our nation’s conscience with a call to action and for change unseen in generations. The faith my father had in America more than a half-century ago has been tested. Demagoguery is pushing unequal treatment through a chorus of supremacy and reclamation, but this pandemic reveals how truly interconnected we are and in the era of social distancing we still find the ability to march together toward something better.
My father’s story forces me to see America from dissecting perspectives, from a place of admiration for what this country made possible and from a place of duty to make sure it fulfills the promise of its ideals for everyone.
It’s those perspectives that shape my promise to my children. A promise that they won’t lose their country. We will reject fear and efforts to divide us and we’ll find reconciliation through love and empathy for one another. We will secure equality under the law and we’ll breathe life into the ideals that beacon all walks of life to this country. We will restore our character through a shared fidelity to justice. That’s my promise to my children.
My children won’t lose their country. My father’s compass already charted my family’s course to a better life and we have arrived.
Andrés Acebo is a first-generation Cuban-American lawyer and non-profit and civic leader in New Jersey.
Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.
The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.com’s newsletters.
"story" - Google News
June 21, 2020 at 09:12PM
https://ift.tt/37MQR6B
A father’s story and a son’s promise | Opinion - nj.com
"story" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2YrOfIK
https://ift.tt/2xwebYA
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "A father’s story and a son’s promise | Opinion - nj.com"
Post a Comment