Tôi không hiểu

My grasp of the Vietnamese language crawls along.  A new word gained here and there.  The only time I get to practice my new vocabulary is when I casually show off to my Viet mother-in-law.  And she is dumbfounded that a white girl can even wrap her tongue around the sacred language.  The bottom line is that I can exist in my every day life without knowing Vietnamese.  Curse or blessing?

My fiance's mom grew up in Vietnam speaking her native tongue and learning French. Then the war came, beginning the scariest journey of her life.  The following years found her thrown from boat to prison to boat to prison, and finally to refugee camp.  Her journey culminated when she boarded a plane bound for the United States of America.  And then her second journey began.

She landed on American soil with two children and no English.  I can't even imagine; absolutely no English.  I asked her, on our most recent visit, "How did you survive? How could you get a job!?"  She weaved together for me a picture of their early existence: living off welfare, living off her husband's wages delivering pizzas, opening an Asian gift shop, pushing the kids through American public school, watching as their knowledge of English far surpassed her own, getting the chance to go to cosmetology school, working for and then running a hair and nail salon, and always the struggle, struggle, struggle.

The struggles of learning English were thrown on top of the financial troubles.  There were not many Viets in the country back then, so Viet-English translations were limited.  She was reduced to looking at picture books labeled ONLY in English and attending a class for immigrants where the teacher ONLY spoke English.  She would see a picture of a glass of water with a word next to it, but she would think, "Does that word mean "water" or "glass"?  Or perhaps it means "drink" or even "to drink"?"  Another tale she tells me is seeing the word "table," but thinking it is said like the french word, "table." Same spelling.  Same meaning.  Different pronunciation.

As she tells me these stories last weekend, she expresses the difficulty, what she deemed impossibility at times.  But she kept coming back to one phrase: "For my children."  All the trials in her life can be captured in those three little words.  She escaped oppression, battled poverty, and learned a language and culture from scratch.  And all so her children would know life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  One of those kids grew up to be the man I love.  How can you thank someone for that??  The only way I know is to sit, eyes wide, and listen to her stories.