Resilience

Ability to press “re-set” after a serious setback. Ability to call “hell” home. My mom was certainly resilient. I grew up watching her multi-task, day and night. And from hearing stories that now turned legends, I look up to her even more. I want to emulate and follow her footsteps.

She was raised in a French orphanage, obtained her teaching credentials and turned refugee twice in her sorry life. Her cousins, however, were stinky rich, owning tea plantations in Northern Vietnam. Mom had to flee the safety of family to find work ( in today’s terms, it would be to travel to Odessa oil field to find work). I remember her older students taking their kids – then new students- to our house to pay respect on the third day of Tet.

Hard times did not get her down: 2 million died of starvation in 1945, the country’s partition in 1954 (when she migrated South) and the last day of Vietnam (War). Mom kept going, kept learning (Vietnamese, French and English). I found her reading outside a Winchester nursing home in Spring time, or dragging a gallon of milk back to her assisted living apt near Seven Corners, VA where I once took a nap, the best nap I have ever had.

She taught me to respect all things, creatures big and small. To agree to disagree but doing so politely. And above all, save up for upcoming hard times. She wrote to my older siblings, pleading for my case. Although she never walked me to school (she had a conflict of schedule, teaching at another Elementary out of the way), she did not miss my graduate-school graduation 12-hour drive away. Her life can be summed up in one word: resilience. When her hip gave ways and she was buried in Fairfax, VA, the tombstone showed an opened book, half-way read.

I realize it’s a tough act to follow. I will have to finish those chapters, that book. I will have to bounce back after serious setbacks. I will have to allow her to live through me. To give to others, to impart the knowledge and experience life journey have taught both of us. That journey tastes more bitter than sweet and has more thorns than roses. Nevertheless, it plays right into her place, our place in the universe: she was and still is a force for good. Myriads of setbacks from orphanage to old home and in between only served to strengthen her resilience. A character trait that only shows, not in the absence of setback , but in the face of and in spite of it.