Back Into Water

by April Ai Han Phan

On a ferry boat making its way to a small island off the coast of Thailand, a man sitting in the middle row was hurling up his recently consumed candy bar and Coke into a small plastic bag. It was the wet season, and rain showered down hard on the deck. The choppy ocean rocked the ship back and forth unsettlingly. The atmosphere was paralyzingly stagnant and now had the added perfume of regurgitated bile. Next to me, DJ, my boyfriend, was staring out the window at the horizon with intense focus to keep from getting sick. He was convinced that if he kept his eyes on the point where the sky met water without wavering, he could control his bodily fluids that threatened to make an appearance on his lap. I had false confidence that was quickly checked the moment the air conditioning was cut, raising the temperature no less than 10 degrees in as many seconds, and I ducked my head into a bag soon after. 

Behind me, my sister, Anne, and her boyfriend, Alex, were feeling no better than we were. In the row behind them sat my mom, who was uncharacteristically quiet. It is an immense understatement to say that my mother is not a quiet person. The sound of a chainsaw is about 110 decibels, a train horn is 140 decibels, and sitting next to my mother in the car while she’s talking on the phone is somewhere in that range.

However, she wasn’t quiet for the same reason as the rest of us. The last time she was on a boat in Thailand was in 1981 after fleeing from Vietnam. It had been almost four decades—through one marriage and divorce, four children, and two college degrees—but now in December 2018, she was back in the same waters that have haunted her for most of her life. 

As a child she loved to swim, but escaping her war-ravaged homeland on a boat at 25, spending days at sea, left deep, psychological scars. It wasn’t until her fifties that she had the courage to sign up for swim lessons at a local high school. Her teenage instructor was kind, telling her, “I know you’re scared, but I’m here to catch you,” gently reminding her that she was in only 3.5 feet of water. She worked through her long standing fears, once again finding her love for water and couldn’t get enough. From then she swam as much as she could, going to the community pool, taking a dip in the heated pool at my sister’s apartment complex, and going to Hawaii and New Zealand with her gaggle of friends, all of whom were also middle-aged Vietnamese women.

We had come to Thailand with a purpose. My mom, a social worker, was asked to counsel urban refugees in the Bangkok area. She brought my sister and me along to help her, although we had no obviously applicable skills. Accompanying us was my mom’s colleague, Cynthia, whom we grew to love and see as a cool aunt. My sister and I saw it as an opportunity to visit a new country, temporarily escape unsatisfying careers, and work on a cause that has affected our very existence. We fell into the role of doing activities with the children to keep them busy while their parents were in group therapy sessions with our mother and Cynthia. I came equipped with 10 years of experience working with children as a gymnastics coach. My sister showed up with a bag of balloons, instructional YouTube videos, and her ability to do anything. We had no knowledge of how many people we would be working with, their ages, or the kind of space we would have. My mom and Anne were not bothered by this, but I was more than a little nervous and much less confident, as usual.

I’m not sure if my mom ever saw herself coming back to the place where she was first labeled a “refugee,” a label that would define the rest of her life, influencing how she saw the world and how it saw her. She and my dad have always been vocal and proud of being refugees. We never questioned where our family came from and knew they overcame incredible hurdles to build lives for themselves. 

But the details of their earlier lives have only recently begun to surface. As children we were told that their families were originally from northern Vietnam, both sides ran from Ho Chi Minh and the communists, the first time my family would do so. Both sides eventually settled in the rice village, Kenh 5, where my parents grew up. Our parents met while they were in school but didn’t become romantically linked until much later. Then the war came, and our dad fought as an officer of the South Vietnamese Army. He was caught and sent to jail and re-education camp several times, escaping twice. He organized an escape but was caught the first time. They put him back in jail, but he escaped again, this time successfully leaving the country by boat for good, taking my mother and about 60 other people with him. From there, my dad captained the boat, navigating by the stars. They landed on an island in Thailand where they were picked up by UN officers. They spent time in different refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines until they were granted admittance to the United States of America, in 1982. At the camps, my mother used her skills as a seamstress to purchase thin gold wedding bands for her and my dad. Months after their initial journey, they made it to San Jose, California, where my siblings and I were born and raised. 

Life went on, and we accepted what we knew about their story. My parents tried their best to keep their heritage alive in us, sending us to Vietnamese school every Saturday. Taking us to Vietnamese church on Sundays. Signing us up for Vietnamese scouts. Putting on an elaborate party for Tet every year. Dressing us up in ao tu than and ao dai. But it was hard to compete with the strength of American culture. Our interests drifted, and our Vietnamese identity took a backseat to every other aspect about us. We were athletes, students and workers first, Vietnamese second. 

Later I would ask my parents more questions, interviewing them so their stories would live on. I needed to document the events that led to my being. In the process I gained a better understanding and acceptance for what they could and couldn’t give to my siblings and me. How truly lucky I am to be a Vietnamese American. And that it was OK that my parents weren’t like my friends’ parents. It was a blessing that I got to eat banh cuon instead of burgers.

Something happened when I reached the age when my parents were going through the most harrowing time of their generation. I started comparing what they went through to what my life currently looked like. At 19 I wasn’t sitting in sniper huts. At 25 I wasn’t hunting rats on an uninhabited island next to our shipwrecked boat. At 29 I’m not raising three toddlers, working at the flea market, and going to school in a new country. And then I think about the current climate around politics, immigration and refugees. Knowing that every day, people just like my parents are still risking everything to escape the terrible lives they were given. Knowing what great things they could accomplish if only they were given a chance to have a safe, stable life. Seeing the country that accepted and gave everything to your family, now treating others horrifically inhumane. The sense of helpless empathy is overwhelming.

So, my mom, sister and I signed up to contribute in the way we could. We traveled across the globe to Thailand, volunteered our time, donated laptops and food, and offered bail for the immigrants that were jailed for being aliens. My mom counseled families who were dealing with the hardships of being in a foregin country, not able to go back home for fear of persecution, not able to work, living in fear of being arrested, fear for their children, trying to figure out how to raise them with hardly any means. Meanwhile my sister and I constructed balloon animals, sang “Ring Around the Rosie,” and skipped with a rainbow parachute with the refugee children. Part of our goal was to give them a little tiny sliver of hope, to show them what became of one refugee and her children.

By breaking the ice with their children, my sister and I gained the trust of the parents to make my mom and Cynthia’s jobs easier. I had been so apprehensive before the trip because of all the unknowns. But I quickly learned that kids were just kids wherever they may be in the world. I was amazed by their ability to play with whatever materials were around them. They played with the balloons until the supply was depleted. Then they took the scraps of balloons and played with the bits until they would no longer stretch. Next they found the cardboard boxes that carried the milk from lunch. When that was torn to shreds they played with the pieces. We named one boy The Balloon King. He was shy but hoarded all the balloons he could get his hands on. The bright, colorful things hung from every appendage he had available, his eyes barely visible over the numerous balloons adorning his neck.

My mom and Cynthia had their hands full with the adults. The refugees shared their concerns about recent police raids within their communities, among other issues surrounding their lives as aliens in Thailand. I got to see my mom stand in front of a group of 20 men, lecturing on ways to help them adjust to their lives in limbo. They listened intently leaning forward on their chairs, forearms resting on the row in front to soak in her words. The men asked questions and she answered with expertise and passion. As a young girl, the men in her life had never taken her seriously. Tradition dictated she wasn't permitted to eat at the same table as the men, instead relegated to eat in the kitchen after the men were tended to. Her father and older brothers tried to stop her from going to school, proclaiming educating a woman would be a waste. But here she was, an intellectual, self-made woman, entrancing and engaging with each of them. 

After our volunteering was complete, the three of us took some time for ourselves. It felt perverse to enjoy our privileges after spending a week with families that bear such heavy burdens. We reunited with Alex and DJ for the final leg of our trip. We woke before dawn while the streets were still dark to catch a bus that took us south to the coast. Coming off the bus, it began to trickle while we lugged our suitcases along the pier to the odious ferry. As we found our seats, the rain became more incessant, the gray more prominent. The next two hours were a blur of humidity and nausea. Finally we docked at the island giving us a short reprieve before a glorified shuttle took us on a ride through the jungle that would make Indiana Jones proud. However, upon our arrival, the rain had subsided and we were welcomed by a secluded beach haven.

The next morning the sky was clear as we lounged by the beach eating dragon fruit, mango, and tropical bananas. In the afternoon we donned our swim gear and waded in the warm clear waters to cleanse our spirits. The slow season meant we had the cove almost entirely to ourselves. My mom was the most free and happy I had ever seen her. The sun shined on her face when she showed me the strokes she learned in her lessons. She was glowing and I was so grateful she had done it. She was one of the lucky few who lived and thrived. As I watched her plunge into the water that once haunted her, I pondered our journey and smiled contently as she reemerged back out of the water.