On Nov. 5, after voting in Northern Virginia where the ballot comes in English, Spanish, Korean and my native Vietnamese, I posted on social media: “Never ceases to amaze me every time I vote here to see my mother tongue on the ballot of the USA. My throat tightens every time. You’re my America.”

My war refugee family fled here from the fall of Saigon in 1975. I grew up in Phoenix and graduated from Arizona State University. Then I married you, America, and I’ve had children with you.

My expanded immediate family and all our blended family histories – from the Midwest, from the South, from Japan, from Vietnam – have witnessed you at your worst and at your best. Despite your nightmares, we still believe in the dream of what America could be.

What our America is supposed to be, according to the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

"The pursuit of Happiness."

I never thought much about those four words in that order until I read a New Yorker article in which........

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