This is how I’ll remember you.

Eyes wide, hands weathered yet clasped. You are modest but glowing. Your children are safe in your hands and there’s hope in your faces. You survived oceans and uncertainty, gambling with war and destruction so that I wouldn’t have to. It paid off. In your one-mattress apartment, you slept soundly with your family huddled around you, despite the sirens and the stones rattling against the iron bars as they hit. But poverty was a challenge more than it was an incarceration.

You had dreams. Big ones. And these dreams kept you afloat as you struggled through America without a word of English in your mouth or a dollar to your name, even when they came to harass us for looking like the Commies.

But things changed as time went on. When stable money and a safe place to live became less of a worry, other priorities set in. You turned your gaze from the family to somewhere else. And for the longest time, I remember you sleeping in separate beds more than together. In the time you weren’t there, things decayed. It became too painful to live there and you couldn’t keep up that things were okay. Every time I came back, things got worse.

So you left.

I understand your decision. It’s not like we all didn’t see it coming. I can understand. It was time. But while I do forgive you, I will not forget. I will not allow you to rob me of my anger. I’m pretty pissed off at what you did and what you’re doing. You can’t even tell me to my face about what happened. I really want to ask you now: was it worth it?  Are you happier? Do you ever think about us? Do you wonder who will be there next to you on your death bed, and then regret?

You always taught me that loyalty always run deep, to ride or die for me and mine. So it fucking sucks to see you go back on that.

Thinking about post-grad life hasn’t been difficult for me lately. I have a guarantee of where I’ll be in the summer, where I’ll be in the fall, and hopefully where I’ll be for the two years thereafter.

And the back up plan was to always go home. East Side San Jose. Where a room was there for me for the last 20 years. Where there was family.

Things have taken a different course in the last few weeks and post-grad life seems much more daunting. That home is no longer there. It’s a strange feeling knowing that I no longer have an anchor to the place I was born and raised. There’s nothing stable for me anymore. And as much as I know I have extended family in San Jose, I was never close to them. I wonder how they know me.

A lot of things are running through my head. Is this adulthood? Did I grow up too fast? Did I not spend enough time with the family when they were there? Where do I go now? And who will be there for me?

The last question is starting to scare me more and more, especially coming from a refugee background. My family line here in the states extends back only one generation — all I have are my parents. I don’t know any other family. And now that’s not quite there anymore, I feel so so alone.

I am lost.

There are photos of my family at church which are older than I am. Looking through the albums, the church book-ends one era to another for my family: my parents in front of the church that sponsored them here, my middle sister’s baptism ceremony, my oldest sister’s confirmation ceremony, my own baptism, marriages of my uncles and aunties. There are even a couple of photos of me dozing off in the pews when I was four that my dad thought would be particularly funny.

Looking at the pattern of images taken of my older sisters and relatives, I watched them grow up as they were documented during their first baptism, eucharist, confirmation, marriage, funerals and the cycle begins again but with their own children.

There are lapses as time passes, however. One nephew wouldn’t have a baptism, another aunt wouldn’t have a marriage. Eventually, examining my own memories in front of me, I realize I don’t have a confirmation memorialized. 

It was no coincidence though; I left the faith a long time ago when I realized I was gay. The contradiction in my parent’s faith and my sexuality was only the cherry of the reason; the bulk of it built up from years of understanding my own sense of existed. I always hated being given instructions.

There were fights. There were long nights and dreadful car rides. Yet I was stubborn and fiercely committed to what I believed was right. I remember my dad telling me he left monastery training as a teenager to be with the woman he loved — my mom — and I’m essentially doing the same. Eventually, they gave up. I haven’t been inside of a church since early high school. 

Though looking through the album again, I see there are less photos of these life events in general (aside from my own) even though I know there are more little nieces and nephews who go through them. Hell, there are less family photos altogether. These eras are lost.

Perhaps they no longer felt it was significant to document every precious moment and the novelty of comfortable luxury of the United States in comparison to their war-torn Vietnam had worn off. New realities were terrifying though exhilarating at first but soon became tomorrow’s drudgery. However, even if it was partially that, I also realized my parents haven’t gone to church in the last four years. When I used to come home for Christmas, they would tell me, “Meet you at Midnight Mass, we are going to go first to get seats and you can catch up” and I would intentionally disappoint their expectations. But now, not even that happens.

I didn’t notice for the longest time. As I’ve gotten older, however, I begun to wonder why they stopped going. I stopped going because I lost my faith and I know why. But I wonder what they lost to make them stop. For once, I felt uneasy about the situation.

Knowing that something they did for over 50+ years, across war, violence, devastation, oceans, continents, jungles, trauma, resettlement, life, and death was suddenly stopped worries me. It must have been something quite catastrophic and lately, I’ve noticed my family crumble apart particle by particle from the inside out. The rooms are cold. The walls echo. Things are dead here. We’re hollow.

I’m starting to see this, and I’m starting to mourn it.

I can’t lie. Looking at the photos, I felt a familiar warmth emanating from them that was long extinguished and its comforting glow reignited what I hadn’t noticed was even missing in the first place. I remember seeing my first Nativity scene and the excitement that came with it, I remember watching my first Lion Dance show and my eagerness whenever January came to an end, I remember sitting in envy as my older sisters got to take part in the Eucharist alongside my parents and awaiting the day I no longer served to save their seats.

How will I hold on to these feelings when they’re gone? When they’re gone, will they be comforted? Or will they thrash through everything in a journey of fear until the very end?

The second scenario terrifies me. The only thing terrifying than experiencing their loss is experiencing their loss without having the warmth that we had in those photos.

Was it my leaving the church that my parents stopped going as well? Or what was it which made them stop?

Sometimes, I begin to think I should believe again, if only for the comforting fact to know that my family will be taken care of with just as much love as they took care of me. Then, perhaps, I could not fear loss as much as I do now.

I never use this word, but damn my parents were swagalicious.

There are a series of photos that I’ve been thinking about a lot more lately. They’re in a water-damaged faux-leather burgundy photo album in the corner of my parents’ bedroom back in San Jose. There’s about eight of them in the bunch and they’re falling out of their pages because the adhesive is gradually transitioning into its next stage of life, which seems to be a crumbly earwax yellow.

My middle sister is about six years old which makes my parents sometime in their late thirties. They’re at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk with the rest of the extended family. It’s windy because my mom’s perm is all up in her aviators and they’re having trouble keeping the wind from furling napkins from the ice cooler in the air. There’s two towels that they’re sitting on, but most everybody is wearing those matching 80’s windbreaker combination jacket and pants. Old school pepsi cans, hot dogs in their hands. There’s a picture of a nonplussed seagull. What I didn’t notice until much later was that there was nobody else around in those pictures; the boardwalk was empty and aside from their presence, the sand was bare.

Probably because it was a really windy day.

Lately, these photos have made more noise in my memory precisely for that reason. I wondered, what compelled my family to organize a trip with the extended relatives and drive nearly an hour south in order to go to the beach on a cold, almost frustratingly windy day (as evidenced by my mom’s displeasure at a ruined perm and my dad’s attempt at holding down those coolers)? They must have missed a memo, because no other families were present at the beach.

For me, I began to understand these series of photos as my immigrant family’s attempt at constructing American-ness. What’s an essential aspect of the American lifestyle, especially during the 80’s? The “freedom” to leisure. And a camera to capture it. By going to the beach, they engaged in this activity and forced themselves to do so in order to do what, I feel, they felt was American — even if they didn’t enjoy it as the pictures seemed to suggest.

Not to say the beach was a foreign, solely American thing, of course. My parents grew up around the beach, in the Central Coastal Provinces of Vietnam. Rather, what I found to construct the American-ness in the series of photos was the fact that it was a “trip”. There was some sort of planning around this — the coolers of food, the beach towels, and the outfits. There was an intention to drive all the way down to Santa Cruz in order to spend some time at this beach, which was now a “trip”, a “vacation”. The windy, inopportune timing of the trip was the true highlight in my mind: I believe it was an awkward interpretation of where and when “trips to the beach” are supposed to happen.

What a concept. And there’s this longing I have to jump into those photos and place myself alongside them, confused but smiling because the camera’s there.

I was born in a time period where my family’s attempts at crafting this cultural citizenship were largely halted. Around the time I was born, these trips to the beach stopped along with the photos to the lake, the photos in the mall, and the photos in front of the large vanity mirror in the two-bedroom apartment for eight.

My family, around the time I was born, had settled in a place where they could feel comfortably situated in America with their Vietnamese skins and Vietnamese children.

Though I can see and argue that that isn’t completely true today and they are still negotiating this situation, I still would have liked to have gone to the beach with them.

rain pitter-patter — leanin by the window, six year old boy lies near huggin close this well-worn pillow. though his eyes be squeezin shut and in a playback loop his dreams are stuck (repeatin a mantra of a better tomorrow), what keeps him up ain’t a fascination with the weather’s celestial changing but rather some frequent vocal crescendos outside this vacant room’s portal keeps his eyes glued toward the window. with a mind uncomfortably occupied as ears are focused to the external parental matter, he’s left starin closely at the pitter-patter, tryin hard to watch out this window to drown out his schoolkid sorrow.

sorrow. fears of the vocal crescendos take place of dreams once had lookin out this window now covered by pitter-patter — dreams once had on greener todays, tonights, and tomorrows. but tonight? now grey; to quarrels.

pitter-patter. what’s a matter? no matter. just a drowned-out dream this little boy was chasin after. but dream ain’t no matter when ma and pa don’t know that they son got a case of the pitter-patters as they turn up the volume of vocal crescendos caused by money woes (it matters), nights of sleep to forgo, and stacks of unpaid bills that grow. though the boy ain’t a cause of the crescendo outside this portal, a young heart knows not the reasons of quarrelin adults and so fear heard external breeds the idea of fear believed internal.

vocal crescendos growin stronger. ma’s now stormin her own pitter-patters as they beat against her windows. one swift movement, she locks herself in boy’s portal, spending the night drownin out her sorrow. and though the boy’s eyes be squeezin shut, in a playback loop his mom’s pitter-patters are stuck, til the night dies late and her heavy heart do heavy lids make.

so internalized do these fears go during these grey tonights and tomorrows, as a six year old boy stares out the window listenin closely all night at the pitter-patter, wishin  for tomorrow’s ever after.

tomorrow.

a-somnolence lasts far past his adolescence and tonight’s a pitter-patter. but though my eyes be watchin, not a thing makes this a matter.

just this grey night’s stirrin memory of when long-gone went my ever after.

rosary — you rose me. by the soft hymns of gloria in excelsis deo and the oakwood pews of the diocese of st. maria goretti, you are the wafer and wine of my boyhood memories. though seein the parents while growin up wasn’t always a guarantee, sundays in the pews was a few-hour consistency with my mom and my dad and my sisters sittin all around me. and in the hours of trials and tribulation, between my mom’s fingers would a rosary be threaded, countin down those hours with a repeated call of a prayer, a silent whisper: save him …

a prayer, she sighed, to a son of a higher divinity. because damn, though i wish i coulda saved her (those eyes showed how life weighed on her), i knew the savior(saved-her) to whom she prayed wasn’t in me.

and it wasn’t long til she prayed for me too.

because as i grew older and my mind saw the lies behind policies and philosophies that launched bombs and marked atrocities, i became more critical of intersected stakes that hang around my nape, becoming more individual in the separation of my church and my (inner) state. new eyes blessed me to see where i had been colonized and i prayed to a new divinity: that of hymns and the pews of my own mind.

rosary — eroded me. declared sinful the very essence of my being.

and though my mom’s tears shed as i refused the savior these Bibles bled (seein the bleedin these words left in human bodies instead), i remained for years without a god, spiting my earthly creators in searchin through the pages of my own holy book yet fully read.

yet in reflection of my past and these symbols, i come to a greater understanding of what made me and today i pick up my rosary again. but not out of some fear of mortality did this body become holy.

hardly.

for though you hang around my neck, your dogma doesn’t leave me hanged. no, i don’t mean disrespect but rather than a ball and chain, i wear you in memory of the struggles my parents overcame. for in the hours of my own trials and tribulations would this rosary would be threaded, countin down those hours with repeated memories of their struggles forever embedded.