-----Original Message----- From: Jaime R Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> To: editor <editor@saipantribune.com> Sent: Wed, Jun 18, 2014 7:00 am Subject: For June 20 from Jaime Goodbye, America I should title thisarticle as Goodbye, Columbus, for themain characters in my recollection were folks who drove all the way fromColumbus, Ohio to Fort Wayne Indiana to meet and share a meal together at ChuckE Cheese, for all the children and the adults. The Columbus retinueincluded my second wife (er lao po) withour daughter and her younger brother, both diagnosed ASDs. She will turn 22 this August and he was 19this April. Along with them was a verycompetent aide who assisted my ex-wife to make sure that my daughter and sonwere cared for the midst of their non-normal neurological condition. My group coming fromoutside Chicago included my eldest daughter from my primal spouse (yi lao po) who drove with her two sons,one at 6 who is cavalierly brilliant, smarty suave, advanced in languageproficiency, and an assertive 4-yr old brother who exhibits hyper-activity,extremely contrarian social responses, and repetitive behavior that qualifieshim within the current diagnosis of ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder. In total, there were eight of us thatoccupied rooms at a local Hampton Inn outskirt of Fort Wayne. For those unfamiliarwith the characteristics of “autism”, they can Google the subject. There is no shortage of attempts atenlightenment on the widespread condition, from the symptoms to the myriadprescriptions of dealing with it. I hadwritten enough about the condition and the local CNMI families with childrendiagnosed under ASD, along with my experience with a few SpEd students assignedto my 6th grade class in PSS’valiant attempt to mainstream their learning, that to add more would be anoverkill. I am using the Indianameeting as the occasion for my intentional farewell to North America. Yup. T'was almost 50 years since I sailed for 20-days to San Francisco fromManila, taking citizenship 20 years later to deter immigration officers fromdetaining me for further scrutiny since it was unusual for a Philippine-descentimmigrant to qualify to be a citizen and not apply 8 years later! My style of commitmentwas through covenants. Three covenantsof marriage with three American ladies made me a prime candidate forpsychological profiles to determine possible "flaw incharacter". Add four other"significant others" and we are definitely deemed unstable. I was also communallycovenanted with some folks who took their churching seriously, their bodies onthe barbwires of history, designing human development projects that simultaneouslydealt with all the people and all the issues personal and social in adelineated geography, bringing to the enterprise the gifts of the 20th century scientific,and secular revolutions, and appropriating the gifts of the inner city, theurban center, the suburban spread, and the exurban green into the socialdemonstration. The Ecumenical Institutein Chicago had enough sense to dissipate when the center would not hold in themid-80s. I had meant to drop inon Sheridan corner Lawrence in uptown Chicago where the Greenrise building iscurrently an urban demo but decided that my farewell would be a drop in thepostal box of materials that might be of interest to the institutional archive. I am done socializing. An off-shoot, theRealistic Living Institute, rigorously mapped the spirit in the last 30 years withthe use of Christian symbols and metaphors; I bid them adieu as well in thewetlands of Bonham in Texas not too long ago. Appropriating theimage of the "dead man walking", dead-and-resurrected, has me singingmy "One Moment in Time" to be 86 years, leaving me with the last of the5- phased 17-years each journey to consciously age graciously into the sunsetof my years. I began by writing abio-profile early this year from the perspective of the other side of 86. Not beholden or fearful of the mystery of theunknown future, I am lucidly covenanted to the 86-year journey of this bodyinto human history. Should it factuallyturn out to be more or less my statistical projection, c'est la vie! The price isemotionally taxing. I am biddingeveryone in North America physical and emotional "goodbyes", justleaving a window of connection ajar being only a mouse-click away on the otherside of the planet in today's technology, but mentally, willfully, and totally raisingthe gates on heretofore covenants into my new covenant with my new circles ofconsciousness in China of my far east Asian continent. My genetic connectionwill be to four grandsons with the family of my two eldest daughters in Chicagoand Oakland CA who have gleefully developed their own signatures with noshortage of flourish; it is to their children that I launched a seven-year-itchof writing. The second layer ofgenetics will be the ASD world in Columbus where two children I was privilegedto help bring into existence but defaulted in their upbringing; and a shy butgifted writer daughter in Pittsburgh who is gingerly nursing the blooming of aliterary self-consciousness. I told friendlyconnections in several places that if we ever were to see each other face-to-faceagain, it will have to be in Asia and/or the Pacific. Paalam! Goodbye! Zai Jian! j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!