By The-Anh Nguyen
For Northwest Asian Weekly

In 1987, I was four years old. My family lived with my grandparents, on my mom’s side, in a three-story brick building near a dump.

After the Vietnam War, Saigon was not as pretty as it is today. I can still remember Saigon’s slum-like atmosphere. It looked like the city was cleaning up after a major hurricane.

In 1981, my father became a free man, after serving a six-year sentence for his employment with the democratic government of Vietnam. He was [in] a political prison.

After prison, we were born. My father worked as an English teacher, while appealing to the government to allow him to practice law. After many appeals, he was allowed to practice outside of the court system, unless he had special permission [to serve in the court system] due to his political background.

Even with the stress of being alienated from his own country for supporting democracy, he never grieved to us about the unfair circumstances. Instead, he processed his anger creatively through his desk job at a pharmaceutical company, through Chinese chess, and by providing free legal advice to people. Even though we were poor, my dad never accepted money for his legal work. He didn’t like to charge people for what he was good at.

We all lived at my grandfather’s house. My siblings and I would play hide-and-seek with four or five cousins for most of the afternoons. With so many people, there was never enough food. On some days, we were fed leftovers from the tenant-restaurant on my grandparents’ property. [Having an] empty stomach was not too bad sometimes, because I had plenty of cousins to play with.

When I turned 5, my grandmother got sick and became paralyzed. My grandfather was forced to sell his home and moved the family into a smaller house in an alley. At the new house, we had more cousins. At one point, I counted 25 of us sleeping on the same brick floor at my grandfather’s house. He was a very funny, firm, and caring grandfather.

A few years later, my parents bought a house with the help of my dad’s mom. During the last few years of my childhood in Vietnam, I had a chance to spend time with my other grandma.

My dad’s mom was a businesswoman, who lived by herself and managed a hotel in Da Lat.

My grandma only had a second grade education. She couldn’t read, but she sure could count and make lots of money. Grandma would always bring me gifts when she visited. On the weekends, my grandma would take me to tai chi sessions on the red dirt at dawn and play soccer with me toward dusk. She was very affectionate, and I was her favorite. She taught me how to count millions of Vietnamese dollars (not worth as much as the American dollar), which were laid out covering our brick floors. She also taught me how to tell fake gold from real gold.

When we left Vietnam, I was 10 years old.

My grandma sold everything and came along with us. She left her livelihood, retirement assets, and all of her comforts for us. We moved to a strange country where older people are ignored and disrespected. During her remaining years in the United States, my grandmother found comfort and company with us. While my parents worked two jobs each and attended college full-time, we were left with our grandmother. She took us to the food banks on Rainier, in the Central District, downtown, and everywhere she could ride the bus to, but mainly route 7. She didn’t know any English.

Then came the years when life distracted me. I had materialistic dreams. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to have a car, a girlfriend, and my own apartment. I was 17 years old. I didn’t get along with my parents because I didn’t get to see them often enough. I was sucked into the American mainstream culture and no longer had the desire to watch Hong Kong movies with my grandma. I was working multiple jobs and hanging out with friends.

Three years later, when I was 20, my dad had to beg me to visit my grandmother in the hospital because she had fallen and lost consciousness. When I went to visit her in the nursing home, she wanted me to take her to the temple, and she shared her funeral arrangements with me.

Everything went well, until I had to leave. She insisted that I take her home with me because she felt like she was in a prison. I could relate to her, the fact that she has no privacy except for a drape separating her and the next bed.

It was very difficult to deny my grandma. My family had said that the social worker and the state would create legal problems for us if my grandma did not receive proper care in our home. I hated the fact that my grandma was a piece of property to the state.

I had no choice but to visit her less often to help her to be more independent. A month later, she was transferred back into a nursing home facility, which was half a block away from my job. My dad visited her every single day, and I got to visit my her more often. However, because my job was so demanding, I had to reschedule on many occasions.

On the days that I couldn’t visit her, as I had promised, she sat by the window and stared at the front door of my job hoping to catch a glimpse of me running in and out of the door.

When I did have a chance to visit her, my grandma would always have an orange saved for me from lunchtime.

Then, one day, I got a call that my grandmother was in the intensive care unit.  Her last day on earth was Dec. 25, 2008. The next day, my family and I were in scramble mode, trying to figure out what to do for my grandma’s burial ceremony. We are Catholics and she was a Buddhist. But my smart grandma had already made plans with the head monk at her temple and had prepaid all of her funeral expenses. She even set aside her clothes.

I have to admit that much of this story didn’t come back to me until my godfather took me to a co-worker’s home, a 78-year-old vet, whom I worked with and had communication problems with. My godfather reminded me that being old is an honorable thing.

He said, “You don’t just get old by being lucky. Just look at how many young people at your age are dying every day. So be a little more patient with Walter and give him that undivided attention for a few minutes when he needs it, and he will be good for the rest of the day.”

I would like to say that you don’t just get old by being lucky, but by the right choices that you have made. Wealth and knowledge are best shared from the two prior generations.

When you hit age 50, you get younger every year thereafter. When people get older, they want their grandchildren around them, because often, their children are too busy. My grandparents need my love and time as I need their patience, love, and life lessons.

Grandparents are great mentors for self-esteem building.

A few months ago, in the middle of the crosswalk lane, a 10-year-old boy threw a tantrum and refused to hold his grandmother’s hand while crossing.

I looked at the boy and said, “Respect your grandma, because mine are all gone.” He stopped his tantrum, and I could see the embarrassment on his face. His grandma smiled, nodded her head, and said, “Thank you.”

Less than 30 seconds later, tears were pouring down my cheeks. Every time I see a senior picking up a pop can from the dumpster, or working at their age, I think they should be at home, relaxing. I see a saint saving the next recycling money for snacks for her grandchildren. My grandma recycled everything and shared the little money she had had with my siblings and me. ♦

The-Anh Nguyen can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.