Loss and identity: Ha Phan

Ha P. recalls her grandmother’s house, the instinctive sense of loss at being a refugee, and her friendship with an American soldier.

Identity

We escaped Vietnam. When I was nine going on ten.

I always felt like that day that we left Vietnam was the exact point where we reinvent, we redefine who we are. There was a point where we started, where I started having this dichotemy of identity, or a double perspective of who I am.

Grandmother's House

When we were young, my brother and I often came to my grandmother's house when my mother was, my parents were working. We often go there on the weekends and the weekend in Vietnam is actually only one day because we had six days of school. But my grandmother lives in this dirt road and at the end of the dirt road, that would be like an alleyway. And that image, I don't know why it made me so emotional talking about it because there's nothing painful. It was very, it was a happy time in my childhood.

But, but that image of my grandmother's house was so tender. When I used to visit my grandmother I used to sleep late. And my my uncle would be home babysitting me and my grandmother would go to the outdoor market and she would take the shortcut from the back alleyway. And because I woke up late, I tend to wait for her to get home. And I could always recognize her steps. When you walk through the alleyway, you can hear this echo in the back and that sounds stayed with me for so long. So that memory is very special to me.

An American Soldier

In terms of the escape, I have many happy memories of the escape. Having read my father's book, I know that when we, as kids are going through this journey, we don't, we're not aware of all the danger that, or all the uncertainty the adults have to consider or is going through.

I saw it as a happy memory. I knew that something had been lost, but I didn't know what was lost. When we were in the refugee camp, everything seemed like an adventure to me. So I didn't see as like any kind of hardship at all.

One special memory that still stuck out to me in the refugee camp was when we were in Guam. And we were staying in these barracks and my mother helped out by working in these Quonset huts to pass out milk to mothers and babies. And so on. And she befriended a, an American soldier. I think he was a private, his name was James Carey, and I felt like I had a special relationship with this soldier. I felt like he treated us like, and it was my first connection with an American. And I didn't know what American meant at the time.

So in Vietnam, we don't have, we don't celebrate Christmas the way we celebrate Christmas here. In America, we have all these marketing around Christmas, all the stories around Santa Claus. In Vietnam, we don't have those stories.

We have, I don't know how actually, I don't know how we came to understand who Santa Claus was. When we were in Vietnam, we believed in Santa Claus, but I initially thought that Santa Claus is an American because he was white. I didn't know he lived in the North Pole or anything like that. So when we were in Guam and we met James Carey, one of the questions my brother and I asked James Carey was, "Does Santa Claus live in America?" And if he is real. And James said to us that Santa Claus is very close to us. That's why I remember. But for some reason there's an association of Santa Claus and America, and some white person is bringing you gifts at Christmas. So that was one memory I had in Guam and the daily interactions we had with this American soldier named James.

I also remember that when we settled in San Diego a couple years later, he came and visit us. But it wasn't the same because I don't know why it wasn't the same, but it just wasn't the same. Maybe I'd grown up a bit then, but that, that memory was quite special to me. The kind of interactions I had with people in the refugee camp was important to me and I think that memory and the connection to James Carey is specific only to me. My brother also interacted with him, but I talk to him the most least that's how I felt about it.

Ha P. (2022)