Maybe it started in Colorado, when I was nothing but a bashful little toddler trying to follow her mother and 6 year older sister anywhere she could.  I remember following my mom outside into the courtyard after it rained, putting out my hand for her to place squirming little earthworms into my palm. I stared transfixed at the silly grace of the little creatures wriggling around in my palm.  Taiwan in the 1960s was complete industry, a concrete jungle packed to the brim with motorbikes, tobacco smoke, and people. Space was hard to find in everyday life, let alone green space. So I can only imagine my mom and dad stepping out of the airport; and for the first time, breathing clean, clean air and seeing so much green and so much life.  I know my father fell in love with the mountains, to this day he still says he’s going to go back, “There are no mountains like the Colorado mountains,” he says… he doesn’t even ski.

To my father, the American Dream was something very real. The American Dream was getting his PhD in geology, having a house for his family to grow into, being able to breathe fresh air without smoke or smog filling your lungs, but perhaps most of all, having a yard. A plot of green that you could call your own and walk around in and cultivate whatever flora you choose to. What he didn’t expect from the American Dream was, losing his scholarship funding because of a mistake and a disagreement with his professor. He wasn’t expecting to be laid off from 3 jobs, or to be afraid to talk to his peers because he struggled to learn English.  And most of all, he wasn’t expecting to worry so much about not being able to support his family, not having enough money to buy the food that we wanted, and having to dig through dusty bins at second hand clothing stores to find clothes for his two rapidly growing daughters.

But we were in America! We traveled further than any of our other relatives had ever even thought of traveling. We had the American Dream, it just wasn’t what we expected. As a child, it’s hard to see over the fence of reality, so much was hidden from me. I could only peek through the cracks between the pickets and catch glimpses of worry and strain. I didn’t know my dad was losing his dream, I didn’t know how hard it was for him. Being born in the United States, I didn’t realize what I had, grass, trees, and evergreen air was just the way the world was.

Around my 3^rd birthday, after losing his third job, my dad decided we were moving to Pennsylvania, a church friend had put a good word in for him at a company that based its work around the distribution of Christian literature to China. He would work there as a computer technician; nothing to do with what he had spent so much time studying. We moved in the summer, driving all the way and traveling through all of the States in between for the first and last time. I was fascinated with the passing scenes of the view from my window. I could stare out for unnatural amounts of time for a toddler my age, at one point, my father started to worry and pulled off to a nearby strip mall to buy me and my sister a burger and a book.

 I remember finally arriving in Pennsylvania and being slightly but undeniably disappointed. The grass in our apartment complex was yellow and dry, and I encountered the pungently musty smell of manure for the first time in my life. I had been so worried that we were going to live in that smell forever. We lived on the bottom floor of a two story building, the floor above us had their own patio over ours, so our rooms were forever shaded from the warm sun that I loved so much. But, having no neighbors underneath us meant I could jump and play around as much I wanted, without my mother worrying about disturbing the neighbors. Even though our neighbors had the sunlight, we had something maybe even better. A small patch of land lining the front edge of our porch that we were allowed to plant flowers in. My mother didn’t have a particularly green thumb but we were always out in the garden with her. I remember finding odd red marbled snail looking things and being both in awe and afraid as I had only ever encountered the dully colored earth worms of Colorado. I threw them as far away as I could with my little spade.

Fast forward about 7 years we moved once to another apartment leased to us by a friend and somehow my geology studying father worked hard at his new company and went from “computer guy” to Director of the Board of Administration… or something. We moved to a house (an actual house) at the end of my 5^th grade year. As we grew into the house, we also grew outside of it. All of a sudden we had two huge evergreen trees, two dogwoods, one very established cherry blossom willow, and about 10,000 square feet of grass to mow. Up until then we’d never mowed grass before.  My mother even had space for a small vegetable garden to grow tomatoes and Oriental garlic chives. Mowing got old fast, but my dad would always treat it as a family activity. He would often call me outside, put his hands on my shoulders and say, “Look, look how green it is, look at the trees, look how much we have, aren’t we lucky?” I would nod half-heartedly seeing little more than grass and weeds. As I got older, and my asthma triggers started to increase, I started to learn the value of green.

I watched my parents drive away, leaving me at the front door of my “new home” at college. I turned, took a breath, and walked purposefully back into the building, passing my future dorm-mates and their families on the way. I would smile and nod to them trying to pretend that I felt like I belonged here. Amidst the confusion and insecurities of college life, I started studying landscape architecture. I started to understand the value and character of plants and their almost all-serving life. How ingenious of God to create a little creature that would convert sunlight into sugar and transpirate to create the thing we need to respirate.  How sweet is that? How could I not fall in love with them?

Time went on and I started to love the color green. Green meant so much to me. Green meant safety and health. I began to curate my own little green zoo of herbs, succulents, epiphytes, and green creepers. I was besotted with them, tiny soft beings each with their distinctive shape, texture, and smell. Each a different personality: sun-loving, shade-loving, hard and prickly, or soft and flowing. Green meant peace and life and hope. There came days when people I trusted proved me wrong, nothing I did could ever seem to come out right, and getting out of bed felt like dying. But I would get up and water my plants. I would wake up to see the green, because the green reminded me how lucky I was. I remember coming back home from my first trip to Taiwan, blowing my nose, and seeing black in the tissue. The smog and dust and cigarette smoke that was the air of Taiwan circa 2004 showing their true colors.

I wish green upon every living person, I wish poplar trees and fluttering leaves for every city to clean away the black and grey of the everyday urban life.  Green tells me that I’m cared for, and I shouldn’t give up hope. Because if there is something that exists so purely self-sufficient that it even provides for others. Then maybe the world is a kinder place that it seems. And if little plants can live turning sunlight into sugar and carbon dioxide into oxygen to let us all breathe a little easier, then maybe I can learn to turn the dreams of my life into reality. Maybe the color of my American Dream was never red, white, or blue. Maybe it was always green.