My life’s beginning in Viet Nam continues

I’ve begun documenting my life here on my blog for memory sake. The more kids I have, the more brain cells I lose. This is the next installment of “MY LIFE” series and I’d love to share this part of my life with you. I realize, asking you to read such a long post would be like asking my three children to sit still on a plane for a twelve hour trip to LegoLand. With that said I thank you in advance for humoring me!!

Incidentally, this week’s theme at mamasaysom is “life”.

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The next chapter of my life in Viet Nam began in 1970, the Year of the Dog, when my little sister arrived home. I was two at the time and was too young to remember my reaction towards her.

With the help of my parents, I was able to uncover that my maternal grandmother was at the hospital with my Mom when she gave birth to my youngest sister. As my Dad walks into the recovering room, my grandmother feignly said with disappointment “another girl!” (this would be his third daughter), but to my grandmother’s astonishment, my Dad said “it doesn’t matter if I had a son or a daughter, as long as both mother and daughter are healthy…then I’m happy.” And he was true to his words.

He loves us girls to death. Coming from a chauvinistic Asian country where women are considered as second-class citizens, and there’s a fine line between a man’s job and a woman’s role. My Dad didn’t see that fine line. He would give us baths, washed the cloth diapers, and he even gutted fishes or pluck chickens (yeah, live ones, you can’t just go to the store and buy something like Purdue chicken, all washed, plucked, cut etc…you’re lucky if you had chickens to eat in the first place really), on special occasions, as my Mom was too trepid to do in that department.

Looking back at pictures, my little sister was such a cute and pudgy baby. Her belly would be hanging out for the world to see, that’s how plump she was. She had such porcelain white-yellowish skin. Her cheeks resembled two small red apples when she was hot. It was so red that people often stopped and asked my parents if someone had just slapped her. How funny is that?! And of course, we didn’t have suntan lotions to lather her skin with at the time.

When my sister was able to talk, every night was the same. We three shared the same bed and the same words were uttered from her little red lips “straight, straight!” She would not go to sleep unless her blanket and sheet were straight as an arrow. This was not an easy task with three little girls in one bed. But every morning, we would find her side of the bed with sheet and blanket still in tact, and still…straight as an arrow. That was her personality, it was not taught…she was born like that (to this day, her house would be immaculately clean…you can actually eat off of the floor).

My sister and I love her dearly, and would give in to her every whim. She was a very bossy child. When she wanted something from us, she would demand for it until she gets it, otherwise…she would scream so loud that the next town over would hear her. Boy, how she has changed a bit from that.

I recalled a happy childhood. We were very spoiled by both sides. My Mom’s sisters would make trips to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) to purchase merchandise for my grandmother’s store, and would bring back beautiful identical dresses and shoes for all three of us. In every single picture, we would have the same outfits on (no wonder why I felt the need to be different when I grew up with hairdos, and clothes).

Here we were with our Dad, guess who’s the clown in the family? You mean the picture gave it away? I always got yelled at for not standing straight for the pictures, as evident in the picture below. See the same clothes, the same hairdos (the demi-garcon hair style was in back then) and see the bangs? Yeah, Dad couldn’t stand the way our hair was in our faces, so he took it upon himself to chop it off, to my Mom’s horror!!

The fighting was still going on between the North and South of Viet Nam. The country was in turmoil. I was too young to know or remember any of the whys and the hows of the war, so I will refrain from giving my opinion about it here. All I know is that the North Vietnamese, who were the Communists…were bad people. They were taking over the country despite the help of the Americans to the South Vietnamese troops.

My uncles and father either were enlisted with the American military or worked in conjunction with them. They were in fact, enemy of the state if caught. The punishment would have been severe, “re-education camp” as it was called but realistically, it was more like a “hard labor camp”, located deep in the mountainous regions or in deserted areas. It reminds me of the movie “The Last Emperor” where Pu Yi was imprisioned at one of these “re-education camps”.

As a side note, my uncle, (along with thousands of former South Vietnamese troops, high-ranking officers, clerks or simply the ones who supported the Americans and the South Vienamese side), was caught and served seven years of harsh labor and brain washing when the war ended in 1975. I think he was never the same after that experience. My Dad barely escaped being imprisioned. With the help of his in-laws, he came to work on the family farm, pretending to be a farmer, stripping all associations he’s ever had with the Americans or South Vietnamese troop as a way to survive.

From a child’s perspective, everything seemed normal. I supposed my parents sheltered us from any bad news regarding the state of the country. Having family businesses, we were considered as a wealthy family. We each had a young nanny. My oldest sister and I attended a private Catholic school ran by nuns (’til this day, I can still remember the tiny button cookies that were served during snack time but I don’t remember anything else about the school), we played with the neighborhood kids, celebrated Tet, went to Buddhist temple, had birthday parties, went to ice cream parlor with my Dad on his Vespa, just normal every day living, so we thought.

Here’s my oldest sister (the first grandchild on both sides) and my Dad’s Vespa in the background. Sorry the picture is not exactly clear.

My brother was born in 1971. My Dad took his familiar seven-minutes trip to the hospital with us three girls (in the old days, men were not allowed in the delivering room). As always, my maternal grandmother was already there holding the baby. She looked at my Dad with a feign sad expression (again) saying “it’s another girl”. My Dad took the baby, opened the cloth diaper and exclaimed with such happiness “it’s a boy! It’s a boy!” Everyone was cheering along with him in the room. I think after three girls, he was ready for some male companion in the house since he was outnumbered by us four girls, my Mom included.

My Dad was overjoyed with having a son, and so was my Mom. To this day, he remains my Mom’s favorite (although she denies that flat out saying all five of us are her favorite). He was bald like Yul Brynner and oh so cute with two huge almond black eyes and just completely pudgy all over. He has this calmness about him, as if nothing could bother him at all.

We all adore and love him tremendously, so it was tough to see him suffered through asthma attacks. Growing up, he was a very weak child but well protected by his sisters (I even punched a boy once who harassed him when we moved to the U.S., more in later post). It was not uncommon to have him snuggle up to one of us in our bed, up until he was seven. He was scared of monsters easily and couldn’t sleep by himself so we were all too happy to oblige.

Here’s a picture of us girls and our brother celebrating his third birthday. This is where I will end this very long post (are you still there? If you are, I thank you for reading this journey of my life). In my next chapter, I will document our lives before the Fall of Saigon, the birth of my youngest brother, living under Communist regime, our terrifying flee from the Communists through the open seas with pirates and all to reach our final destination…America, land of freedom and opportunity!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 8:02 pm and is filed under GENERAL, MY LIFE. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.