Third place winner in the Storytelling Contest non fiction category.
Have you ever seen fireworks in broad daylight? Often associated as a nocturnal sighting, I was mesmerized to hear them implode above us on July 4th, 2020.
“Mẹ, look!” I pointed toward the bright sky as we stood in the garden that you’ve transformed into a jungle because it reminds you of home. You weren’t looking above – you’ve always looked straight ahead, focused on the next thing to do. Instead, you were looking at me, almost straight through me, wide-eyed and in terror.
My mom pulled and rushed me back into the house, and for the first time, I saw her in a different light. Just like the chance of fireworks during daylight, it didn’t occur to me that all along, my parents could have had PTSD from living through the Vietnam War.
I often thought my parents were overly anxious, like any immigrant family. I would push them into spaces and scenarios they deserved to be in, like new restaurants or art museums, holding their hand as if I were the parent.
Earlier in the pandemic, I remember going for a late-night walk with my mom, a routine we started as a way to cope with social isolation. In the dark, a eucalyptus tree’s rustling leaves and ominous canopy drew me in while my mom instinctively pulled us away.
“Đi (let’s go), “ I playfully pushed hand-in-hand toward the tree as if trying to prove her bravery. I didn’t succeed. My mom rarely resisted things with such firm determination.
Now, having understood my parents’ history and their recounts of ricocheted bullets and doors wired to explosives, I realized that the tree’s dark presence reminded her of guerrilla warfare and ambushes. I misattributed her phobia of standing under trees as a Vietnamese superstition.
I used to accept these unusual superstitions as old Vietnamese beliefs, but now I question their origins and the prevalence of trauma responses within certain immigrant communities. My parents fearlessly tell me stories of growing up in rural Vietnam or becoming migrant farmworkers in Australia.
They told me they legally left Vietnam, unlike my aunts and uncles, who all fled by boat. But they never told me of their failed attempt to flee Vietnam that ended in their capture in Cambodia – a story my aunt disclosed to me.
There’s a lot I still don’t understand about my family’s experiences and what happened to them, but now I look at them with kinder eyes and a better understanding. On a day like Independence Day, where we celebrate freedom and independence, I am reminded that others are still held captive of their past.
Despite this, I know my parents are proud of how far we’ve come and that their son is a medical student who can better understand some of people’s traumas.
