Tag: Teacher

Insights from the inside

This could also be titled “Full Circle”.

We act out that which triggered us from the inside. Stored up commands.

Encoded instructions (like our own software version if you will).

Years ago, we fled by barge.  FOB. Then when we reached safety, inside secured camp  boundaries, we started to fight our ways to survival: each man to his own. An extended family that fled together ended splitting up into four units: college-bound, work-bound and American-style nuclear family and my mom, left all by herself, a retired school teacher with no taker (sponsorship).

I was completely crushed due to my helplessness: a few months before that, we had already left our house and my Dad. Then my Mom (knowing that she got mess hall pass and a bunk bed to sleep in did not ease my pain).

That’s how dramatic the script was: I was detonated into adulthood with everything (country, culture and cocoon ) disintegrated all around me.

No warning, no orientation. In fact, I missed the pre-registration period when various student organizations recruit incoming freshmen.

No fraternity, no fellowship.

Years later I volunteered to be back at those camps in the South china Seas. Even then, I did not recognize that deep motivation  of ” no man left behind.”

This marine-like motto came from no where. I continued to come back the second time a year later upon graduation from grad school.

It’s a trajectory unavoidable.

The insights came much later. Like yesterday. All of a sudden, the past resurfaced and revealed itself to me. Ah ha.

One guy found me after 31 years. Full circle. I helped him, he now helps me.

Then I realized why I came to help him: I couldn’t have done it for my mom in the early years.

As soon as I could, I did, even for strangers I had yet to meet.

An act of atonement.

Guilt and shame.

How do I live down after the break down.

Now, with distance and time in between, I could connect those dots.

No man left behind.

That’s what makes us who we are: social beings. Yes, we should love ourselves.

But we should not forget those two commandments: Love God and your neighbors.

These actions are not mutually exclusive. Try it, and you will find there are plenty left for  yourself. You see, love is not finite. In fact, the more you use it, the faster it replenished itself. Infinitely. I don’t know much about life, how long it lasts, what does it really mean etc… but I know a thing or two about love, or the lack of it. Especially, when it shows up and plays catch up with you. It hurts. It was real. It exists. Like yesterday, suddenly, this insight came uninvited but got me teary. Then, I was freed.

Mom’s Ao Dai

When I saw a Vietnamese woman on motor bike with helmet, mask, sunglasses, messenger pouch, gloves and Ao-Dai steering her scooter while holding a baby on their way to the sitter, it brought back memories of Mom’s dress.

She was a schoolteacher, deeply committed to and consistent in her multiple roles: mother, teacher, wife, daughter-in-law and friend (to colleagues who also migrated South, all graduated from the same French Lycee up North, which in her times, was big brag!).

Having spent her semi-orphan childhood in dormitory, she made sure we have what she had not: a loving home with home-cooked meals.

Untrained and untutored from day 1, she tried most times, without even taking off the Ao Dai from work. By design or default, she had a good assistant: me. Here, hold the live chicken legs while I slit its throat (all the while, she would pray for its soul – after all, it had been predominantly an agrian culture, with eco and ethno cyclical living in harmony).

Then she would place the boiled chicken on the altar – an offering to our ancestors on the days leading up to Tet or special occasion of extended families gathering to memorialize ancestors.

I learned by observing and via osmosis (run to the market and get me ginger) and by serving/cleaning.

And clean I did, on the cusp of New Year. Mom would put on her Ao Dai right before mid-night, light up three joss sticks and pray to the four corners of the Earth. There was something so sacred (and safe in the midst of a lightening hot war) at countdown. Inspirational enough to my parents who often competed to compose and read aloud a stanza or two to each other (both were well-versed in French …Lamartine, Chopin and Flaubert). Now lost, but once around, a family photo carefully kept in yellowish album, showing their “mon dang ho doi” wedding, on par with Sicilian B/W counterpart minus the dance. Mandarin don’t dance.

I meanwhile tried to finish up my last rinse for the floor in anticipation of a throng of visitors.

Back then, you could hear occasional boom and bang (Chinese enclave was known to spend a fortune on firecrackers e.g. shades of pink and red – color of fortune, evident in spent shells carpeted their lawn, our version of V-J Day ticker-tape parade).

The whole region threw a big New Year Eve party that makes even the dead want to join in.

Years later, Ao Dai evolved in style (Madame Nhu), hence rid of the collar as temperature often rose above 100 Celsius.

But not for my mom.

She stayed on in that northern teacher’s style all the way to NE America, where once again, she trekked snowy roads to the Temple on New Year’s Day. I knew then and even now, she had prayed for me, her youngest who has never traveled traditional safe path (heck, I was too young and too late to the Sexual Revolution of the 60’s).

In contrast, the Road Less Traveled strayed me far from our proverbial tree. The first few feet on student car were the hardest, seeing her wave from my rearview mirror.

This made it hard my whole way to Windy-City Wheaton, to grad school and an uprooted life.

Her picture has been on my altar. I wonder what gift I should get to make worthy a Tet offering (bean bun, bouquet and beer?) Banh chung, bong cuc va bia?

Perhaps the best way to honor and keep her memory is to be the best son/student/self.

I don’t want to see in the rearview mirror shadow of regrets. I realize the only way she could have let me go was for furthering education. Of any in my family, she would be the one who understood it best. Always among the 57 students, year after year, at times, second-generations, for 30 some years, marshalling and motivating them with words and deeds.

When seeing a younger version of her going to work in scooter, mask, glasses and helmet, but still in Ao Dai (Vung Tau resort reception?) holding a baby to the seaside babysitter, I was reminded of her: sacrificial and selfless, a role model to show us the possibility of reaching higher, rising from four feet to become worthy bi-pedalist. Her contribution made our human race all the richer i.e. man shall not live by bread alone.

Si tu n’existais pas, I wouldn’t be here. As a humble keeper of fine and fond memories.

Mom’s Ao Dai

The General Temple

When my mom, a teacher, took me there, I was 5.

This time, I  went there by myself.

Happy Teacher’s Day!

The Temple has always opened to seekers .

On New Year‘s Eve, it’s the equivalent of Times Square .

The crowd, the smell of incense burning and the long line at fortune teller’s dispensary.

It could last till morning.

But then, it’s not surprising to see less traffic here on New Year’s day.

People hesitate to be the first visitor (uninvited) for fear of initiating a chain of  bad luck.

I noticed how spacious the court-yard was, as compared to New Year’s day in my memory.

It’s a 20/80 use of space: 20 percent of the Temple were occupied by 80 percent of worshippers.

According to history, the General went down, like a Captain of the ship, after having set the castle on fire instead of letting it fall into the hands of  advancing French army.

Where once a ruin now an attraction at a busy intersection.

Art students whose school was nearby, sat in groups, in front of their canvasses, and sketched.

Upon entering its gate, I felt small again as memories of boyhood rushing back.

“Hang close to Mom, you don’t want to get lost”.

If I had a wish here at the General Temple, it would be to do my mom proud.

It is undisputed here in Vietnam that education is a lever to a better future.

Unfortunately for many, time in the classroom is perceived as time away from earnings.

Worse off, educational loan has reached 1 Trillion dollars in the US.

With no end in sight.

No one wants to Occupy the school.

Although their parent’s couch is still available, no one wants to occupy it either.

Although the lack of education limits one’s career choices , too much educational debt leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Not until their golden years will students come to appreciate the value of education (life enrichment, art appreciation, in-depth sense of history and personal fulfillment).

For now, what society wants is productivity at the least cost.

In short, harnessed knowledge and repetitive actions (to the point of auto-piloting) are preferred over a contemplative mind.

Charlie Chaplin all over (Un temp modern).

Think not of tomorrow.

Spin the wheel today.

Worry not about the past.

What is the value of a heroic figure who went down for his nation and neighborhood?

What is the value of human intervention and interaction?

What is the value of an educator, a trainer, a mother?

What can’t be monetized, quantified and duplicated , is set aside. Park it.

In Seven Habits of Effective People, we learn that our society values quadrant number 1 (Urgent and unimportant) over quadrant number 2 (Urgent and Important) e.g. environment, worker’s training, infrastructure investment and community development. In short, no commons. Just Ego over Eco.

No wonder on Teacher’s Day, I found the Temple absolutely quiet except for those Art Students.

Outside, the city was bustling with commerce. Perhaps quadrant 1 will continue to occupy everyone’s mind , until New Year’s Eve.

That’s when the wheel pauses, the workers (cogs) can then get off. The soul gets tended to. Incense burned next to fruit offerings on the altar. Just in those few days, the General spirit will be extolled, his legacy affirmed. I can’t even image being there on New Year’s Day. I hope his spirit doesn’t discriminate any one or any day, like today, Teacher’s Day. Seek not the crowd, for they know not what they are doing. At a fork in the wood, I chose the road less travel. Quiet and safe, though not popular or prosperous. Sometimes you have to let the soul have its quiet whispers. Mine got a small dose of stimuli at Lang Ong (the General Temple) and a flashback to those moments with Mom, a dedicated teacher and educator of Vietnam‘s previous generation. Happy Teacher’s Day.

Rough “road” to learning

 Please fasten your seat belts.

The road to learning is rough: one has to survive the transportation to and fro, bullies and academic pressures.

“it’s the same river, same ferry, and coconut trees along the banks, but, it’s different today. The difference is, …today, I am back to school” (paraphrasing a poem by Thanh Tinh)..

When their age, I got picked up by various adults in my household: father, brother, sitter and sister (my mom was a school teacher at another school, so she couldn’t have due to schedule conflict). They picked me up by VeloSolex and Mobylette. Twice my little foot got stuck in the back wheel (once I ended up in the emergency room).

Rough road to learning.

Seeing school children in An Giang getting ferried to school brought back some memories (last week, on PBS Newshour, on the subject of the Keystone pipeline,

one commentator even mentioned that current climate change was due to global increased energy consumption in countries like Vietnam and China etc… That prompted a rebuff from the environmentalist, who said “how much an average Vietnamese uses energy per day compared to the developed world”. We should chroma-key in above picture to make his point).

School could never equip us with survival instincts.

The best teachers can do is to create a sense of normalcy, habit-forming, and hopefully,

plant a desire for further learning.

Besides, they already got “tiger moms” at home who ensure conformity to village life.

Those are end-products based on century-old Mandarin system (to supply new blood to run the admin system).

Except now, we don’t face shortage of labor at all (fewer people are required to produce the same amount of agri and aqua products, fewer employees per factory/offfice square foot etc…No more “where is the white-out”.

Yet, children are risking their young lives to get to school across the river.

Quite a “distant” learning.

Could someone throw a safety jacket?

Here, people blog about  (wearing) “White after Labor Day“.

I just hope that one of those children will make it to the big city, and propel into the big league (statistical outcome of a large gene pool of 90 million). Perhaps through IT, or Math (one already won the most prestigious award).

One charity in the West was exposed for trying to build schools in Afghanistan while pocketing the rest.

He even wrote a book about it. PR man. Opportunist man. Spare a jacket?

I am sure these schoolchildren pick up on some survival skills during their one-hour commute (team work, social awareness etc..) before setting foot in the classroom.

And should one of them be drowned, (as already happened) I hope for the rest a quick move forward over survivor’s guilt.

Those scars take a long time to heal.

I know what I am writing about.

I still have the aching ankle ground by Mobylette to prove it.

It took place from a rough road back from school.

It’s the same road that I saw every day, but the difference was, that day, was the day I arrived home via the hospital. Rough “road” to learning, I tell you.