“Tr… Trương… Vinh… Diệu… Chân?”
The teacher’s voice stretched across the room like someone trying to lift a heavy curtain.

I felt every eye land on me.
My name was too long for my small body, too tall for me to stand inside it.
Other children’s names fluttered in and out of attendance like sparrows.
Mine took up the whole doorway.

Childhood

When recess came, a boy pointed at me and laughed.
“Chân means ‘foot,’ right? Foot! Foot! Foot!”

I pretended not to care.
But inside, the word pressed against my ribs.
I didn’t know why my father had chosen it.
I only knew the name was nothing like the girl who kept tripping over her own shoelaces
and always sat at the bottom of the class chart.

At home, I asked him once,
“Ba, sao tên con dài quá vậy?”
Dad, why is my name so long?

He only smiled the way adults do
when they’re looking at a future the child cannot see.
“Một ngày nào đó, con sẽ hiểu.”
“One day, you will understand.”

I didn’t believe him.
Not then.

Many Years Later

Decades after that schoolyard, I found myself interviewing Vietnamese artists—men who carried the old world in their breath.
One of them paused halfway through our conversation and looked at me carefully.

“Cô tên gì?”
What is your name?

When I told him, he leaned back as if he already knew my father.
“Ba cô chắc là người tri thức.
Tên này… đẹp lắm. Có ý.”
“Your father must be a thoughtful man.
This name… it’s very beautiful. It carries intention.”

I felt something shift—small, but unmistakable.
Like a door unlocking in a house I thought I had already walked through.

He recited a line of classical Hán-Việt verse
“Thập niên chi mộc, bách niên chi nhân.”

Then translated it softly:
“Trồng cây thì mười năm, trồng người thì trăm năm.”
“It takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to cultivate a person.”

I suddenly remembered my father’s smile.
The one I hadn’t understood.

After that conversation, I went looking for the meaning of each word—as if searching for pieces of myself scattered across languages.

Trương — a bow pulled back, holding tension, holding possibility.
Vĩnh — something that lasts, even when life does not.
Diệu — a quiet magic you only notice if you slow down long enough to see it.
Chân — the truth that remains after everything else is peeled away.

Four characters, each rooted in an older language.
Four small doors.
Four ways of being asked to grow.

I realized then that a name doesn’t wait for you to deserve it.
It waits for you to grow into it.

Sometimes slowly.
Sometimes painfully.
Sometimes without knowing that you are walking toward it at all.

These days, when someone asks for my name, I don’t shrink.
I let it arrive in the room fully—long, steady, deliberate—
the way my father must have imagined it.

And on certain mornings, when the light falls just right,
I feel something inside me standing a little taller,
as if the name is still unfolding—
still teaching,
still calling,
still stretching outward in ways I have yet to understand.

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Chị Hà’s voice trembled as she spoke those words, and the entire bus fell silent.

I was nineteen in the summer of 2000, the youngest passenger on a tour from Vietnam to Cambodia—a journey I thought would be about ancient temples and historic sites. Instead, I found myself surrounded by veterans of the “forgotten war.” My life until then had been as uncomplicated as a blank sheet of paper.

The woman who spoke sat near the front, early forties, with a face that held both warmth and an unmistakable sadness. When she began to tell her story, I had no idea I was about to hear something that would stay with me forever—or that I wasn’t ready for what came next.

Her voice trembled as she recalled that desperate warning from when she lived near the border between An Giang Province (Vietnam) and Kandal and Takeo Province (Cambodia). One moonlit night, she said, terror swept through her village. People sprinted down the dirt road, bare feet slapping the ground as they fled the Khmer Rouge soldiers. The air was thick with panic—rushed whispers, muffled sobs, and the rustling of bodies pushing against each other.

“No time to ask questions. No time to think. We just ran,” she said softly.

She recounted how she and her sisters were separated in the chaos. Hiding in a bush, she cowered under branches that clawed her arms, fearing for her life. At dawn, she returned to unimaginable horror: the bodies of mutilated and dismembered men, women, children lay everywhere. She found her parents and sisters among the dead.

I felt a knot tighten in my throat. My ears burned, and I noticed her polite smile give way to raw, heart-rending pain. My hand started sweating as I tried to absorb the shock of her words. After a long pause, I managed to ask in Vietnamese:

“Chị Hà ơi, chị bao nhiêu tuổi lúc đó?”
How old were you back then?

“Mười tám,” 18, she replied.

She was younger than I was at that time. Around us, people on the bus bowed their heads, silently honoring her lost family.

Chị Hà continued the story. After losing her family, she joined the army to protect those living near the border. She had no time to grieve, no time to process what had happened. As she put it: “I was young, and so much had already occurred. I just kept moving forward.”

Six months into her service, her platoon was ambushed by Pol Pot forces. One of her female comrades was captured. When they found this friend, she was lying on the ground—naked and brutally violated. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“They planted a bomb in her private parts,” Chị Hà said, her voice trembling.

She and her team quickly backed away, horrified. Moments later, the bomb exploded, destroying her friend’s body even further. No one else was hurt physically, but the emotional impact was unforgettable. They stared at each other in numb shock, a coldness filling the air that words could never describe.

I could barely breathe after hearing this. I looked around the bus, and every passenger wore a haunted expression. For a while, no one spoke. Finally, a man named Hung stood up and introduced himself, offering his own wartime experience. Others soon followed, sharing stories that delved deeper and deeper into darkness. Fear and overwhelming sadness welled up inside me until I could no longer listen. I pressed my hands over my ears, seeking some refuge from the horror.

Yet, Minh, my older sister, continued listening intently—she was much braver than I was. We eventually arrived in Phnom Penh, each of us weighed down by what we had heard.

In the early afternoon, while the group checked into a hotel, I wanted to find Chị Hà. I still had questions about her decision to return to a place filled with such horrific memories. Minh noticed me slipping away and tried to stop me: “Ừn, em đừng hỏi nữa, sẽ làm chị ấy buồn.” “Un,” she called me by my family nickname, “don’t ask more questions; it’ll only make her sad.”

But when Minh got distracted, I approached Chị Hà anyway. I’ve always had a habit of speaking my mind—not out of boldness, exactly, but because my curiosity tends to grab hold and won’t let go until I ask. A quiet, honest question feels like the only way forward.

She was sitting by the lobby window, gazing out at the busy streets of Phnom Penh. I sat next to her and asked quietly: “Why come back here? Aren’t you afraid those terrible memories will haunt you again?”

She gave me a gentle smile. Despite everything, her face still held an almost radiant kindness—like a white daisy in full bloom.

“The war ended a long time ago, but for me, it feels like just yesterday,” she said. “Every night I dream of those scenes. The older I get, the more clearly I remember everything. My comrades and I took part in that war—we’ve had to struggle with the memories. Many nights I can’t sleep, thinking of my comrades, thinking of my family.”

She paused, then added: “I can only hope to let go of some part of it. By seeing their country, seeing their people, and feeling compassion for them. They suffered even more than we did.”

I swallowed hard. “Are you sure that will work?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “but I’ll try anything to ease those horrifying memories.”

Just then, Chị Hà mentioned that some in the group were planning to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum that evening.

“Do you want to come along?” she asked.

I felt a mix of emotions swirling inside me. I was nervous. Scared. A part of me wanted to go, to see it for myself to understand the pain etched into those walls and honor those lost lives. But another part of me wasn’t sure if my mind was strong enough. Just hearing Chị Hà’s story left my chest heavy. I could already feel that the museum would ask more of me than I could give.

Before I could respond, Minh appeared behind me, her hand landing gently but firmly on my shoulder.

“She’s not going,” she said with finality.

Then she looked at Chị Hà and added quietly, “But I will.”

I didn’t argue. I couldn’t. That moment split me open—not with anger, but in quiet, aching tenderness. In Minh’s eyes, I was still the youngest sister who needed protecting, not yet strong enough to step into the darkness and return untouched. Part of me wanted to resist, to prove I could face it, but another part understood she might be right.

After dinner, I lay on my hotel bed, the thin glow of streetlight slipping through the curtains and drifting slowly across the ceiling. The air felt heavy, thick with the faint scent of damp wood and the smoky breath of traffic seeping in from outside. My throat was dry. My heart beat slowly but heavily, each thud dragging my body as if through deep water. Chị Hà’s words still echoed in my mind that night—the dirt kicking up under bare soles, the bodies that littered the dawn, and her friend turned into a weapon. I tried to imagine what waited inside the museum: the musty air soaked in grief, photographs staring straight through you, and the kind of silence that’s never truly silent.

An electric shiver ran down my spine, both pulling me forward and holding me back. Curiosity whispered, “If you saw it with your own eyes, maybe you’d understand what no story can reach.” But fear replied, “If you go in, it might leave a mark you can never wash away.” Minh knew that. She knew I wasn’t ready—not yet—to face a darkness that could cling for a lifetime.

Minh returned late from the museum. She sank onto the bed with a long, heavy sigh and didn’t say a word. She hardly slept for months afterward. The look in her eyes said everything. She wasn’t just being firm. She was being protective, like a mother shielding her child from something she’d once seen and never forgotten. To her, I was still the baby sister. The one she carried when our parents were too busy, the one she struggled to teach homework, the one she still wanted to keep safe—even from history. So in that moment, I decided to let it go. I chose to honor that protection, even as I wrestled with questions in my heart.

Seeing how people like Chị Hà and my sister Minh chose to face those memories made me realize that “letting go” isn’t simple. Sometimes you have to stand right in front of the past—in the very places where it happened—to begin releasing it. Sometimes you have to wait until you’re strong enough.

At nineteen, I covered my ears. But Chị Hà’s words found me anyway, and they’ve lived in me ever since. Maybe telling their story is how I finally face what I couldn’t then—how I honor both their courage and Minh’s protection.

Before I tell this story, I want to bow my head in thanks to your Ông Ngoại—my father. He was not gentle in his teaching. Each morning before school and each evening after dinner, he called me out into the courtyard. My bare feet pressed against the cool cement, my arms trembling as I held a stance for what felt like forever. The sharp thwack of a bamboo stick against the ground snapped whenever I lost focus. My muscles ached, my hands blistered, but he would only say, “Lại nữa, con. Again.”

At the time, I thought it was punishment. I didn’t know it was love. Ten years of sweat and stubborn discipline carved something into me deeper than bruises or sore bones. He was teaching me to stand firm, to see danger before it struck, to know that even a small body can hold great strength if the spirit inside refuses to bow.

I didn’t realize then that he was preparing me for a night when the lessons of kung fu would no longer be just drills, but the thin line between fear and survival.

Tokyo, the end of summer

My daughter, you and I were wandering through a city of bright lights and tangled trains, learning to read the maps as if they were riddles. On one ride, you told me about London, where you once visited a friend. You described men hiding cameras to take secret photos of girls, and how some trains were reserved only for women.

“Maybe they have that here too,” you said.

I asked you, “And what if they don’t? Would you feel unprotected?”

You nodded.

So I told you: “I never wait for the system to protect me. Because if I do, I’ll always depend on others. Thanks to your Ông Ngoại, I learned early to protect myself.”

And as I said that, I realized I had been asked the same question once not with words, but in the silence of a dark alley when I was fifteen. Let me tell you about that night.

The Dark Alley

I was fifteen.

The schoolyard had emptied, and the last slant of daylight was slipping away. I walked home through a narrow alley. Shadows pressed in, the kind that make silence feel heavier.

A man appeared, walking straight toward me. He looked thirty, maybe older—bigger, stronger. His right shoulder rolled forward with power, his left leg dragged just slightly. My mind made its calculations automatically: weight, height, weaknesses, distance. My father had trained me for this.

Ten steps ahead, I noticed a stone—two pounds, enough to use. In my bag, I remembered the long, sharp scissors I carried for school.

Then he smiled—a grin that curled my stomach—and pulled his pants down.

The world shrank. My pulse hammered against my ribs.

In one motion, I leapt sideways, scooped up the stone, scissors in the other hand. My voice exploded out of me, raw and fierce:

“Pull your thing back up—or I’ll cut it off!”

I stepped closer—one, two, three. My mind stayed sharp: if he lunged, I’d strike his throat, sweep his weak leg, finish it with the blade.

For the first time, he looked uncertain. Then he yanked his pants up and bolted into the shadows.

When he was gone, my knees trembled. Sweat ran down my back even though the night air was cool. My hands shook so hard I could barely keep hold of the scissors but I refused to drop them. Fear was in my body, but my voice still rose, louder that the dark:

“Do you think I’m scared of your elephant trunk? Try again, and you’ll lose it for good!”

My hands were shaking, but I held steady. When I left that alley, I told everyone I met what I had seen. Fear wasn’t meant to be swallowed—it was meant to be spoken, so others could be safe too.

My daughter, this is why I tell you: danger is everywhere—in alleys, on trains, even in places that look safe. We cannot predict when it will come.

That night, I wasn’t a victim. I was my father’s daughter. And one day, I hope you’ll carry that same fire strength not just in your hands, but in your heart.

It was just me, my body, my training, and my will. If not for kung fu, I might have been another girl’s whispered warning.

The system didn’t save me. Kung fu did.

That’s why I believe every girl should learn to defend herself—not just for health, not just for strength, but so it becomes part of who you are. A habit. A way of walking in the world with your head high and your heart steady.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is knowing fear—then stepping forward anyway.

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Every street sign in my town had one slogan:

“Dù gái hay trai, hai con là đủ.”

“Whether a boy or girl—two kids is enough.”

I never really knew what that meant back then. I just knew it sounded important and kind of bossy, like most things adults say.

I wasn’t like the other girls in my neighborhood. They were busy being smart and proper. Me? I preferred hanging upside down from the longan tree, letting the world wobble like a bowl of soup. That tree branch was my thinking chair, my nap spot, and my lookout tower.

“Chị Un! Hôm nay có trò gì chơi không?”

“Big Sister Un! What are we playing today?”

I peeked down. There they were—my two loyal sidekicks, Nhi (age 6) and Bé Ba (age 5). They weren’t my brothers, but they followed me around like ducklings. If I was peeling potatoes, they’d sit in silence. If I was napping, they’d guard me from imaginary dragons.

I sighed dramatically. “I haven’t thought of anything yet…”

But Bé Ba came running back like a squirrel with a stolen treasure.

“Look what I found!” he shouted, holding up a wrinkled little packet.

We opened, and inside we found a peculiar, floppy balloon. No cartoon faces, no colors—just one long, stretchy mystery tube. It looked like something a doctor might use or a magician might hide up their sleeve. It smelled like a new raincoat.

He blew it up. I blinked.

“Woooow. That’s the longest balloon I’ve ever seen.”

It swayed like a confused eel, then plopped down. We tried to tie it off, but it kept slipping out of our fingers like it was shy.

“I got it!” I yelled. “Let’s make a balloon tree!”

We started decorating the longan tree like it was Lunar New Year, hanging those weird balloons from every branch like… like… fruit? Jellyfish? Sausages? Nobody knew. Some dangled, while others shot off into the bushes with a squeal.

To test its strength, we poured water into one—just to see what would happen. It grew. And grew. It looked like it could water the whole neighborhood if it popped.

“This is a rain balloon now,” I said, seriously. “Science.”

The three of us climbed into the branches to admire our masterpiece. I was 11, basically a tree engineer by then. Nhi and Bé Ba were buzzing with pride. For a moment, it felt like we’d built something important. Maybe even magical.

And then… the grownups came home.

They stood under the tree with their mouths open like frogs in a thunderstorm.

“WHO. DID. THIS?!”

They didn’t laugh. They didn’t clap. They just started yanking the balloons down like they were toxic. One uncle nearly fell off the fence trying to reach one way up top.

I stayed quiet.

I didn’t know why they were mad. It was just a tree. With balloons. Beautiful, stretchy, mysterious balloons. Why were adults always ruining the fun?

Later that night, we sat in the dark. Our neighborhood only had electricity three nights a week. No TV, no radio. Just the sound of crickets and the occasional adult sigh.

I looked up at the longan tree, now bare again, and whispered to Bé Ba:

“Next time, we will hide them better.”

He nodded like a soldier.

“There’s a dead body at Bà Mười’s house… it was a murder,” one of them whispered, his voice trembling. He looked around. “Do you want to see it?”

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Bà Mười worked for the new government at the time, holding the power to decide who could stay in the village and who would be forced to leave for the distant, undeveloped “Kinh Tế Mới” economic zones. Her house was located just fifteen minutes away from ours, up in the neighborhood everyone calls the “upper village.” All the people in our area knew Bà Mười because of her authority. She was friendly enough to us children, often smiling or nodding as we passed by, but families who had worked for the old government rarely received any warmth from her.

A dead body and murder. I had never seen one before. My heart pounded, not with fear but with curiosity. Death was just a word, something from stories my siblings told at night, full of ghosts and shadows.

So when asked “Do you want to see it?” of course, I answered, “yes.” And we ran.

As we reached Bà Mười’s house, the air felt wrong. The evening breeze had stopped. The cicadas, usually so loud, had gone silent. The kitchen door was open, swinging slightly as if someone had just passed through.

Then I smelled it. A mix of something sweet and something sour. Incense smoke. Flowers. And something heavier, something metallic. Something my young mind could not yet name.

The other kids pushed me forward. I stepped onto the hard dirt floor, and my eyes landed on the first thing— the blood.

It was dark and thick, pooled near a long knife that gleamed in the dim yellow kitchen light. My stomach twisted and hurt, but I couldn’t look away. Then I saw the white chalk lines.

And inside the white chalk lines, Bà Mười was lying there.

She wasn’t moving. Her body looked stiff, twisted in a way that didn’t seem real. Her hair was matted to the side of her face; one of her hands held the bloody area, and the other hand was over her head. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I saw what was next to her: green bananas and a bundle of tuberose flowers. Their white petals were still fresh, glowing faintly under the flickering candlelight.

Tuberose—those heavy, milky-sweet flowers that bloom at night—filled the room with a scent that didn’t belong. Thick, lush, and too sweet, like perfume spilled in a sickroom.

The smell stuck to my nose, wrapped around my throat. My chest tightened. I wanted to turn away, but I couldn’t. It was as if the tuberose itself had trapped the moment in amber, refusing to let me look away.

I heard whispers behind me.

“Thằng Đê giết bà ấy!”

Đê. I knew that name. Everyone in the upper village knew that name.

He was young, just a little older than my oldest brother. They sent him away to Kinh Tế Mới before I was even born. I didn’t really know what “Kinh Tế Mới “ meant, but I’d heard grown-ups whisper about it when they thought no kids were listening. They said families who went there didn’t come back the same—if they ever came back at all. There was never enough food to eat, and mosquitoes as big as bees bit people all night. The forest was full of animals that made people sick. I imagined snakes hiding under their beds, rats running around their feet when they tried to sleep, and people shivering with fevers they couldn’t escape.

Đê’s family had been sent there. His father died first, then his little brother, and another sister. Some said it was sickness. Others said it was hunger.

Now, Đê had returned, but not as the boy who had left—he came back with anger in his chest and a knife in his hand.

I didn’t know what anger that big could feel like. I didn’t understand how grief could turn into something sharp, something deadly. But standing there, staring at the blood on the floor, I knew that whatever had happened to Đê had followed him home.

I couldn’t breathe. The walls felt too close. The incense smoke curled toward the ceiling, twisting into shapes I didn’t want to see.

Then I ran.

I ran past the darkening houses, past the voices of the village women whispering, past the fields that stretched toward longan trees and large tamarind trees with big branches. I could imagine Bà Mười’s dead body lying there in my mind. I closed my eyes and ran as fast as I could. I didn’t stop until I was home, throwing myself into bed and yanking the blanket over my head. I squeezed my eyes shut, but I could still see the chalk outline, the blood, the sweet smell of tuberose.

That night, I didn’t eat. I didn’t speak. I didn’t sleep. I kept the window by my bed closed.

Days later, I heard my mother whispering to my father.

“Thằng Đê bị bắt rồi. Ba nó chết. Em nó chết. Nó hận Bà Mười vì đưa nhà nó đi Kinh Tế Mới. Nó về giết bà.”

“Thằng Đê was arrested. His father died. His younger sibling died. He hated Bà Mười for sending his family to the New Economic Zone. He came back and killed her.”

The police had taken Đê away.

I imagined him sitting in a dark cell, the smell of blood still clinging to his hands. He was only twenty-five, but what would happen to his life next? Was it over?

Bà Mười was gone. De was gone.

The war ended years ago, but it was still taking people—it had taken Bà Mười’s life and Đê’s future. I didn’t understand war yet, but I knew one thing: it wasn’t over, just hiding in the hearts of those who had survived it.

And from that night on, I could never look at green bananas or smell the scent of tuberose the same way again.

I had never met them before because they left Vietnam before I was born. My parents and older siblings used to talk about them like they were heroes. They left when they were just eighteen, young and full of energy. But when they returned, they weren’t the same, according to my parents and neighbors.

Uncle Sau would talk in a strange language at night—words that didn’t belong there. My mother whispered that it was Cambodian. I didn’t understand why he spoke it in his sleep or why his voice trembled between fear and anger. His words drifted through the quiet village like ghosts searching for a way home.

Uncle Nam, on the other hand, was always quiet, like a shadow moving without a sound. If Uncle Sau was fire, burning with something he could never put out, then Uncle Nam was stone, heavy and still.

I was a curious child, always asking questions. One evening, I sat beside Uncle Sau as he stared at the sky. “What happened in Cambodia?” I asked, expecting an adventure story, like the ones my oldest brother told me about heroes and ghosts.

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He looked at me for a long time before sighing. “We were lucky, little one. We came home with all our arms and legs. Some never came home at all.” His voice was heavy, like a rock sinking in the water.

As the days passed, I noticed more things that didn’t make sense. My uncles never slept at night. While the rest of the village rested, they sat outside my grandmother’s house, awake in the dark. Uncle Sau started drinking from a glass bottle that smelled sour. “It helps him sleep,” my mother told me. But the more he drank, the louder he became—yelling at the neighbors, at the sky, at the war. He was angry at everything and nothing at the same time.

Uncle Nam didn’t drink. He just sat there, quiet, always staring into the distance, as if his body had returned but his soul was still somewhere far away.

I didn’t understand why they had no home of their own or why they couldn’t go back to who they were before. The war was over, but it still clung to them like a shadow that never faded.

One night, as I lay in bed, I listened to Uncle Sau whispering in his strange language, his voice rising and falling like the wind before a storm. Uncle Nam sat beside him, silent as always. I pulled my blanket up to my chin and whispered to myself, “If they are home now, why do they still seem so lost?”

Her name was “Mẹ Cơ.” Not her birth name, but the affectionate title everyone used—‘Mẹ’ means Mother, and ‘Cơ’ her given name.

He had come to Vietnam, to my hometown, in search of her. But everything had changed since 1972. The road, the houses, even the people—he could no longer find the place he once knew. It was the first time since the war that Vietnam had opened its doors to American visitors, and I couldn’t understand why this man, with “his blonde hair and blue eyes,” as the radio host described him, was calling an old Vietnamese woman “mother.”

We were taught in school that “Đế Quốc Mỹ là xấu”—Imperialist America is bad. But this man’s voice, shaking on the radio, made me wonder if there was more to the story than what we were told.

For three weeks, I listened to it every day, waiting for news, while helping my grandmother prepare a meal Then one afternoon, the radio host announced that someone had found Mẹ Cơ.

The soldier rushed to her house, but when he arrived, all he saw was an altar. A single framed picture of an old woman stared back at him. She was gone. My heart felt heavy, I moved closer to the radio.

He fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. “Mẹ ơi, con về trễ rồi”—“Mother, I came back too late!”

I imagined the scene as the host described it. The soldier saw a small plate in front of the altar, and inside was a ring. He picked it up, turning it over in his fingers, his breath hitching. It was his. His name and his wife’s name were engraved on the inside.

Turning to the woman who now lived in the house, he asked for a hug. Without hesitation, she embraced him, and they both cried.

Mẹ Cơ had been a single mother. Her husband had died in the First Indochina War in 1954, leaving her to raise five children—four sons and a daughter. One by one, her sons joined the war, fighting as Viet Cong soldiers. Three never came home. The last one was still somewhere in the jungle, and Mẹ Cơ was left alone with her young daughter.

Back in 1972, her daughter was studying in town and couldn’t safely travel back home due to the constant threat of the war, leaving Mẹ Cơ to live alone.

One evening, she found an American soldier crawling into her yard, bleeding heavily from a wound in his leg. He was barely conscious, his body shaking with pain. She froze.

He was the enemy, the reason her sons had died.

She could have turned him in and reported him to the Viet Cong soldiers who patrolled the village.

But when she looked into his face, she didn’t see an enemy. She saw someone’s son. A young man, no older than her own children, afraid and in pain.

Her heart clenched, but she hid him. She moved him into the rice warehouse, cleaned his wounds, and wiped away his blood where he had crawled. That night, the Viet Cong came through the village, asking about an American soldier. She stayed silent.

The next day, she intentionally cut her own hand, making the wound deep enough to need medicine. This gave her an excuse to visit the doctor, where she secretly gathered the medical supplies she needed to treat him. She nursed him back to health in secret for two weeks, risking her life every day.

When he could finally walk again, she disguised him in her son’s old clothes. Wrapping a scarf around his face, she led him through the village, pretending he was her nephew as she walked toward town. When they reached the edge of the safety area, she pointed him toward the American base.

Before he left, he took off his ring, smooth and still warm, and placed it in her hands.

“To remember me.”

Then, with tears in his eyes, he hugged her tightly one last time.

He never forgot her. Time went by, the American government had an oppressive embargo against Vietnam making it unsafe to travel but decades later, when it was finally safe to return, he found her too late; instead, he found her daughter.

Holding her hands, he said, “Mẹ Cơ saved my life. She was my mother. And you—you are her daughter. That makes you my sister.”

The daughter told him that her last brother had died in 1975. Her mother had lived the rest of her life alone, missing her children and holding onto the memories of war.

And the ring, she had never sold it. She never lost it.

“It was a piece of a life she saved. A reminder of love, even in war.” I sat there, listening to the radio, my heart full.

I had learned about the war in school, but I had never learned about this love, about compassion, about forgiveness. Mẹ Cơ had lost her own children to war, yet she had still saved the life of a soldier—one who had fought on the other side. She had looked past politics, past hatred, past grief. She had simply seen a person in need.

That day, I realized that war does not make people enemies. It is fear, pain, and loss that divide us. But kindness—kindness has the power to bring us back together.

Sometimes, when we talk about war, we focus on the bombs and the bullets, on everything that’s been destroyed or lost. But what resonates with me most in Mẹ Cơ’s story isn’t the violence. It’s the warmth of her heart— the way she chose compassion over anger at a moment when most people would have chosen otherwise.

I grew up understanding that Vietnamese mothers embody a special kind of love: it’s patient, unwavering, and, most of all, boundless. Even though Mẹ Cơ had every reason to hate the soldier—she saw past the uniform—past the tragedy of her own sons. She recognized a human being in pain. In that instant, she was not thinking of sides or politics; she was simply a mother who saw someone’s child in need of help.

That choice to show mercy rather than vengeance taught me something profound: forgiveness isn’t about forgetting what happened; it’s about refusing to let bitterness define us. We can acknowledge the wounds inflicted by war while still reaching out with kindness. Mẹ Cơ lost her sons, but she saved another mother’s son. In doing so, she proved that even in the midst of unimaginable hardship, our capacity for empathy can overcome our fears and our anger.

This story reminds me of the quiet strength many Vietnamese mothers hold in their hearts: an instinct to protect and nurture life, regardless of who stands before them. It shows how a single act of compassion can bridge the gap between enemies, turning them into family, even if only briefly.

That is what I carry with me: the knowledge that a mother’s love transcends borders, ideologies, and resentments. Rather than dwelling on the violence of war, Mẹ Cơ chose love—a love that says, “Yes, we have suffered, but we will not pass on the suffering.” I will never forget her story, because it urges us to see beyond labels of “enemy” or “ally” and recognize the humanity underneath.

In a world that so often chooses war, may we learn to choose love.

My notebook is filled with red ink. My confidence filled with silence.

If you told anyone from my childhood that I’d grow up to be a writer – and not just in Vietnamese, but in English – they would’ve laughed… or looked away with pity.

I’ve carried enough silence in my bones.

I write because it frees me.

Rick Rubin once said, “The person who makes something today isn’t the same person who returns to work tomorrow.” That’s how writing feels to me. Every time I sit down to write, I meet a stronger, freer version of myself.

Childhood

I was five—the smallest child in the classroom, with legs that barely reached the floor and eyes that stayed lowered. While the other kids chatted or kicked their feet under their desks, I sat silently, the book on my desk untouched.

Every morning, my mother waited by the school gate. She never left until she saw me settle into my seat. Her presence was like a thread that kept me from unraveling.

After a few days, the thread loosened. One morning, the teacher called my name and gently placed a book in front of me.

“Let’s read aloud today.”

I stared at the paper. The letters blurred. My chest tightened. A beat passed—then I shot up from my chair, heart pounding. Without a word, I leaped over the low window ledge. In one swift motion, I jumped out of the window and ran home without looking back.

Clearly, I was destined for an Olympic career.

I did it again the second time, and even the third, thinking I had found the perfect escape. But eventually, she caught on. She discovered my fear, pinpointed my reluctance, and one day trapped me by calling my name again. My eyes darted nervously across the page, lips forming soundless words, desperate not to be noticed.

But her piercing gaze didn’t miss a thing. She moved swiftly, the wooden ruler as big as my hand and as long as the size of my body tightly clenched in her hand. My heartbeat quickened as she raised the ruler high, striking sharply against my palm. The sting jolted through my fingers, hot and sharp. Around me, my classmates sat silent, eyes wide, watching. My cheeks burned with embarrassment as she lifted my reddened hand high, a silent warning to everyone else. The lesson was clear—etched deeply into everyone’s memory, especially mine. I wouldn’t dare repeat that mistake again. That was exactly what she wanted.

I was in class but my mind was out of the window!

“A childhood label”

I want to begin with a label that chased me through my school years in Vietnam. Teachers would shake their heads and whisper, “Cha làm thầy mà con lại dốt chữ,” which in English means “Her father is a teacher, yet his daughter can’t read.”

My father was a respected elementary school principal. My six older siblings all earned top grades. I was the outlier—the youngest, the “slow” one. My classmates finished high school in 12 years; I needed 14. They finished university in four; I limped across the stage in five. At night, I would ask my mother, “Am I smart enough for school?” She would smile, wipe fish-sauce scent from her hands—she brewed and sold fish sauce after the war to support us—and say, “Do you want to carry heavy jars to market like me, or sit at a desk like your friends? Keep going.”

What nobody knew then was my brain didn’t process words the way others did. Letters slid across the page and out the window like a mischievous child.

I felt ashamed, and I made myself small. I avoided friends, afraid they’d find out I couldn’t read like them. I kept quiet in class, not because I had nothing to say, but because I didn’t believe my voice belonged there.

A second life in America

After marrying my husband Lucas in 2007, I moved from Vietnam to the United States. I became a mother of two beautiful daughters, and in 2013, we returned to Vietnam so they could grow close to their roots. But in 2022, we came back to Portland to rebuild our lives once again.

That’s when I started working in a local bakery.

I loved that job more than most people might expect. To me, it wasn’t just about baking. It was art. Watching dough transform into the golden croissants felt like magic – how flour, butter, and yeast came together in layers, rising slowly into something beautiful. There’s a kind of poetry in lamination that most people never notice.

My main job was pushing hand pies - repetitive, physical labor that used my dominant side constantly. I’m right handed, and for two years, I used the same shoulder and wrist for long hours without rest. Eventually, I developed a frozen shoulder. Then, when the lamination machine broke down and stayed broken for months, I had to manually pull and guide the heavy sheets through the broken lamination machine - until it pushed my body past its limits. That’s when the pain in my wrist became unbearable. Carpal tunnel syndrome crept in.

I wasn’t alone. One of my co-workers, a friend I admired, had to quit because of the same condition. She didn’t have insurance. She couldn’t keep going. That shook me.

I looked at her – and I looked myself – and I asked:

“How is this the American dream? Where is the freedom in a system that breaks workers but doesn’t protect them?”

When I finally filed a worker’s compensation claim, I thought I was standing up for myself. But instead of receiving compassion, I was treated like a criminal - questioned, doubted, and pushed aside by both my employer and the insurance system. I wasn’t trying to cheat anyone. I was trying to survive.

It broke my heart. Baking was my passion – but I realized I needed to find a new one. One that wouldn’t injure my body. One that couldn’t be taken from me so easily. One that could turn my pain into purpose.

That’s why I went back to school with the goal of becoming a Physical Therapist Assistant. I want to help people like me heal and keep going.

Back to school

Going back to school felt like jumping into a storm of old memories. It was one of craziest decisions I’ve ever made - not because learning scared me, but because school used to be a place of shame, struggle, and silence for me. But I remember what my dad told me:

“A teacher’s belief shapes different students.”

Last year, I sat in a classroom at PCC’s Cascade Campus, clutching a slim storybook in my hands. The chairs around me creaked as students flipped pages. Joanna Sullivan, our ESOL reading teacher, asked us to read and share our thoughts. My heart pounded as I raised my hand—for the first time.

“Chan,” she said, pausing with a thoughtful smile, “do you know you have a unique voice?”

That moment glowed like a candle inside me.

Later, in my writing class, Catherina Thomas leaned over my essay, her eyes misty. “Your stories,” she whispered, “they feel like movies. I laughed, I cried—you made me feel it all. You’re a natural writer.”

By the end of fall term, after diving deep into Reading Level 8 with Lara Mendicino, her words landed like gentle thunder: “Chan, you are a writer.”

And just like the Klamath River when the dams came down, something inside me broke free. I had never written stories in my own language—yet here I was, writing in English, pouring out feelings I had once buried. Now, I let them flow freely onto the page. I rushed forward with quiet, unstoppable belief: I am smart, I am unique, I am a writer.