Still, my mother-in-law said, ‘Wuji is just as successful as the other sons! He got his Ph.D. in America! And at least he is not a volleyball coach, right?’

‘Wuji jumps like an elephant,’ my father-in-law said. ‘He is so slow he has to wave the flies away; he cannot swat them. I do not think he could have become a volleyball coach.’

If Wuji was not the ump in the family, maybe he would feel bad, But, instead, he calmly said, ‘I am not a coach and I am not a professor. I cannot jump and truly, I am slow. But I am going to be a father.’

And my father-in-law agreed then that Wuji had accomplished at least one important thing. Because a child born in America is a U.S. citizen. And a U.S. citizen can do anything!

‘He is a success!’ my mother-in-law said.

My father-in-law nodded.
—“No More Maybe,” Gish Jen