Childhood memories, Life Journey & Breast Cancer

Last week my cousin IM'ed me that my second cousin, My Van, got breast cancer. It took some time to register. Van is my mom's half brother's grand daughter. In Vietnam, relatives are a lot closer and got ranked like in the same family. Therefore she's supposed to call me "auntie" (she never did, just used the term for peer, claiming that she was older than me - 1 year). Van just turned 40 last November. Her youngest of 4 just turned 1. She stopped breast feeding in June, found a lump on her breast and went to the doctor's for it in September. Test came back after Thanksgiving: she got breast cancer. As of Monday this week when she went in for her 11-hours surgery she was at stage 3.

Growing up my cousin Van and I were close. We lived a few minute walking distance in Saigon. Her family's bedroom is on the third floor of her grandfather's house, where I spent almost every night watching TV since we don't have TV at home. TV was only broadcast a few hours a night every day, state owned of course. We spent many summers of our childhood in the country where my grandmother's house and her grandfather's house are of a few minute walking distance also. We spent afternoons laying on the branch of a tree branding over the river in front of her grandfather's house looking out the river, talking. I showed her my first poem. We "swam" in the river using inner tube, banana trunk to float since we were just a bunch of kids from "the city," never were close to any water in Saigon. I got a frantic moment there where a leech stuck to my thigh.

Then we drifted apart. Her family, after many attempts, finally successfully fled the country, spent some time in refugee asylum camps and migrated to the States. My father also fled with my two brothers, spent some time in Thailand, Philippine refugee camps and then got to the States, living in the same apartment complex with her family. My dad then sponsored my mom and I in 1992. My family of 5 lived in a 1-bedroom apartment. My second day in America I started working in Van's mom's Nails shop in downtown LA.Eventually I started at East LA College and did Nails to make a living. I then moved to Virginia, opened my own shop, finished up my undergrad, went to work for a year, went back to school and finished grad school. I didn't see Van for years until 2 years ago when I went back to California for my uncle's funeral. She got 3 kids, I got 2. My youngest is 2 months older than her youngest, both girls. We then exchanged numbers. I called her once last year right before she gave birth to her 4th. I never thought I needed to worry about her. She was a strong, independent woman. She sent her husband to New york for dentistry school, then she went back herself to be a pharmacist. I thought she lived the American dream and very proud of her.

It breaks my heart to learn what Van'd have to go through compare to the little surgery I went through last week and know about the discomfort that went with it. Makes me feel like a whim. On the other hand I'm confident Van will overcome this with the resilience my people have proved over times of darkness. I'm forever very proud of her.

Election day

I always feel so excited when it's election day. Today is the day Virginians make their choice for the new governor. I have a chance to exercise my hard-earned right to vote and know that my vote counts. Election in Vietnam before I left at age 22 was a joke! It still is now. No one voted voluntarily because we knew it was all staged. Results were already determined before election. We had no say. Besides, there's only 1 party; what do you vote for? Communist party vs. Communist party? At the end, the most corrupted guy will stay. Open our mouths and we go to jail. Intellectuals who made plays, songs or voice their opposition mysteriously got run over in the most "accidental" accidents and this is still happening over there.

The picture below is very famous in the Vietnamese community in the US. April 2007, father Nguyen Van Ly was sentenced 8 years for "spreading propaganda to oppose the socialist government of Vietnam." According to BBC father Ly (we use first name formally in Vietnam) has been in prison for 14 years in the last 24 years for pursuing democracy and religious freedom for Vietnam. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/vietnam/story/2007/03/070330_fatherly_jailed.shtml). To this day, many lawyers, reporters, writers... are in jail for telling the truth or publicly express their opposing opinion. Americans, appreciate your true FREEDOM!

the "trial" of father Nguyen Van Ly

My dark past cannot be my Kids' Future!

I was reading an article from a former USSR citizen and got a chill from the striking similarity:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=509831

The ghosts of the past that I ran away from 17 years ago have come back to haunt me as I read the news, as I observe what they're "changing" in the policies. All that scares me. This is what they're heading? This could be my kids' future? Most Americans have no idea what "socialism," "communism" really means. Only us who lived through it (or survived it to be more accurate) in the Soviet or in Vietnam circa 1980s-early 90s understand how it dragged human dignity down. Here is a brief summary of life in Vietnam, after the "blood soaked war against the Imperialist Americans to save our country."

THE WAR AGAINST THE BOURGEOIS

All "Bourgeois" (business owners, "rich people," people with properties) got a search and seize of all private properties: gold, diamond, money, houses, land... The people themselves are put to a "new economy" area (a concentration camp where even the basic necessities are lacking) for "re-education" and learn how to labor on the field. In all, some 300,000 people were detained there.  
The next blow was the currency exchange where the value of the money went down to the extent it turned everyone's valuables into nothing. So there we go, social justice for all: we all were equally poor except for member of Rogue party who just seized all our properties!

THE LABOR RE-EDUCATION CAMP

All soldiers serving the south Vietnam in the war report to these camps, most of them located deep in the woods. Depending on their "crime," based on their rank they will serve there from a couple weeks to 20 years. Camps for former officers and functionaries of the Saigon government are usually located in malaria infested jungle areas. Thousands of camp inmates have died from lack of food, medicine, or clothing. Thousands have committed suicide some have been secretly liquidated, others perish through staged “accidents”: For example, former officers are forced to de-activate minefields with their bare hands, so the regime will not have to waste valuable bullets on them. After the officers had mostly “been taken care of, it was the turn of the intellectuals some 2,500 of whom were sent to re-education camps. Among them are journalists, authors, scholars, professors, Western-educated technicians, student leaders, “Third Force” leaders.

THE RATIONING

Families provided with "food card" to go get rice, or oat for free (stimulus, anybody?) for the month which would last about a week. No other means to put food on your table. Companies, businesses, factories are all state owned. All workers are unionized (union = government). I remember my youngest brother woke up in the morning trying to drink hot water to calm his hunger but ended up crying at the hot water pot because it obviously couldn't calm a 3-year-old's hunger!

THE FREEDOM TO TRAVEL AND GATHER

All citizens who wished to travel anywhere (out of the city, to other province...) must acquire a permit. Once got to the destination, he needed to register with local authorities in order to stay there (even for a couple of days)

All gatherings (birthday, family reunion, whatever) must be pre-approved with a permit.

HEALTH CARE

The wonderful state-run health care is free for all. Anyone, including a child can walk into a clinic and get an abortion, an IUD, no question asked. Not much medicine around, mostly domestically made and useless. Human life is cheap. Corruption was everywhere. My brother fell off his bicycle and poke a hole in his rib case near a "children" hospital. His friends took him there, blood was everywhere. They turned him away because he "wasn't a child" (he was 14!). My other brother needed an emergency blood transfusion in the hospital immediately but they wouldn't do it because my parents didn't have any cash on them to pay for the blood. My aunt ran across the street and pawned her gold chain, saved my brother's life!

 to be continue with Education...

Foreword

Just a place for my life's keepsakes: the love, the laugh and the tear. Maybe one day my kids stumble upon this page and rediscover their mom, themselves.