Tuesday, June 5, 2012 “Learning about my past” Part I

This side-trip to Vietnam was to learn more about my past. I landed in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday evening at 8 pm and my aunt and her son from my “father side” (he’s my uncle who adopted me when his family immigrated to America) picked me up at the airport. There I met a few relatives and they brought me in to their extremely small studio in Saigon (i.e. Ho Chi Minh City, I’m just going to refer it as Saigon from now on) where I spent the night. We also had a long, complicated, and difficult conversation that I was man enough to have and that my uncle relatives needed to understand. There’s been a long drawn out feud between the two families: my uncle’s side of the family and his wife side’s over the house that my uncle built for his mom. This house is more of a curse than anything; there’s no happiness there and only my real mom (sister of my uncle) works there as a house-maid to take care of the house and her mom who is in her late 80s, I think around 87. It turns out that my grandmother has six children--four sons and two daughters, my mom being the second of the last children. They had four sons first and then two daughters. My mom is the fifth child and the first daughter, and my uncle (the one who took me to America) is the eldest son.

To the right is one of my uncle. I think he's the youngest. To his left is his daughter in law and his grand-daughter. This is in Saigon where he and my aunt and cousin picked me up at the airport.  

My cousin, Duy Nguyen. We're both about the same age, his mom is also very close to my mom. He cared for my mom when she was undergoing surgery. 

Duy's mom, the youngest of the six children and who accompanied me to our hometown. Believe it or not, this was what we have for breakfast at 7:30 in the morning--looks like lunch doesn't it? I'm definitely going to put on a few pounds after this trip to Vietnam. hahaha...

coconut is put into the frig and the rinds are cut so that it's clean, unlike in India. But I bet it's a time consuming process. 

Pho for lunch. Really good meat too!

One of the confusion that the relatives from my uncle side of the family has is that his wife has a lot of money and that she sends money back home to her mom and her side of the family and neglecting them. This I debunked immediately, because I believe that they don’t understand how frugally she lives in America. She is one of the most frugal person that I have ever met in my life and growing up with her for 15 years, I know how careful she is with money because she herself doesn’t make anything. She never buys anything new for herself and she would have the same clothing for many many years without complaining a single bit. The money that she makes is hardly anything and what she gives, she gives out of her poverty and nothing else. This they needed to understand before they think badly of her.


Both my adopted parents (i.e., uncle and his wife) have sacrificed their lives in America to make sure all of their children have a better future that they never had. Even though growing up with them was a living nightmare that I do not want to go through again, I am still very grateful for them and what they have done for all their children. They have five children and including me means six mouths to feed. So you can imagine how hard it must have been having six kids to feed in America--I don’t think I would have been able to do a better job than what my uncle and his wife did for their children. And so you can see that I was not going to allow any relatives in Vietnam disparage either one of them. What they needed to understand was that there was no happiness in our family in America. We were extremely poor and were very unhappy. My cousin, Duy Nguyen, did not understand that, but I tried to make him understand with my broken Vietnamese. He said that there are many poor Vietnamese families and yet they are happy, so why is it our family was unhappy. And I tried to tell him that the cause was due to financial stress having to feed six kids and sent whatever money they were able to save back home to Vietnam. But they stuck it out for 15 years until all the children have finished their education and able to support themselves.

Growing up with my uncle, I remember the constant crazy argument that they would have every day  about the big house that my uncle built for his family while neglecting his own children. There were many other bitter arguments that all of the children had to endure so much so that they don’t care anymore about the relatives in Vietnam...and it’s true. My brother and two of my other sister have never been back to visit our relatives. This is my first trip even though I refused to go with my uncle when he visited the country about 7 years ago. And the purpose of my trip was not to really reconnect with anyone but to visit my mom more than anything else. However, it’s been really refreshing to see my cousin Duy who is about my age and his mother, and our grandmothers--both from my uncle’s side and his wife’s side. They reminded me of many memories before I left Vietnam. Memories of me waiting for my mom sitting on a rock waiting for her to come home from work. Memories of how my grandmother comforted me when I was about to leave for America saying that I would someday have a better life and then be able to support my mom. All of this grieved me very much seeing how much my mom had to endure all these years.