Tag Archives: Daughter

My dad wore aviators (actually, I think those are technically riflemans) before they were cool. http://dadsaretheoriginalhipster.tumblr.com/

My dad was about 21 when his fishing village in Quang Ngai, off the coast of Central Vietnam, was stormed by Communist troops during the Vietnam War.  Everyone made their escape; he ran into the ocean and swam as fast as he could away from the coast.  He says he left sometime in the evening, and he swam for hours, doggy paddling when he couldn’t swim, floating when he was too tired to paddle, and then swimming again when he regained the energy.  Finally, around sunrise, he managed to get picked up by a fishing boat that took him to a refugee camp in Singapore.  From there, he was able to get on a ship that would take him to a camp in California.

So my father came as a refugee to the U.S. with literally nothing but the clothes on his back and almost no familiarity with English.  He had the good fortune, though, to have a degree in engineering from the Vietnamese college system (it’s rather complicated but kind of interesting, culturally), and he was able to get a sponsor who helped him pay for a Master’s and then a Ph.D. in engineering.  I was able to sum that up in one sentence, but rest assured it was a lot of work.  He used to tell us how he would go to class and study during the day, and would work nights as a dishwasher for a restaurant, earning twenty-five cents an hour.  (It really makes it hard to complain about studying when I have that kind of example set for me.)

When I was younger I took this story for granted.  It was just another one of those things that my dad would tell me about Vietnam or his childhood.  But now I realize just how astounding it was that he had the fortitude and the luck to make it over here and get where he has today.  When I think about everything he’s done and all the work and love he’s put into his life—and mine, as well—it just makes me amazingly, humbly grateful.  I’m determined to follow his example—if he could manage to provide so completely for his family, shouldn’t I, with everything I’ve been lucky enough to have, be able to do just the same?

Happy Father's Day, Dad--thank you, for everything.

I’ve still haven’t told my parents that I write for this blog. Partially because I’ve never liked showing them my literary efforts—I’m loath to present anything but my best work to their critique. But I’ve also held off because I know I would endure endless teasing from my mom about my attempts to be funny. And after this post, I think she’d kill me for talking about her on the Internet. But in light of Mother’s Day, here’s a post on why I aspire to be my mother’s daughter.

This is my mom. Allow me to brag a little, since you won’t catch her saying these things about herself. She’s tri-lingual (English, Vietnamese, and French), and got transplanted to this country as a young teenager after the Vietnam War, when my step-grandfather married my grandmother and brought them to this shore. She’s tiny (4’ 9”) but has a force of personality to make up for it (sound familiar?). She has a Ph.D. in analytic chemistry, which accounts for the way she labels salt and sugar, but she gave up her career for years to raise my two sisters and me. She Googles everything and reads my textbooks for fun, because she just finds everything so darn interesting (she’s where I got my love of botany from). And aside from all that, she is supportive, hilarious, and caring.

My mom must be about 16 in this picture. I found it in the basement and thought at first that it was a picture of me.

I’ve learned so much from my mother, but today I wanted especially to share two things she taught me:

Don’t be a jerk.
As a kid I had the tendency to be a show-off, probably as a way to compensate for my own short stature, but also because I can be an arrogant bastard. My mom noticed that very quickly, and I could always count on her to pop my ego should my head be in danger of inflating. She taught me to be grateful for my abilities, but always reminded me that 1) nobody likes a know-it-all, and 2) there is always going to be someone better than you, so don’t get smug.

No, but really, she not only told me the importance of humility, but also showed me how to be humble by her example.  I think my mom is the bomb, if you couldn’t tell from what I said above, but you’ll never hear her mention her own accomplishments. I try to remember not to get too complacent or self-congratulatory. Humility is one of those things that you can try for years to embody, but once you think to yourself, “Hey, I’m really humble! Go me,” you’ve failed. But my mom values it so highly that I can only try to live up to her, making sure my pride never gets the best of me.

Believe in myself.
You may have heard of “tiger moms”, a breed of mother (usually Asian) that is stereotyped to be extremely demanding, competitive, and exacting. Amy Chua’s “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” in the Wall Street Journal raised eyebrows about her anecdotes of drilling her daughters with practice tests anytime they brought home a mistake in school, calling them ‘garbage” when they disrespected her, and making them practice the piano for hours until they perfected a piece. In the article, an excerpt from her book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, she explains that strictness can actually increase self-esteem while forcing kids to abide by a parent’s exacting standards.

Well, I was never beaten or anything for not getting high grades (I’m Vietnamese, not Chinese. HA! Kidding!), but I received my share of yelling about test scores. My parents expected me to work hard and do my best…but they also expected my best to be 100%. I feared parental disapproval, and I also wasn’t quite as convinced of my own infallibility as they were, so I was constantly working hard so as to avoid disappointment (and a tongue-lashing).

This attitude is a different way of looking at achievement. The bar was set at doing well, so As were duly noted but not otherwise rewarded. But anything short of the bar was cause for some serious notice. My mom never said, “Well, you did your best” if I got a B. She didn’t think my best was B-worthy; she was convinced of my ability to get As, and anything less than that was me not trying hard enough. And while you may argue over the merits of positive versus negative reinforcement, over the years I implicitly learned from this—if my mom thought me capable of getting the absolute highest score possible on an exam or in a class, I believed it too. My mother doesn’t think I can do anything—she expects it. Yes, sometimes it can be daunting to live up to that, but if I believe in myself only half as much as she does, I’ll be fine. (Raise your hand if your parents’ styles were the same, or if they were different–I would love to hear other perspectives.)

If what I just described sounds like a Wicked Witch mothering style, I’m not doing it justice.  I’ve only benefited from the way my mom parented me, and she tempered her high expectations with as much love and affection as I’d ever need.  Sometimes I take my mother for granted, but I appreciate what she’s given up and what she’s put into raising me.  So today and everyday I am proud and grateful to be a daughter to all 57 inches of my tough-love mother.