As with many children of immigrants, the story of my parents’ journey to the United States has largely shaped my life. I’ve been told the story since I could remember. I didn’t realize its influence on me until I told my parents that I was taking a leave from Harvard Medical School to start a company. My dad looked at me incredulously and said, “That’s too big a risk.” In a moment of self-realization, I responded, “Yes, but think about the risk that you took…”
The Escape
It was 1979. My parents had not yet met, but both lived in Saigon, Vietnam. The Communist regime had taken hold, creating a society where opportunities were scarce. My dad was twenty-five, a graduate from the top engineering school in Vietnam, but hopeless in a country that didn’t need his skill set. My mom was twenty-two, stuck working in a factory. They each decided to escape from Communism. At the time, thousands of people were fleeing the country by small fishing boats, protected by Vietnam’s vast coastline. This was a perilous endeavor: the survival rate was 50%. Storms, Thai pirates, and general misfortune delivered many to a watery grave. It was on a small fishing boat, escaping Vietnam, where they first crossed paths.
I’m sure they wish that their story ended there. Meeting on the high seas, how romantic. Instead, the situation turned dangerous. On the second night, their tiny boat hit a massive storm in the South China Sea. Out of complete luck, a foreign shipping tanker appeared in the distance. My father, being the only person who could speak English, jumped onboard to ask the captain to save them. The captain refused, citing company policy against taking refugees. His first mate empathized with my dad and offered to go down to the fishing boat to analyze the situation. Seeing this as their only chance for survival, my father decided to take a chance.
He yelled down in Vietnamese to the boat, “Unplug all the holes in the boat! Women and children, start crying!”
When the first mate saw this scene, he pleaded with the Captain, “They’re going to die tonight if we don’t save them.” The Captain relented. Safe aboard the tanker, my mom approached my dad to say thank you. That was the first night they spoke.
Far From Home
One might suspect that such a dire situation, a man’s bravery, and an unexpected change in fortune would quickly lead to eternal love. Not so. When the tankard reached Malaysia to drop off the refugees, my parents were almost immediately separated. Everyone was ferried to a deserted island where the Malaysian government created a makeshift refugee camp. Conditions were poor. My mom recounts having trouble sleeping as rats would crawl across her body throughout the night. Worse, she was in limbo from an immigration perspective. She had a sister living in Texas; however, she would have to wait until her sister could get the necessary sponsorship papers through the US government. Unsure of her future, she constantly worried about the possibility of being sent back to Vietnam if the Malaysian government grew inpatient with their stay. She was stuck.
Unlike my mom, my dad had another option. With his engineering degree and ability to speak English, he was quickly accepted as a refugee by the Canadian government. He arrived in Edmonton, Alberta with nothing but the shirt on his back and a resolve to survive. He enrolled in a Master’s program in electrical engineering at the University of Alberta, paying for tuition and rent working as a teaching assistant. He lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with fifteen other men, saving every cent he could to send back to family.
The Hail Mary
26-years-old, far from home, and in a cold, strange place, one wouldn’t blame him for yearning for something familiar. Indeed, he couldn’t stop thinking about the pretty young woman he spoke to on that tankard. In a Hail Mary not unlike sliding into someone’s DMs, he sent a postcard to the refugee camp in Malaysia, asking how she was doing and where she might be immigrating. Fingers crossed.
On the other side of the world, my mom read the card and, thinking this relative stranger had meant to send the postcard to another woman, threw the card into the trash. Her older sister (she has many), who was accompanying my mom, took pity on my dad, “That’s rude, write him back,” she said. My mom penned a response. However, there was no easy way for her to mail the card back. So, she gave it to a friend who was about to move to the U.S. to send when the friend arrived in the States.
This long delay threw a wrench into this story. By the time the card finally arrived in Canada, six months had passed. My dad had moved an hour away from the apartment that he listed in the return address. He had largely written off his postcard as a lost love connection.
One average day, he was driving near his old neighborhood and thought to himself, “Hm, I wonder if my mailbox key still works…” He opens his old mailbox, and there sat a single postcard. It was my mom’s.
Tearing open the card in absolute disbelief, he read that my mom was going to move to Houston to be with her sister. He jumped back in his car and sped home to dial her.
“Operator, can you connect me to a ‘Kim-Chi Ha’ in Houston, Texas?”
“One moment. Connecting.”
“Hello?”
“Kim? This is Hung, from the boat.”
My mom had just arrived in Houston the week prior. Her sister had just registered her in the phonebook the day before. Unbelievable.
Take a breath here because the story is not over. After their first conversation, my dad began calling my mom regularly, spending all of his money on late night long distance charges. He would often express his feelings for her, but each advance was met with a, “We’re just friends, right?” Ouch. But, my dad, as is natural to him, was never deterred, “Yes, just friends. It’s lonely up here in Canada, so it’s just nice to have someone to talk to.” His strategy came to light when one week, he stopped calling my mom. She fumed. When he did call again, she blurted out, “Why didn’t you call me last week?” They both knew what had happened. She had fallen for him.
“Will you marry me?” my dad responded.
“No! Are you crazy? …Well, I’d think about it if you asked in-person.”
The problem was, my dad couldn’t afford a plane ticket to Houston. Remember, he’d burned it all on phone bills. In another stroke of luck, his professor was presenting a poster in New Mexico. Like he did on that tankard, my dad spoke up and asked if he could come along to help. From New Mexico, he could afford a trip to see my mom. Things were finally coming together.
“Will you marry me now?”
“Yes, but you’ll have to ask my family.” As with many cultures, it is custom in Vietnamese culture to ask for permission from the bride’s family. In a final twist of fate, my mom’s family ruled that he was not fit for my mom and rejected his proposal. He stormed out in a heartbroken state and took a cab to the airport. My mom chased after him in a car as her older sister fought with the rest of the family. “They’ve been through enough. Let them be,” her sister pleaded. My mom caught up with my dad at the airport and said she’d marry him anyway, not knowing that her sisters’ pleas had swayed her family.
“Okay,” said my dad, smiling
Too Big a Risk
Fast-forward 35 years. They had me and my two beautiful sisters. My dad went back and got his Ph.D. while raising us and working full-time as a chip designer at Compaq. My mom became a graphics designer and climbed the ladder to become one of Chevron’s highest-ranking designers. My sisters are thriving — Valerie is a doctor, and Andrea is in dental school.
And there I was, sitting across from my literal heroes, telling them, three months before graduating from medical school, that I wanted to do something else with my life.
“That’s too big a risk.”
After I responded (see first paragraph. You’re probably exhausted by now). My mom nudged my dad, who looked concerned and said, “He’s right. He should get on his own boat.”
I think she meant Buoy.
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