As you know, I wrote an earlier post about some of the beginnings of my life. If you haven’t read it yet, you should go to my main page and click on the link with the date that says January 20.

Forgiveness is the kind of grace that moves you forward 

So a long time ago (before I was born), my mother lost her bamboo childhood home, where she grew up. She would tell me how harsh the roofs would get, and how difficult it was to harvest leaves to supply the roof of her parents home. Water sometimes seeped through the roof. I would assume they collected water, but I believe her family was too poor to afford a water bucket. They lived impoverished and most of the time they lived without knowing what the world was going to be like for them. Their imaginations were fluttered with, ‘who am I going to be like? My mother? My father?’. They wondered to themselves about how they were going to live for the rest of their lives. Just when everything seemed to be bad, with a low stock of food at my mother’s childhood home. Bombs began blowing up nearby, and her family had to evacuate. My mother then would have to wipe the butts of her siblings, comforting them from the bombs. Their destiny seemed to turn things around for my mother and her family when the war began. 

While my mother and her siblings traveled, there were people shooting after them. However, every passing time the bullets would miss. 

One day, her father told her and her siblings that he would be back with a small bag of rice to feed everyone. After he had gone, he did not come back to them as he said he would. There was an Uncle who supervised my mother and her siblings, and he decided to go and look for their father. However, they all ended up traveling together in search of him. When they got to a neighboring house on the road, they found a Yang family with my maternal grandfather’s pocket money. After seeing that, they had all decided to go travel back where they came from. Sadden they were when their Uncle made the assumption that my grandfather got mugged by a Yang family. No one could tell if my grandfather was still alive, or had survived. But all that remains is a sad and grieving mystery. 

My mother used to say that before the bombs came, my grandfather would always be busy speaking about things with a mayor who owned an airplane. They would always have a meeting at my grandfather’s home. My grandfather once told her that the mayor and him were best friends, and that he would always go do some business trips with him. My grandfather was always busy with that, and sometimes he wouldn’t be home for a long while. After my mother’s mother died of demon possession, my grandfather had to comfort the rest of my mother’s siblings. He even took them to try going on an airplane with his best friend, but my mother was too afraid to go. 

For most of my mother’s life she lived her life in fear, and in sadness. Trauma filled her memories. After some time her father never came back to them. Their uncle supervised them until one day, my mother’s brothers left Laos and Thailand to go to the United States. At the time my mother stayed in contact with her brother, making sure she memorized and kept the mailing address with her at all times so she could write letters to them. One day, there was an Aunt who wanted my mother to get married, because it was custom for girls to go off marrying someone to be their guardian. My mother, who was still very young, felt pressured, and was afraid of rejecting their proposal; which allowed an arranged marriage to happen. That marriage did not last though. My mother was being used to do their farm work, while no one helped nurture her two children; who eventually died of unknown causes. There she lost the two most important little beings who meant the world to her. 

It took a village for her to divorce her ex husband in the past. Because he was so domestically abusive, he forced her onto a canoe boat, leaving her there in the middle of a lake. Luckily there were still people around, and that saved her life. With the help of all the villagers, they all defended my mother. Ever since that day of her divorce, my mother was freed. She didn’t have to do their farm work anymore. She began to stand by valuing herself more when she decided that she wouldn’t marry anyone, or so she thought. 

So, before my mother lost a lot of photos of her family in Laos, so that she could ride the bus to get to the plane ride, the photos only dated back to the late 1960s. She used to carry a ton of photos, wherever she traveled. She was on her way to Thailand, when she bumped into her cousin going in the same direction. He knew that it was unsafe for a woman traveling by herself, so he insisted on traveling with my mother until my mother got on an airplane to get to Thailand. When she arrived in Thailand, she met a Hmong man along the way. He ended up asking my mother to marry him. My mother was hesitant at first, but he instead decided to ask her how much she wanted to go to the United States. And she said she wanted to follow her brothers to the United States. And he told her that the only way she could go to the U.S. was if she married him. My mother, who was lean and malnourished, thought the handsome young man tried to find a way to marry her. But because it was custom for men to ask women to marry them ( to whom they were really interested in marrying in a short amount of time), my mother decided to marry him. Marriages were made out of partnership, and made out of so many reasons. And marriages like the one that my mother was in, love grew over time. One of the saddest things that could happen in lovely marriages, is if the significant other doesn’t want to follow the same path. 

After my older half brother was born, my mother asked if his father wanted to go to the United States. He said he didn’t want to follow that path. My mother was heart broken. My brother’s father insisted that she and my older half brother go to the United States, and that he’ll think about coming to the United States. By that time it was time for my mother and him to depart. My mother asked him one last time, “ Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”. With love and sadness, he said, “, I can’t go with you.”. Knowing that his parents still lived in Thailand, he knew he had to take care of them too. My mother, who was very afraid of being alone, knew that she probably won’t be able to see him again. When she finally arrived to go to the United States, her sponsor was there to take her in. Ofcourse, he couldn’t go with her. No one was sponsoring him. He also had another woman to take care of. And that was the one thing that broke her heart. 

My mother’s experience in the United States was so different from what she imagined. Although it was hard to find work, she had to live through the American low class and working class struggles. One day my father arrived at my uncle’s door step knocking on the door. My brother thought his father was going to be there, like my mother promised him. When my father came inside, my brother hugged him thinking that it was him. My mother was surprised, for so many men came to see her brother. My mother, who was fortunate enough to be pretty, was the beauty that my father had found at my uncle’s house. My mother, who had lost faith waiting for my older half brother’s father. One day, she had decided to call my father. They had only known each other for three days, and my mother insisted that they get married because she didn’t want my brother to fall sick for not having a father around. (Note: my father died in the year of 2000, just six years after I was born. I’ll post more stories of him of when he was still alive.)

There will be some days that I used to feel scared and alone. Even when my mother was there when she came home from work. I always had that sacred thought that she must always be treated with high respect, because due to my natural instincts, this feeling or impulse that I had, held a responsible mentality towards her. 

I remember when I used to stay with a Hmong family in California with my brother, and sisters. I was forced by a girl to masturbate in the bathtub. At the time I had no idea what it was all about until I found out on my own the meaning of this. 

Arguments with my mother began after my siblings and I left our stay with that family, and soon we ventured across the nation to Wisconsin. I recall how bad it used to be on the road. My brother who didn’t know he needed glasses was able to look at the U.S. map that my late father had stuffed in the car, and guide us through the nation’s highway system. We did not have cell phones, android phones; nothing but the car, and the road map. 

When my family made it home to Wisconsin, I refused my mother to come near me or any female to come near me because I kept having recurring flashbacks of that incident that had happened to me. I remember being anxiously uncomfortable, and afraid of girls. Whenever I was near females, the thing that crossed my mind on most occasions was how I was molested. I felt like I was violated. I felt ashamed of myself. 

My brother who used to have a very aggressive nature towards me would always condemn me for arguing with my mother, but the truth was I was trying to communicate with her about what I was dealing with when I was a child. One day, I asked my mother if everyone could sleep outside at the back of the old red truck and look at the stars. My brother translated it to my mother, and she said yes. It was a beautiful summer night, with nice cool air. And all that we did was sleep while looking at the stars together on that very occasion. Then I asked my mother to make a promise not to ever leave us again. And I really meant it, because I was tired of my mother always leaving us to stay with people. I just wanted her to have faith in my siblings and I to be at home alone while she was at work. My mother was a free-range parent, but when she was home everything was under her rules. So, my brother translated what I said. And my mother promised, pinky promised me. That night, the moon was out, and the stars glittered across the sky. My mother, who couldn’t fall asleep, went inside and never came out. Eventually I helped carry my two sleeping sisters back into the house. My brother also decided to stay indoors, too. That night made us all remember what was most important. Family. 

During the development process, as I grew, every single time that I think of this time period, it makes me want to forgive my mother for saying terrible things to me. I still get emotionally about the love I have for my mother. And terrible her words can be sometimes, words still had meaning. So I often kept all my feelings bottled inside, because I couldn’t express it in the mother tongue the way I wanted it to in the Hmong language. I used to feel that if someone knew of this, they probably would say that I am a useless child or blame me for not being able to help my helpless mother who couldn’t speak or understand English. People in the Hmong culture put so much expectations and pressure on children to perform tasks. And I think in a positive way that it helps children become responsible human beings, but it also negatively affects them with the load of stress. 

Bitterness, and resentment kept boiling as I grew to my adolescence. That’s where my healing journey began, or so I thought. If you want to read more short stories about the adventures in my mind, you’re welcome to drop by and read more upcoming posts.