“The adoption wouldn’t even have gotten approved today. But Mom wrote a letter to the Chinese government explaining why a quadriplegic man could be a good father, and the application was accepted. I’ve known the story my entire life. Dad got in a bad car accident when he was twenty-four. And Mom met him while working as a nurse in the ICU. She said his calmness was the first thing she noticed. Most people cry when they’re told they’ll never walk again, but Dad was silent. He was like that my entire life. So calm and level-headed. His parenting style was to ‘sit back and watch.’ He had no other choice. He could only guide me with his words. When it was time for me to walk, he just said: ‘Stand up and walk, Princess.’ And I did. He taught me to ride a bike by explaining the physics of it. My problems eventually became more complex, but he was always there in his same way. If I was panicking over a test, he’d bet me a dollar that I could pass it. That became our thing. Whenever I was feeling unsure, he’d bet me a dollar. As my anxiety got worse, he studied psychology. He’d walk me through coping strategies. He’d say things like: ‘Are you catastrophizing this?’, ‘Have you ever failed a class before?’, ‘What evidence do you have that this time will be different?’ I hated being the emotional one. I never wanted him to feel like the reason I was messed up. If he could handle being a quadriplegic, why couldn’t I cope with being the daughter of one? But it was so hard. From a young age, I had to help him with so much. And I was such a shy kid. I looked different than everyone else. It was a lot of stress. But he did everything he could for me. In the only way he knew how, by encouraging me, and believing in me. He started getting really sick in August of 2017. It was some kind of cancer, but we didn’t even get it checked. Because we knew he couldn’t survive the chemo. I sat at the foot of his bed during his final days, filling out my law school applications. Of course I was panicking. I was convinced that I wouldn’t get accepted anywhere. But he kept reassuring me. And he was right. Even if he didn’t live to see the results, he knew. ‘I’ll bet you a dollar,’ he told me.”
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