I grew up in the big city. It had dirt roads. Here, seeing ghosts was more common than seeing cars. People strolled barefoot or in sandals, travelled by bicycle and took cyclos for taxis. If you were lucky or cool like my Dad, you owned a motorbike.
This is Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
Our house sat on the bustling street of Rue Samsenthai. Elephants wandered into our neighbourhood. They were gentle, happy creatures that belonged to the monks next door.
We lived a block away from Wat Si Muang, an ancient Buddhist temple known for an heroic martyr who sacrificed her body to ward away evil for the community.
My two sisters and I offered bananas to the monks. I was told that this brought good karma to our community. The sweetness of giving and receiving taught me to honour the spiritual life. The monks opened their windows and received the alms with big smiles. They were bald. But it’s OK to be bald when you’re holy.
I’m the third daughter in my Vietnamese family. When I was four, my parents enrolled me in preschool. Dad drove me to class on his Honda motorbike and Mom would make snacks for me each morning. My favourite was bánh bò, a sponge cake infused with pandan leaves.
I thought I was smart by sneaking the cakes from under my desk to press them against my face. I ate through the cellophane. My teacher noticed everything, but never reprimanded me. She was young, barely 20 years old, a Vietnamese with fair skin. She had a natural beauty mark above her lip like Marilyn Monroe.
My class took place in a modest single-room building. Our morning ritual required us to hang our hats in the foyer.
I never owned a hat until Mom took me to the outdoor market one weekend. She treated me to a variety of candy, ice cream and anything my heart desired. It was the first time my mother showered me with love. She led me to a hat stall and asked me which one I wanted.
I picked a bright pink derby. Then she took me to a Vietnamese street barber so I could get a professional haircut. My sisters would have been jealous.
I sat on the stool as the barber cut away my hair. Suddenly, almost all of it was on the ground. The weight on my head felt significantly lighter.
He brought out the razor.
I touched my head. It was smooth like marble. I started to cry.
Mom tried to console me by diverting my attention to the new pink hat. I put the derby on, but it didn’t fit anymore. Not only was I bald, but also, my new hat was useless. All the joy left my heart.
I cried even harder.
Embarrassment at school
My sisters and I made fun of the neighbouring Laotian kids. They ran around, bald-headed, without any worries. They were extremely poor, played in dirt and didn’t have living conditions that supported proper hygiene.
Mom yelled at us for playing with the Laotian children. I didn’t make the connection between that and how she scrubbed our heads with all kinds of treatments and shampoos.
Nothing worked.
They had head lice and were contagious. And now all three of us girls were infected. We learned the hard way to never again play with those kids.
My two older sisters had their heads shaved, too, but they took it in stride. Maybe they were asked to be mature and set an example for me so that I’d get over my resentment. But Mom didn’t trick them. She gave me love and took it back the same day.
I became difficult and needed constant attention from my mother. This was when I understood what amor incondicional was and demanded it. Instead, this only made her ignore my cries.
When Dad drove me to school on his motorbike, I held onto my derby during the entire ride. I stepped into the school foyer, afraid and nervous.
My teacher stood in front of the room, watching everyone take their seats. She turned to me and asked me to go hang up my hat. Refusing to do so was disrespectful.
But I shook my head, no.
She asked me again. I stared at the room full of kids, all hinging on my answer. I kept shaking my head.
She raised her voice.
“No,” I said.
Her face turned angry. She ordered me to do as instructed … or else. Or else what? Several months earlier, I had woken up at school alone in the dark, because no one had woken me from a nap. I never wanted to revisit that terror.
I had an uncanny awareness that my vanity was designed to protect me from ridicule. I was not going to remove my hat. I stared back at her and refused.
This went back and forth until she threatened to make me stay after school. I stood up and went to the foyer. When I returned to my desk, all the children erupted in laughter.
I burst into tears.
The teacher stared at me in shock. Then she yelled at the kids to stop mocking me. I wasn’t mad at her. I resented my mother for setting me up for humiliation. Why didn’t I get to stay home?
A effect of the Vietnam War
My grandparents immigrated to Laos from Vietnam in 1955, when the war started building in Vietnam. In Laos, my Mom met my Dad, who is Vietnamese. I was born in Laos and grew up speaking both Vietnamese and Laotian. My father brought home basic French he picked up from the soldiers stationed in Laos. My sisters and I would play a game of singing the French alphabet.
I was too young to be aware of the political circumstances reshaping my future. I had no awareness of the imminent dangers of the Vietnam War, its effect on Laos or the fact that we might be running for our lives.
When the Pathet Lao Communist party fought to overthrow the Laotian government, my parents began secretly bribing boat owners to plan our escape from persecution. We eventually crossed the Mekong River on a stormy night. My mother led two girls and a baby boy in her arms, down a rickety wet bamboo ladder, to the tiny boat waiting below.
We would either sink and drown or get gunned down by military guards looking out for escapees. My father stayed back in Laos to watch our store as a front, and would escape to unite with us later.
We fled into the jungles of Thailand on foot, as homeless refugees with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Having no real sense of the volatile world and what was to come—or of the 270 million cluster bombs that would rain down on a country once known as the Land of a Million Elephants—I wondered if we would have learned to speak French, had we stayed in Laos.
Like many homes in Vientiane, ours was a mixed-use building. My parents’ storefront took up the ground floor. Our family slept upstairs in the open-space loft. My parents had a real bed, raised off the floor, with a sheer curtain sectioning off their sleeping area. Dad kept a sword under the bed. As children, we feared seeing ghosts more than getting killed by burglars.
My two older sisters and I slept on mats, like piglets in a row, on the hardwood floor. When my brother was born, my parents bought a crib for him and set it near where we slept. As siblings, we took care of one another and watched over our baby brother.
We had cooking and private bathing areas, but no designated rooms for family functions like in Western societies. No one had the luxury of porcelain toilets, except the super-rich. A Vietnamese girl in our neighbourhood showed her toilet to my sister and me. It didn’t impress me at all, but it looked like a ceramic plant holder, while ours was a room with a functional hole in the ground.
Despite our modest living standards, we never felt poor. We lived in a dignified, civilized way with just enough means to keep us happy. My parents made sure we had an education and proper manners. They were resourceful about making a sufficient living as merchants, and made sure we never went hungry.
We lived in a house, while many Laotians lived in shacks with dirt floors and corrugated tin roofs. Their rooftops would sometimes unfurl during monsoons. I felt bad for them whenever I heard the high-pitched pitter-patter of rain beating down on metal. Then the high winds would follow. There was a lot to be grateful for, even if you were among the poor.
Our culture had no need for dining tables. We squatted around newspapers that lined the floor and served as a tablecloth. Sometimes we sat on 6-inch (or about 15-centimetre) stools just high enough to take the pressure off our ankles.
Although this eating arrangement is primitive by occidental standards, the squatting aided digestion and helped our bones become limber and agile. I learned, later in life, that this saved us from the back pain that is common in societies that rely on chairs.
The Pho Shop
Mom is an excellent cook and my grandmother was even better. They owed this to my grandfather, who died of liver disease before I was born.
My grandmother didn’t want her kids to suffer the way she did. Her husband’s drinking problem drove him to gamble away all his earnings. The matriarchal side of my family survived by preparing food to sell on the street. They created excellent beef jerky recipes.
The French occupation brought the great irony of high-calibre taste to poor countries like Laos and Vietnam. I grew up eating coq au vin, French-inspired beef stews like bò kho, e pâté chaud puff pastries. They were part of my diet, rather than dishes that were considered delicacies.
My grandfather worked as a cook for French generals. He brought home leftovers and scraps that were fit for royalty: fine meats, fancy gravies, bread, cheese and classic French cuisine.
His culinary skills trickled down to my grandmother’s cooking. They developed refined palates. My mom became a respectable cook because of this.
At lunchtime, my parents converted the sidewalk in front of our house into a street food café. Mom would set up knee-high tabletops that encircled her as she sat in the middle serving Phở noodle soup.
Her lunch corner was a hit, as locals filled up all the wooden stools. Her greatest joy was hearing her patrons slurp and belch—a sign that they loved her cooking.
During my school semester break, Mom made me eat lunch beside the grown-up customers so I could be near her.
Months passed before my hair finally grew back. By then, I had a bad case of canker sores in my mouth. I couldn’t eat my mother’s soup, as the piping hot liquid seared my white, open wounds. I struggled to bite into the noodles, only to end up slobbering over my bowl. I looked up, in pain, to see a fancy taxicab swirling up dust as it stopped in front of our house.
Seeing a car was less common than spotting ghosts, so everyone gawked. Then the dream unfolded.
A beautiful woman stepped out of the cab, wearing crisp, stylish garments. She wore movie-star makeup and had perfectly sculpted dark curls. The beauty mark near her red lips accented her bright, powdered face.
The goddess approached our stall and stood amid peasants wearing dusty flip-flops, hunkered over boiling hot soup that was steaming their faces. She carried a giant pink box with a fancy ribbon and a big bow on top.
I marvelled at her radiance. As she spoke, I realized she was my preschool teacher. Did she come to see me? She introduced herself to my Mom and they exchanged polite words. She mentioned something about how I did well in her class and she had come to reward me.
My mouth hung open, with broth and drool running down my chin. Embarrassed, I ran to my Dad and hid behind his legs.
Mom and Dad thanked her and passed me the gift box.
I carried it inside our store and untied the ribbons. It was layered with notebooks, pens, more school supplies and small toys. Every variety of candy I dreamed of was inside the box. I recognized my favourite treats and delighted in discovering new ones I’ve never seen before.
Humans into gods
The day was filled with magic.
Everything in the box had my happiness in mind—from the colour of the box, reminiscent of my pink derby, to the treats my mother once showered me with. My teacher had no clue about the day at the market. How did she tap into the hurt?
Months had passed since that awful day in class. But she had not forgotten my embarrassment.
I knew that her gift was an apology.
For years to come, I wondered if she’d had a mystical experience. Did a monk or a dream offer her hidden insight? Did they foretell how turning wrongs into rights could change not just one life—but also all who’d be connected? Did Kuan Yin, Goddess of Compassion, touch her heart?
My teacher was haunted.
She couldn’t forget. She meditated on her role in the greater web of humanity. She restored a broken piece of faith before it could form cracks throughout my life.
Because of her, I learned how every wrong act that a person makes aright transforms victims into leaders, the wounded into healers and humans into gods.
All a child needs is to see good character. That’s how faith, humanity and greatness begin. She taught me the courage to give. She put her blessings in a box sooner, rather than later.
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