Victor over the Past - Chapter 5

From: … Nguyen @yahoo.com>
Subject: Nguyen 's Biography
To: thuyhang606@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 9:42 AM

Thân tặng TH quyển hồi ký …

" Về chia sẻ kinh nghiệm với bạn bè. TH cứ tự nhiên. Nếu bài học cuả mình có hữu ích được cho đời thì mình nên chia sẻ. Có vậy thì xã hội mới tiến bộ và phát triển được. Những gì mình có thể để lại trên đời này thì mình nên để lại."

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CHAPTER 5

In Can Tho, we tried to go back to our normal life without my brother. As days went

by, we got better at it. My mother still traveled to many cities selling electronic

equipment. My father was still far away fighting for our peace. We all seemed to live our

own separate lives like we used to. As far as I knew, my parents hardly saw each other

more than twice a year. I knew it must be very hard for my mother. That's why she tried

to keep herself busy, so she did not feel lonely. There were times I had to sleep on the

same bed with my mother when I was a child. I remember she taught me to pray for my

father's safety and for peace in Vietnam. And as we lay down, she turned her back to me.

I could see her crying silently. I knew she did not want me to know it, but somehow I

knew that raising four children by herself was difficult for her sometimes.

 Then as the business grew very fast, my mother spent more time away from home. To

be able to juggle her family and her business at the same time, she hired two of her

younger brothers to live with and to take care of her children. So my uncles moved in to

live with us. Every day my sisters and I went to school until twelve. In Vietnam, the

school system is similar to those in America. Students have to complete 12th grade, and

pass a national standard examination prior to being selected into university. After school,

we came home for the rest of the day, and in the afternoon, we had a tutor come to help

us with our homework. It was difficult for the tutor to teach four of us on different

subjects and levels at the same time, so he tried to concentrate most of his attention on

the older ones. By the time he finished helping my first sister Thanh-Van, and second

sister Thanh-Tung, his time was up, and he had to go home. That left my third sister

Thanh-Tam, and I not to do anything at all. My third sister and I did not care much

either. We ended up with bad grades while my other two sisters did very well. And

before we realized it, we entered a wicked cycle. Since my first and second sisters did

well in school, they got rewarded from school and my mother, so they got motivation to

stay with the tutor more. Whereas, my third sister and I did not do well, so we began to

lose interest. Gradually we shied away from doing homework and did not want to see

the tutor either. Every day to keep us from being bored, my third sister, Thanh Tam,

went out to seek her girl friends and play with them. Whereas, I went to one room by

myself and let my imagination materialize through my fictional drawings. I was very

limited on playmates and places I could go, I suppose, because I was the only boy left in

the family.

 We lived like that for many years until the year 1972. My father was promoted to

colonel and assigned to be mayor of Tra Vinh, a city with six districts and a population

about two million people. As a mayor of the town, my father would spend much of his

time to do administrative work in the city rather than on the front line. That seemed to be

good news to my mother and us because we all could see each other and stay together

more than we ever had in our lives. I remember my mother told us that she wanted to

keep my first sister Thanh-Van and second sister Thanh-Tung with her in Can Tho where

we were living. She said that because these two sisters had only a few years left before

they could graduate from high school; plus they were doing very well. They were always

among the top ten students in their class academically while my third sister Thanh-Tam

and I were not doing very well at all. We barely made it to the next level every year. So

she sent us to live with our father in Tra Vinh. Hopefully with our father's attention and

the assigned private tutor's attention, Thanh-Tam and I could do better. At that time,

Thanh-Van was in the eleventh grade and Thanh-Tung was in the tenth grade. Thanh-

Tam was in the ninth grade and I was in the seventh grade. I remember I was very

excited to be able to go to the new town and live with my father.

To be continued ...