why should they have it all

We too should get some. Per Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.

As a gentle people, we were “herded” to pre-approved regions, an uprooted version of the Phoenix program.

Our carry on: Black/White photos and sobbing tales:” Uncle Ban took 18 bullets for the team, Cousin Khe split his salary for fellow Parisien students.”

Last month, on President Day, my sister passed away.

With her, our memory keeper, stories of struggle and sorrow were buried. Growing up in turbulent times, she was (I still am not used to past tense in her case) a busting T.V. high schooler in a country where many foreign actors wanted to have a say and foothold. from” the Ugly American” to “the Quiet American”, from Sino to Franco Empire. “Stay the course, to preserve our prestige” (100% goal of US involvement).

After our family migrated South, she on one occasion had a Filipino sent for us in a government-issued car (flapping flag and all) – she took me, her youngest brother, like a pin on the blouse – to attend front-row viewing at our National-Celebration parade.

She got her job training in the Philippines, her first trip alone out of the country. Upon return, she brought home good material for my tailored pants (first time I experienced Santa treatment).

Something about her penchant for travel: train, bus, automobile, plane, cruise ships and finally hearse.

Between her husband and she, they brought home tons of pictures: slides, prints, original 36 shots, polaroids, postcards and travelogs. None the more cherished than Hanoi’s. Something about home that had never left and served as bond between them.

That city that makes and breaks their hearts. Its scenery and smell, music and memories.

Once, I spent a month there, taking in the ambience and atmosphere (before Obama and Bourdain) to understand the adult: field, buffalo (one of the 12 signs), geese and sticky rice ” Ngay tro ve, anh buoc le….ra dung dau ao…co con trau xanh het long giup do”. (the village, the pond, the buffalo and bamboo).

It tore to them having to head South, after an agonizing 300-days deliberation. Worse off, they did not have the support of Northern Vietnamese Catholics who were among the one million intra-national displaced at that time.

Collective and communal, they kept up tradition: “gio chap” (ancestral commemoration with extended families etc..) and traditional card game (which I was glad to refill their tea). Until ideologue and culture shock did them in: “individualism reigns” in America (where one can just pick up and leave in two minutes), she once said.

In the South (of Vietnam) I arrived. Trophy child, I trailed behind four working adults (parents and 2 siblings) while they their life 2.0. They took turn on me like summer lifeguards: here are the guardrails, respect the elders, relatives and elected authorities. Residual message: if you forgot everything, just remember where you come from. Don’t pay attention to other people, no matter how screwed up they might be (or how many Bibles they swore on).

A coup d’etat here, a failed attempt at assassination there; a ceased-fire violation here and a lost honor there. My brother often recounted how devastating horror the bombing at a club was – matinee show – that took his talented friend. Or my brother-in-law saw a Japanese soldier beheaded a child petty thief (whose blood spattered on him, like the biographer in Unforgiven).

It’s we survivors of horror, hanging onto self-respect for the arduous journey. Old timers’ values!

Giay rach phai giu lay le (self-respect first and foremost).

On we live peppered with music (nostalgia) and meals (humble). Some culture we got!

Barely feeling out of the wood when another round of uprooting came due. To our collective shame, we picked up our carry-on and hopped on life 3.0 (my 2.0).

Car keys tossed. Empty handed (as dramatic and showman-like a Vegas card dealer at shift-change) for surveillance and world press cameras.

Re-start and rebuild like an automobile engine whose parts scattered all over. Driving on empty while engine light was on. Tons of steel (helicopter’s) and later, tons of skeleton (Boat People) sunk to the bottom of the Sea.

To re-assemble multiple lives without an INS manual was challenging. We couldn’t have done it, not without muscle memory i.e. once survived North-South, one could rehash East-West.

Education is a must. The brains and the hands. Work and chew (something like sticky rice) at the same time. Then, more potatoes and less beef. Soupy stuff and diluted OJ. In Reagan’s quote “oatmeal meat”.

“Good Will from one end to the other!” (the opposite of Colonial England whose Sun never set on its Empire).

I wish I had kept those tailored pants my sister had brought home. My first “foreign” and Santa exposure, which magically, a premonition of my own: the Subic Bay (Philippines) – only to return years later (Bataan, Philippines) to “pay back and forward”.

Of late, seeing the adult passed was painful. At her funeral, some cried, others prayed. People tossed flowers or gently laid them down, depends on one’s personal perception or self-projection of the End. Like Mandela says, “I am because of you”. The adult’s trek my trajectory. Their breadcrumb now mine.

With my own eyes, I saw the end albeit through a thin veil.

Why should other emigrants e.g. Jews from Germany, Polish from Warsaw etc… get all the good memories (Hollywood and the Holocaust). Ours are also worth noting, if not spicier (unless we prefer “let sleeping dog lie” like Captain Kurt’s line: “Horror Horror”). OK, OK, I got it. Pirates at sea don’t sell popcorn. Tattered outfit (subdue even at the start of the journey) don’t come across cinematically.

Homo sapiens stories (Hamas or Hmong) are lessons in disasters and determination. Stories of struggling women in a warring world, who on occasion claim their rightful front-row seats in a military parade or grateful back-row seat on an Intercontinental UNHCR flight.

All the while, for a few brief moments in between, shined (Or, as a title from one of our very own “half-breeds” …briefly gorgeous). P.S. “I’ll have what she is having”.

We too should get some. As that one-liner by Rob Reiner’s mom:” I’ll have what she is having”.