Hau and Kim at Yosemite National Park
circa 1983
The story of Hau and Kim
by Catherine Mylinh
October 1, 2006
One of my earliest memories is sitting in the backseat of an early 1970s Chevrolet Nova with my younger brother, Peter. It was a junky piece of metal, the white paint chipping off, the upholstery, a gaudy bright blue. My parents were in the front. All around us the flood waters were rising during a particularly bad storm. Peter and I were terrified.
"Everything's going to be okay," my dad said.
And it was.
It was the early 1980s and we were living in New Orleans. A lot of Vietnamese refugees immigrated to the Bayou State after the fall of Saigon because there's a fantastic shrimp industry there and that's what they knew to do. However, my father, Hau, and my mother, Kim, knew nothing about crustacean; they had been raised in the city back home and considered themselves young, cool, educated hipsters. We'd been in the country for about two years and were living in Louisiana with my grandparents, who'd arrived to the states first. One day, after much thought, my dad decided there were better opportunities in California. And, like any typical Asian family, my grandparents agreed to follow us out there as soon as we'd settled.
So west we went.
When we arrived in California, we lived in Sunnyvale, south of San Francisco. My parents scraped what little money they had saved and rented a garage that had been converted into a bedroom. We also rented a room from a nice lady. She had two grown children: a son was who away at school, and a daughter who played tennis. She was rarely home because she had a rich boyfriend who took her on expensive cruises. We had free range of the family room, one bathroom and the kitchen.
My mother and father would take turns looking after Peter and me, as the other went job hunting. "They're making computers out here. That's where the money is!" my father would always excitedly claim in Vietnamese.
But those first few years were a struggle. Both my parents had fled war-torn Vietnam with nothing but a few photographs of their wedding day and the clothes on their backs. They had decided to stay after the Americans pulled out, optimistic South Vietnamese forces would win the civil war. After the Viet Cong entered Saigon, they knew it was not the same country.
My parents rarely speak about the night they left their land. What little I've been able to glean paints a horrifying picture. They left in the middle of the night, paying a fisherman to take them out to sea. Hundreds of boats carrying thousands of refugees fled for the Philippines, China, Indonesia. My grandparents told me Thai pirates came abroad their ship, robbed them, burned their belongings and threw the men in the ocean.
I tell my coworkers I once lived in a cardboard box and they laugh. It's true. My parents' boat took them to Malaysia, where I was born. We lived in a refugee camp made of large cardboard boxes, held together by electrical tape and string. I have the pictures to prove it. We stayed nearly a year before our papers were approved and we were on our way to the U-S of A.
Like I said, those first few years were a struggle. My parents have never believed in welfare, saying, "If you can walk, you can work." In Louisiana, my father held several jobs while struggling to learn English. My mother did the same. I remember my dad coming home early in the morning with candy for Peter and me. (One of his jobs was as an overnight cashier at a 7-11. He quit after some men robbed him at gunpoint one night.)
But in California things were different. With their broken English, my parents were able to secure jobs as technicians with blue chip companies in Silicon Valley.
We moved out of that garage after about six months and got ourselves a little apartment in Santa Clara. And like they promised, my grandparents made the trek out west and joined us. They took care of us kids while my parents went to work. And still, even though they could have chosen not to, my parents both held two jobs each. I saw my mother for only a few hours a day before she'd leave for her swing-shift. "We're going to buy a house soon and you can have your own bedroom," she'd promise me every afternoon before she headed out the door.
She was right. Within eight years of arriving in this country, my parents were able to purchase an 1,800 square-foot piece of the American dream. They bought our home before it was even built. On Saturdays, they would drive Peter and me out to the dirt lot so we could watch first the foundation being laid, then the wood frame being erected, then the insulation being weaved in. I didn't realize it at the time but the slow construction of this home would be the symbol of my parents' freedom.
Today, my parents are American citizens. They own their own home. They own their own business. And still, in true fashion, they hold conventional, 9-to-5 jobs. My dad is now an engineer at the company he's been with for years. My mother continues to work in high tech. They've put me through college and are doing the same for my brother. They're looking forward to retirement.
My parents' story is the one I love to tell. When I left for that little town in the desert for my first reporting gig, I was a long way from home, terrified, in a strange place. But I would think of what my parents went through: how they came to this country without a penny to their names, where they did not even know the language; how they have thrived.
And I think back to one of my earliest memories: an old Chevy, rising flood waters, a Vietnamese immigrant couple and their two young children in the backseat.
I hear my dad, loud and clear, "Everything's going to be okay." And it is.
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