story coming soon [updated]

Yay! I caught the writing bug today.

I'm writing a short story for this prompt from Figment:

Great narrative moments often come from abrupt changes in circumstance. Write about a moment of profound, utter stillness and silence that comes directly after an extended period of intense, dramatic motion and noise. The story around the transition from cacophony to quietude can be anything, but be sure to really make your reader experience that shift.

I'm excited to post it soon. 

Words Heard

Great narrative moments often come from abrupt changes in circumstance. Write about a moment of profound, utter stillness and silence that comes directly after an extended period of intense, dramatic motion and noise. The story around the transition from cacophony to quietude can be anything, but be sure to really make your reader experience that shift.

Whenever Alex's parents tried to whisper, they could never attain the volume they hope for. His parents, Italians by blood, were simply not capable of speaking sotto voce.

 “—Don’t you deny it. She told me herself,” his mother Jackie said calmly.

Alex's father scoffed. “Well, she’s lying. You always said she’s a bit crazy."

“Quiet down! Alex is upstairs and—“

“Oh quit it, Jackie,” his dad jeered. “Believe me, he’s not going to hear anything new.”

Well, his dad was right for once. Alex wasn’t deaf. His room hovered over the kitchen and with the door open, all sounds from below could float in.

Alex knew dinner would not be coming soon.  He didn't care really but he wished he had a soundproof room. The yelling always hurt his ears.

The internet would keep his attention. Summer always brought out the naked bodies, which Alex loved. During this time of the season, girls feel it’s necessary to show off the bodies, hot or not. No need for porn sites. Facebook sufficed. He leaned forward, squinting at an image on the screen. That bathing suit did not make Alice Fields look any better, Alex thought disappointingly.

Bruce tried doing what he thought could end this argument: give in. But he gave in with little regard to what would happen next.  “Look, honey,” Bruce began. Alex imagined him reaching out a hand to her, trying to be the good guy in this case. “It only happened once.”

Alex snorted from his seat, wondering when his dad would learn not to be a fucking idiot. He clicked on a Twitter link that read “How to Write an Essay.” He had a 5 page history paper due tomorrow; he needed all the help he could get.

“I heard differently from your bitch,” Jackie said, slicing through his sickly sweet words.

“You trust her? C’mon—”

“And Candace. And Alexis. And freaking Tammy, who, as you might know, doesn’t ever have a clue about anything.”

“My god.” Bruce slammed hands or fists against the mahogany dinner table. He usually did some of his work in the kitchen.  “You have your fucking spies all over the place!”

“Don’t”—Alex could imagine his mom leaving her place at the sink and stalking over to his dad with a steel pointed finger—“use that language with me!”

“Fuck you. Bitch. Cunt.”

"Why you –" She slapped her dish towel against the table.

Alex saw a photo album that his best friend Freddie just posted. They were from last night’s rager at Kelly McHinnon’s house. Naturally it got broken up within an hour of its launch, but they were still able to get great pictures. But of course Freddie was stupid enough to tag every underage kid in the album.

“Dumbass,” Alex mumbled and he began untagging himself. His essay for tomorrow’s history class waited to be finished.

"Don’t think you’re incapable of hypocrisy,” he heard his dad say, voice stark and brimming with venom. He always resorted to formal syntax when he got angry. Maybe it made him feel more self-righteous and educated. “How about you? Spending long nights at the Millers’ when Janice –supposedly your best friend—isn’t even home. What do you do with Steve, huh? Play checkers?"

A horrified gasp came from Jackie. "Oh, I can't believe you would even—you bastard! Turning this around on me. You're the one who decided to stick your dick into—"

And his dad was the one reprimanded for his bad language? Alex shook his head.

A chair screeched as it was pushed back.

His mom's voice rang out again: "Where are you going now? Don't walk away from me. Don't run away from a problem you started!"

"I’m done," his dad spat.

His mother laughed more loudly than usual. "What? You had enough, you coward? Well, if you walk out, you're not coming back. You're walking out on your family. Once you do that, trust me: We. Are. Done."

The door closed with such might that the paintings hanging on Alex's walls vibrated violently for seconds. The splitting crash of some ceramic against the floor or the wall reached his ears.

Alex stared ahead, past the computer screen.  From his view of the window, he watched Nancy as she sunbathed with friends on the front lawn. Nancy had quite a reputation at his school, but her sexual escapades aside, Alex thought she seemed nice. Airheaded, but nice.  She said something to Lyla, her sometimes best friend, and they both heaved in excessive giggles, clapping their hands. The next door neighbor, Cal, a prepubescent face acne-marred creep, peeked over his fence. Alex couldn’t see his hands, which made him wonder what the boy was doing as he peeped at the girls.

The willow tree outside his window had grown nicely since being planted six years ago. On any other day, the tree would always look tall and strong to him, but now all he could think of was how sad its branches looked as they dropped toward the ground. The wind picked up and the muted green leaves flittered in the wind like the wings of hummingbirds as they hone in on their sweet, decadent flowers.

In his peripheral, he saw his dad’s red Corolla disappear from the window pane. Alex promised himself that he would never watch his dad leave again.

Below him, his mom began to sob. She moved around pots and pans and slammed some onto the stove. Then, a sudden crack made Alex jump in his seat, and he guessed his mom just smashed his dad’s laptop.

Spikey, their annoying pet parrot in the kitchen, tittered away. “WhaaAAAHT? WhaaAAAHT?”

A few minutes later, Alex heard his mom's light footsteps along the stairs and he knew they were coming toward his room. Alex closed the Internet window and brought up his word document of his nonexistent essay. Three knocks on the door.

“Yeah?”

His mom poked her head in. She smiled slightly at him. Alex smiled back, nerved by her nonchalance, given what he just heard.

"Dad’s gone?"

She nodded.

“For good?”

His mom pursed her lips then sighed heavily. Alex thought the wrinkles on her face made her look older than her forty-nine years.

"Dinner will be ready in an hour,” she said.

Fraying (Final Memoir Essay)

Fraying

At the ages of 9 and 7 my brother and sister broke one of my mom’s rules. My mom never allowed her children to go beyond the backyard of Apartment 4, one of many in an urban neighborhood with houses tagged with yellow, red, and green graffiti. That meant that the woods, hidden a mile behind our apartment and located near a busy highway, could not be touched.

Dan had told me that a friend invited him and my sister An to go on an adventure. I didn’t receive the invite, but to appease me, my brother asked me to do one small, but important job: keep quiet and don’t let Mom know. As a little sister desperate to please her older brother, I took on this ultimate task, zipped my mouth shut and threw away the key.

The Voice Challenge

Ye came back into my life tonight! 

She had to use the bathroom though. Borrowed my phone. Said she wanted to play Temple Run because she always gets bored in the bathroom. And then she took a self-portrait as she sat on the toilet. That Ye! So funny. I love and miss her!

I'm pooping!

Okay, so I wrote a quick short story today. I followed a challenge that Figment had posted. Each week, the site hosts a young adult author who assigns prompts and fun games for users. This week's guest was Geoff Herbach. His presence on YouTube is well-known, and he is also the author of young adult novels "Stupid Fast" and the upcoming "Nothing Special."

Herbach recently wrote about how to incorporate personal voice into short stories. I just love the way he explained voice through a video. It's so much better than reading long blog posts. I can see why young adults would love him. His basic message for writers is that voice should reflect the writer's personality, not the writer's idol's personality.

He also gave us a challenge so that we could develop our voices. The outline that Geoff Herbach had posted are as followed:

1. YOU HAVE A CHARACTER WHO DRIVES.
2. A BIRD HITS THE WINDSHIELD.
3. THE WINDSHIELD CRACKS.
4. YOUR CHARACTER PULLS OVER.
5. THE BIRD IS HOLDING A TINY SCROLL IN ITS LITTLE, DEAD BIRD CLAW.
6. YOUR CHARACTER READS THE SCROLL.
7. IT IS A MESSAGE ADDRESSED TO YOUR CHARACTER!

You'll see the story below.

Dan

Dan, Me, and An

Writing memoir essays can be similar to writing articles. In order to make a true account of my life, I have to do a lot of research. For my first essay, I talked about my spiritual experiences, and while I wrote the essay, I asked myself: What makes me move? What do I believe in? My second essay dealt with my mom and my dad's experiences during and after the Vietnam War, and to capture the political and social aspects of their lives, I sat down with my parents and asked a boatload of questions. I'm on my third essay now, and I need to write about a complex relationship that I have with a member of my family.

I've chosen to write about my brother Dan, because I cannot begin to describe how complex it is to be his little sister.

I'm walking down the same path that I went on  for my previous essays. My professor suggested that I take time to think about what feelings I have toward Dan. Exasperation, worry, and longing are just a few emotions that I associate with my big brother. Then, I've let myself remember things in my life that I've never really cared to think of before. I'm walking down memory lane, revisiting the good, the bad, and the confusing interactions and conversations I've held with Dan.

Since I'm home for Easter break, I've taken on the task to do more research, and I've been bombarding my parents with questions about my childhood, and the things that happened with Dan that I can't remember clearly. To help with this process, we decided to go through photos of our childhood. I discovered that my parents keep a safe in their bedroom that contains important documents and photos.

Mom pulled out an envelope that had Dan's birth certificate and passport in it. She also revealed three sheets of old, brown flimsy paper.

Dan's life is mapped out on those sheets.

When Dan was born, my grandmother - my father's mother - contacted some sort of astrologer/fortune teller/whatnot to write a description about Dan's projected life. For a small monetary fee, he mapped out Dan's life from his birth to the age of 74. Beyond that number, Mom says, the astrologer couldn't see.

You can imagine my shock to discover the existence of such a thing. My parents never told me about this. Now, let me tell you that my shock is not an indication of my close-mindedness. I'm kinda a believer in the supernatural. I love reading articles and fiction on things that may or may not exist. It's just...it seemed unimaginable to me that Dan's life could be so easily foretold.

I sat mesmerized by the neat but curvy penmanship that some unknown wrote in blue ink. My eyes traced the obscure boxes and arrows that appeared in random spots on the paper. It was in two different languages that I couldn't read: Vietnamese and astrology.

My incredulity heightened considerably when Mom began to translate the words into English.

In his adolescence, he will be a hot-tempered child. He will love and hate you (the letter is written to the parents). He will be a hard child to raise. He will be bright and will like numbers and will perhaps work in business. He will favor the mother over the father. He will be loved by everyone anywhere he goes. He will travel far. He will love but not be close to his sisters or brothers. When he is older, he will take care of his parents. By the time he is 30, he will be rich. He will marry a rich wife as well. His first child will be a son.

Ever feel like you hear something you can't understand but somehow know to be true? That's exactly how I felt when my mom told me these things.

Dan never liked school. When he was in elementary school, he never liked to do his homework. Some nights, I'd wake to find my brother's bed empty. After a little investigating, I'd find him downstairs and my parents awake. They used to make him do his homework during this time, forcing him to complete his assignments in order to get a good grade.

Despite his unwillingness to admit it, Dan has also inherited my mother's anger and stubbornness. He and her are too alike: one bit of friction and their anger comes alight.

Dan had a knack with business. The only thing that he really liked in school was business and business club. I thought he was going to major in it, but imagine my surprise when he decided to go for chemical engineering and then civil engineering! I never understood that change in his path.

Underneath his stoic attitude these days, I know that a thirteen-year-old wimpy kid still exists. Everyone still loves his innocence and they pamper him for being the firstborn son in my family. He can go anywhere he pleases and there will always be someone to help him out. When he went to Vietnam after my family just came back, he went with little regard for anyone there. But when he returned, he came back with gifts and fond letters from distant relatives. After he left training in Arizona, he went to visit a first cousin in Arkansas. He stayed there a few days, played with her dog, and hunted deer with the cousin's husband. He then went to Virginia to visit more cousins. They welcomed him with open arms.

Even though my love for Dan is indescribable, I still feel like there's a missing piece in our relationship. I started feeling it when he left for college, and I haven't thought about it until now, when I feel like I'm finally able to write about us.  My sister and him, on the other hand, will never get along. They've had too many problems, problems that trace back to childhood fights. They will be there for each other, but their bond will never be strong. It's sad to think about, because we've always been the triple Le's. I hope we'll always be that way.

As for the other things that I cannot see - his marriage and his children - well, I hope that can come true. My mom told me to remember that little prediction about his firstborn son. I hope that there's reality in that.

My sister has a letter too, but it's considerably shorter than Dan's. My parents probably lost some of it. My parents can't find mine, but I have one somewhere. Reading that letter is so surreal. So many truths that I cannot explain. There's nothing really wrong with what was written in the predictions. Discovering that letter has helped me reflect on my interpretation and perception of Dan. I still don't know how I'll begin with my essay, but I have the things that I need. I just have to put it all together.

This post has got to be the least coherent of all my posts. I didn't even realize I was typing this until I looked at the time. That's the dangers of being a writer: Your hands begin to move on their own!

Surviving: A political and social memoir

After writing the spiritual memoir, we had to write a political/social memoir. I had to talk to my parents to refresh my memory of their history, and it was quite nice. I don't think they expected me to write about such a thing, but I think they're glad that someone in the family is finally starting to write it all down. 

My piece will be part of a workshop on Tuesday, so this one is bound to have a lot of mistakes. I will post the rewrite when I get to do it. For now, enjoy!

Surviving

1975. Fall of Saigon. Agent Orange. Viet Cong. My Lai Massacre.

These facts flitter through my mind when I think of the Vietnam War. Sometimes I can’t conceive that parts of my family’s history and my very being lie beneath these stone cold, memorized facts that teachers used to throw at me in history classes. Today, I’ve already forgotten most of the names of politicians and military schemes within this war.  Truth be told, they’re just names that can be circled on multiple-choice tests.

I didn’t need teachers to tell me what happened because I considered my parents as sufficient proof that the war did happen - that years ago, constant terror, fear of the communists, and soul-splitting loss had my parents’ lives in their tight-clenched fists.

I look at my parents, and see how life is wonderful for them. All of their children are either undergraduates or graduates of a university. My parents can do what they please. My mom just started taking private swimming lessons. My dad is working on making his potbelly disappear by going on walks in the early morning.

I admit: The story about my family and parents is not simple. It’s an onion that always needs to be peeled. One layer contains the political history that my parents had lived through: the Vietnamese War. Underneath that layer might be one that captures the struggles that occurred after they relocated to America, a foreign country. Directly below, or perhaps a few more layers down, my own life and my siblings’ lives subsist in such an area, and it covers the hopes and dreams my parents came to grasp for not just their own reasons but for the children who are the carriers of their torch, their legacy. In the end, there might be a story outside of my parents’ stories, but it’d take years or my whole life to write such a thing. So, I’ll start with what I know.

I’ve realized that my dad never talks about his past unless he is asked about it. Which means, he only talked to me about his past when I approached him during spring break. That’s how my dad and I are similar. We would rather be moved than move on our own. My mom’s story had always been the story of the family, but I didn’t want to make it seem like my father’s story wasn’t just as important as my mother’s.

As a newborn in 1947, my father was born oblivious into a bloody, beaten world that had just crawled out from the battlefields of World War II, and he was caught in another war that would go on to cause more inconceivable damage to the world’s political relations. Lê Phung grew up in a poor village enclosed by old, rotting Catholic churches that stood as remnants of the French occupation in the late 19^th century. Even in 2012, when I visited my father’s home, the decrepit nature of the village could not be relieved. The main road to my dad’s home remained unpaved. The tunnels still only allowed people as its passersby, and cars were forced to turn around.

When my dad was young, he lived with his mother in a two-room cemented house. In this place, he felt perfectly content. My dad said he liked that he had his mother, because he only needed her.

As the Communists gained momentum, South Vietnam and the United States needed more men to enlist in armies. In my dad’s school, if a student couldn’t earn enough credits for school, he was forced into the army. My dad said that he never liked school, so he didn’t do well, but he wasn’t forced to go. My father wanted to enlist, because his friends did the same. To this day, he always reunites with his buddies when some anniversary of the naval academy comes up or when his friend invites him over for a chat.

And so, my dad left South Vietnam. At this time, he never knew that he’d leave his country at the age of 22, to join forces with the Vietnamese and American Navy. He couldn’t know that when he was able to receive sponsorship for entrance in the United States, he wouldn’t be able to contact or hear his mother’s voice for many years.

Now, I suppose after this, I can say that my dad happened to meet my mom over in the United States, got married, and fell in love. But I can’t. That’s just too simple.

In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson II to become the 34^th President of the United States. My mother, Pham Đông, came into the world around that time, born to Pham Duyên and Mai Thi Cat, a couple who ran a small, but marketable rice company in Nha Trang, Vietnam. At this time, Nha Trang had the cộng-sản, Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese communists, at the fringes of its boundaries.

 “It was during the time of the Vietnamese Lunar New Year,” she said, as she sat in front of the computer in the middle of a Youtube video about some obscure Vietnamese singer, “when I really noticed the world was ending. But I forgot what – oh wait—”

“Ba! Ba!” she said, using the Vietnamese word for my father who was actually sitting ten feet away from her, only he’s a bit hard of hearing. “What year was the –” and she went off talking in Vietnamese that I couldn’t understand.

“Ah,” my dad said back, his eyes thoughtful. He stood up, his hands slipping into his pockets. “It was 1968.”

“Really? But I thought –” My mom looked like she wanted to protest the date but stopped. Dates get fuzzy as one ages in years. “No, that’s right.”

On January 30 of 1968, the Viet Cong launched what is called Tết Offensive. Tết is the Vietnamese term for the New Lunar Year celebration. The communists and the South Vietnamese government had signed an agreement to put the Lunar New Year as a time of ‘cease fire.’

However, the Tết truce ended; the communists had broken their side of the agreement.  During this time, my uncle, Xon, returned from his position as part of a special force tasks in the Vietnamese army. When the Americans needed help landing on Vietnamese soil, they needed to make sure that the land was safe for their feet. The Viet Cong used to place boobytraps into the ground and if the Americans were dropped off in such areas, they’d lose more than just their feet.

My uncle’s job was to detect these bombs, in aid of the Americans. As the Vietnamese celebrated Tết, a time of color and loud, the air suddenly filled with cracks of what people thought were firecrackers.

But they weren’t firecrackers.

Xon knew this from his experience. Within minutes, he rushed his family, including my mom who was 12, into a tunnel located underneath the house’s kitchen. They stayed there for hours. When I went to Vietnam last summer, I stood in that same kitchen many times. We held family breakfast and dinners in such a tranquil space. I had no way of knowing that one of the safest places during 1968 existed underneath that kitchen. The numbers were never officially calculated, but in the aftermath of this offensive, the government estimated over 14, 000 dead victims due to the mass mortar attacks and ground assaults. Even underneath the tunnel, as she huddled with her family, my mom remembers bracing herself against the brisance of the mortar projectiles and hearing the rumbling of the aftershock, which sounded like the roar of a lion.

A few months later, Xon died.

In 1975, Saigon fell. Along with its government, its name also went away. The United States withdrew their forces. The war ended.

 Hồ Chí Minh City, named after the leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, stands today as one of the most populous cities in the country. This is the time that many people remember. Thousands of Vietnamese demanded for relief, frightened by the prospects of the communist state that would rise from their beloved Saigon.  The name Hồ Chí Minh roughly translates to “Bringer of Light.” But this light was not the benevolent light that one looks forward to in a summer’s day. The fall brought the scorch of the Communist forces that would leave the Vietnamese screaming.

The United States amassed the largest helicopter rescue mission in history.  My mom tells me that when the Operation Frequent Wind started, the sky was never silent and never still. Operation Frequent Wind saw helicopters arrive in Saigon, to rescue the Americans who were still stationed there and the Vietnamese whose family had been part of the South Vietnamese government. Desperate families pushed through to take that one step onto the helicopter in hopes of escaping an uncertain future.

My mother and her family ran against time. Her half-brother Con used to be a high ranked official in the Hậu Nghĩa province, but when the Communists took over, they sent him to a reeducation camp. The term reeducation was only a euphemism; instead, former South Vietnamese government members were forced into labor, a means seen as repression tactics.

Con did all sorts of manual labor, from cutting crops in the fields to the dangerously scouring the mines. My uncle, already pompous and cranky, before his time in camp, became more sullen and quiet after emerging from this, my mom said. His experience changed him. With him imprisoned, my family became more exposed. They, along with much of their neighborhood, stood as opposition to the government.

With the impending danger prowling in the rice fields and jungles of Vietnam and the dead bodies of North and South Vietnamese scattered across the grounds of the country like leaves during the Fall, my mother began to plan her escapes.

“Two nights a week, the government would shut down all of the electricity,” my mom told me. “So in our homes, let’s see, we didn’t have light. The streets were also dark.”

“Wait, so how did you escape, Mẹ?” I asked her. “If it was so dark out –”

“That’s right. It was really dark. But that’s why it was the perfect time for us to escape,” she said in a conspiratorial tone as she leaned forward.

Escapees had two means of escapes that had the greatest chances of succeeding: go by foot into Thailand or go by boat to another country. Two of my closest cousins took the former route, because when they went in 1988, they had less money.

My mom, however, became a boat person.

If I told a stranger that I need to leave Connecticut and wanted him to give me a ride, I doubt that the stranger would say yes. But this was what escapees had to do. To escape, they had to know or meet someone with a boat. Instead of paying them with đồng, paper money, they paid them in gold. Gold had more valuable than paper, whose value constantly changed.

“We had to trust our guts,” my mom said.  “And sometimes, we were wrong.”

She tried to escape seven times. One time, her “helper” carried her into the South China Sea by boat, but then took her money, jumped ship, and left her there. Other times, she paid her helpers beforehand, but they never showed up. At least one time, officials caught her in the act. When this happened, my mom had two choices: go to jail or bribe the officials and get away. Her choice was a no-brainer.

Her father, mother, and sister passed in a rapid span of time, which furthered her determination to leave in order to live. Live when others couldn’t.

Freedom. Freedom. The sweet taste of mango on a summer’s day. That jump down a waterfall. The open air of an abandoned flower field. My mom wanted all of this so badly.

My mom found that chance of escape, that chance founded by luck, and she escaped with her 11-year-old nephew. Her sister, the sister’s husband, and their 13-month-old child also went along.

For seven days, my mom shared a wooden fisherman’s boat with 39 people. They had no food. Sickness did not discriminate by age or gender. Other boats had capsized, and no one was saved – even the children. When I was little, my mom told me stories about cannibals. She heard from other Vietnamese refugees that on one boat, a man was so hungry that he couldn’t contain himself. He snatched the nearest person, a girl about the age of 5 and took a bite of her arm. Then her leg. Then the other leg. No one stopped him. As a child, I thought this couldn’t be true.

In reality, it was true. Other horrible and inconceivable crimes against humans occurred during this time. Thai pirates scooped the Vietnamese women from the boats, in guise of offering help, but then they ended up brutally raping and pilfering them. Women suffered – but for what? They had only their skin and bones.

My mom didn’t want to meet her end in a boat, a boat that likely led to freedom. She had to move on. If anything, my mom had learned how to press forward in times of struggles. In an article by Robert Funseth, senior deputy assistant Secretary of State in 1986, he wrote that the exodus of boat people had “resulted in so much needless human suffering and death.” But I can’t fathom why he would write “needless.” He makes it sound like the Vietnamese had escaped in hopes of encountering that suffering. But really they had to choose: either suffer at the hands of others or suffer in their own journey when they still controlled their lives.

In escaping, my mom came closer to touching freedom.

Before my mom left Vietnam, she went to see an old woman that used to buy rice from her parents. That woman had lost her son years before, and she couldn’t find him. She missed him dearly because he was her only relative that she cared about. My mom told her about her plan to escape, and said that if she made it, if she survived to step foot on American soil, she’d look for that missing son.

That woman was my grandmother. Her son was and is my father.

My mother kept her promise. She didn’t know anything about my father, and she wasn’t that close to my grandmother at first. Yet she did keep that promise for an old forlorn woman. After spending a few years in Palawan, Philippines, as a refugee and also as a volunteer French translator, she entered the United States. There, she met up with a brother in Washington who had left before Saigon fell. Soon after, she moved to Connecticut with her sister who escaped with her.

The Vietnamese have the uncanny ability to keep in touch, even after years of separation. My mom keeps a booklet that has all the names of refugees in the Philippines, friends in Vietnam and family all over the United States.

A friend of my father’s also kept such a phonebook. He lived in San Diego and saw that ad in the newspaper, so he told my father.

After a series of love letters that my dad refuses to admit to writing, in 1988, my father and my mother wed.

“So she won me over,” my father finished. The 63-year-old at the end of his tale gave me a nearly toothless smile. “And that was the end of my freedom.”

When I told my mother the first part (the second part just ruined the whole sentimental value), my mom burst into tears or anything like that. She just turned to my dad, who stood next to me. “You idiot,” she muttered in Vietnamese, a smile on her face. My dad started to laugh. I didn’t understand them, but I didn’t ask.

In college, I’m becoming more aware that I exist, and therefore my successes exist, because of my parents. One time, just like I am now as a young journalist uncertain of my paths in life, they were scared and uncertain about the future. But, I am the child of fighters.

Pham Thi Đông. Lê Phung.

I am Lê Đông Loan. My brother and sister also share the same middle name and last name.

In this way, I like to think that my parents imbrued their names in their children’s names, so that we too are marked as fighters, capable of taking on any task which we might have to encounter. Like my mother, my father, and other brave relatives, I know how to move forward. And I will, with the reminder of the past in mind.

Checklist

Get a journalism/publishing internship

update on life; happy things

So many good things are happening in my life right now, but I'm afraid the euphoria I feel will soon fade. If something good happens, I always think that something bad will follow it. Most of the time, I find my prediction is true. One day, I'll have a perfect day; I'll get up in time for class, go to the gym and eat healthy. The next day, I'll be running late, I'll get a bad grade in class, and I get into an argument with a friend. I don't know how I've gotten that type of notion in my head, but it really needs to stop. The pattern needs to stop.

As indicated by my previous post, I've recently been promoted to the role of Executive Editor on Fairfield University's The Mirror. It's a daunting task, to know that I will have to oversee the whole newspaper rather than a seven-paged section in the paper. However, I know that I can do it. I've worked my way from assistant editor to director in freshman year. I'm a hard worker. I'm enthusiastic. I'm confident in my skills. My section has really improved since last year, and people are noticing, thankfully. As the Executive Editor, I won't be required to work too much with layout, like I have in the past. I'll be reviewing the finished product, and I'll be giving my comments to the editors before the paper goes to print. I'll be working alongside the Editor-in-Chief Martin O'Sullivan, who also happens to be a close friend of mine. I know that next year's The Mirror will be really successful because Martin and I are a good team now, so give us a few more months and we'll be top notched. I'll be sad to leave the paper in January of 2013 when I go abroad, but I still hope to contribute in small ways.

Also, I received a call from Simon & Schuster about an interview. I applied for an editorial internship in the summer, and I sent in my cover letter and resume, and they answered right away. I will be going into the city next Wednesday. I'm extremely nervous, of course, because this interview will determine my fate for the summer. I asked one of my professors to help with a mock interview, so I'll be doing that on Sunday. Now, what should I wear? ;)

I feel like school has become second priority to me now. It's not like I'm not doing well in classes, or I'm skiving on my academic responsibilities...it's more like the newspaper now consumes much of my time! Instead of waking up in the morning and thinking about homework I have to do, I think about the paper and what needs to be done for that.

I've been writing constantly; because of my major I do it every day. I've written some short fiction and nonfiction. They need to be revised, so I'll post them when I'm ready. I love how writing has become something like second nature to me. I don't know what I'd do without it.

With my Memoir Writing class especially, I'm learning how to write honestly. I was so used to fiction that I found myself lying in the first draft of my memoir. Maybe I felt like I needed to impress my classmates. Maybe I didn't want to confront the Truth at first, as I reviewed my memory. Maybe I just didn't know.

But I took some time. I thought about it long and hard, and came to one conclusion: What's so bad about telling the truth? I assumed everyone in class was doing the same thing, and so, it was okay to be vulnerable. Writing was a battle at first, because I found myself constantly using the backspace key to erase my lies. In the end, the Truth ended up writing itself.

What more can I say? I'm just really thankful to be alive right now.