Max
(04/1985 – 11/1999)
A cute Main-coon kitty
Your little teeth
Left mark on the chair, table, skins
We were so happy to see
How strong you were
When you lifted the whole carpet
With your front paws
You taught us about sharing
When you moved a 25 pounds turkey
With your jaw across the kitchen counter top
You introduced us to your friend
A County Sheriff,
Who came looking for you and gave you
A ticket for nibbling
The Vet
You gave so much to us and others
A young Japanese man in Japan
With a permanent scar
You gave him
And he was such a little cute boy
Who may allergic to Kitty forever!
My legs and arms
Show your art works
When you sprayed the house here and there
To let us know
The mansion belongs to one General
General Maxwell
We miss you!
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
My second decade
When I was in my late twenties, an old and dear friend of mine, Jim Gallup, told me one too many times that “running is fun when you are not hurting” and “isn’t it fun running without the pain Odette”. I was a little too sure of myself and I didn’t take all his advice seriously. Heck, he was just a medicine doctor/elite runner/space-shuttle astronaut/flight surgeon/ second in command of Mather AFB hospital, what does he know? So his advice to me went in one ear and out the other. Back then, it only took few days for me to get rid of unwanted running pain, oh how much I miss those youthful cells; everything seems to heal so much faster. Now, as I sit with my heating pad underneath my cheeks, I daydream about what it would feel like to do a nice long run, say 18 to 20 miles, without the pain and maybe enjoy a late breakfast with friends without feeling jealous of the "healthy eating" runners.
I started to run in my teenage years, what I didn’t know then was that to run fast I'd really have to practice. After swimming season ended in March, I joined the track and field team and practiced with my high school classmates. I don’t remember pushing hard at practice, I just ran because I wanted to be with other girls my age; I didn’t want to be alone after school. I ran track in high school but I didn't really know what events would fit me best. So I came out to practice and ran around the track, did the workout and would look for a ride home. When there was a track meet, I would try all events as long as Coach Hansen thought I could. I tried shotput, javelin, and discus. I tried everything at least once. I didn’t enjoy it when my coach and teammates would cheer and call out my name when I was the last one to cross the finish line after a 5k. Were they happy that I finally finished and didn't quit, or, was it “good grief, she finally done!” What if were they thanking me because I gave the super track star additional time to warm up or rest? Was I looking that bad out there?
Now, I am the one who cheers the loudest to any finishers that crossed the finish line at all races. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow, anyone who came to run or jog a race, that runner is making a great impression on me. Yes, I have matured, and yes, I’m old and starting acting like someone’s grandma on the sideline.
My Second Ten Years - The Teenage Years.
The second decade of my life, I went through many tough and great times. The worst was when my dad died unexpectedly in his 50's. Life was hard for my mother. I watched her sacrifice her pride for us. I watched my mother many times turning a deaf ear and lowering her pride to buy our family clothes and food to feed us. Thanks to my older sister, we left the country early by the US Air Force C-130. If we didn’t leave then we would have probably left later, most likely on a fishing boat, and live in a refugee camp much longer than the stated "one month". When we landed in America, our lives changed and continued to change for the better, and sometimes worse, but not without the hardship and hardwork. The move had drifted our family slowly apart from each other. Everyone was trying to survive, to live in this new free land.
I experienced another loss, the brand new baby that I held in my single digit year was killed the first year we came to America by a drunk driver. Without understanding English at the time, things were very hard and tough for us.
I can’t speak for the rest of my family, but I’m sure they went through similar, or even the same, kind of things I experienced - good and bad. For example, my oldest brother got beat up pretty badly because he took a job away from an American. He was making minimum wage washing the floor, the type of a job I learned later was called “blue collar” or "hard labor". To this day, he still has a scar the size of a small key lime on his right temple to show it, and still has been working at that company for the last 35 plus years.
Pre-America time
I wasn’t a bad student but I thought school wasn’t “ready” for me. I got kicked out of St. Paul, a Catholic school, when I was in either Kindergarten or Fist Grade, for telling the nuns that my parents sent me there to learn and not to polish the pews. Those Vietnamese Catholic nuns were mean, they spanked and humiliated little girls who shared their opinions and spoke up.
We were taught to remember the written textbook word by word and had to recite it. We didn’t understand the content and couldn’t self interpret either. I got suspended from school one day because I was expressing my interpretation of the story we read in class, and the teacher didn’t like it so sent me to the principal office for being undisciplined and lazy.
The principal told me that the only way I can get back to school was to have my parents come to talk to them. I can’t even picture myself asking my parents to come to school and listen to the principal telling them I was a disrespectful student. I asked, well more like sugared coated the situation, my brother Nghia, to talk the principal into letting me come back to the school. This is a brother-sister secret we kept from my parents.
My sister Odile and I also shared a school secret that we kept for many years until I told the story to her oldest daughter, Laura. I had been talking to our mom about Sunday school, seemed I was always there. Odile was worried and asked me a million questions about why “I” had to go. Odile was explaining to our mom that she had volunteered to go to Sunday school to help a friend on a project. As it turned out, that next Sunday we were both in a same class “project” that was doing time for getting into trouble!
I had several close friends from all different backgrounds, and none of them hung out together without me. They only hung out together if I was there, at the public swimming pool, fieldtrip to the countryside visiting the rubber trees farm, or spending Sunday riding the bus from one end of town to the cathedral.
A few friends come to memory when I reminisce. There was Phoung, an only child. Her dad was an engineer for the government. Lan, a Japanese-Vietnamese girl whose family was rich. Then there was Phi, her mom was a prostitute and she had at least 7 younger brothers and sisters who all had different fathers.
Phi missed school a lot whenever one of her siblings got sick. I used to run to her house and do her homework. I liked to hang out with Phi; she was a genuine nice and caring person, matured way too quickly for her age. She used to feed me whenever I ran to her house; and she used to make me eat before I ran home. I used to get stomach cramps and thought it was her food, little did I know it was because I was eating before a run.
One day on our way to school, Lan talked me into playing hooky to go to a movie, a Kung-Fu movie with Bruce Lee. When I got home from school, my mom always asked me how school was and if I had any homework. I told her the class was fine and did all my homework in class. My mom spoke to me a calm almost scary tone of voice, “Phoung thought you were sick and came to visit you this afternoon because your class was cancelled.” After that my mother and I never mentioned the incident again, but poor Odile, she was home in the afternoon and got all the punishment for me.
Post-America time
I discovered a thing called DISCO, Robert Dunn, the BeeGees, Bob Dunn, Doritos, Robert Dunn, the mall, Bob Dunn, and what a “joint” was. By the way, I truly believed my hero, President Clinton, when he said he didn’t inhale! I also “fancied” my chemistry teacher. The word my high school counselor referred to instead of “crush”.
I had a bad crush with my Chemistry teacher. I studied harder in Chemistry than any other subjects. Once in a while, well more like one a week, I left a little note on the windshield of his car. It must have boosted up his ego because the next day he would make a nice comment about note, almost as if he was thanking "me" for the note, or the note was funny. It also freaked him out when I gave him a nice valentine card because I spent time on the councilor’s chair for few weeks after school.
I can’t bring myself to share some of the stories without resentments or regrets. I think a share a poem I wrote about our first kitty Max instead.
To be continued on a sunny in Sacramento!
I started to run in my teenage years, what I didn’t know then was that to run fast I'd really have to practice. After swimming season ended in March, I joined the track and field team and practiced with my high school classmates. I don’t remember pushing hard at practice, I just ran because I wanted to be with other girls my age; I didn’t want to be alone after school. I ran track in high school but I didn't really know what events would fit me best. So I came out to practice and ran around the track, did the workout and would look for a ride home. When there was a track meet, I would try all events as long as Coach Hansen thought I could. I tried shotput, javelin, and discus. I tried everything at least once. I didn’t enjoy it when my coach and teammates would cheer and call out my name when I was the last one to cross the finish line after a 5k. Were they happy that I finally finished and didn't quit, or, was it “good grief, she finally done!” What if were they thanking me because I gave the super track star additional time to warm up or rest? Was I looking that bad out there?
Now, I am the one who cheers the loudest to any finishers that crossed the finish line at all races. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow, anyone who came to run or jog a race, that runner is making a great impression on me. Yes, I have matured, and yes, I’m old and starting acting like someone’s grandma on the sideline.
My Second Ten Years - The Teenage Years.
I can’t speak for the rest of my family, but I’m sure they went through similar, or even the same, kind of things I experienced - good and bad. For example, my oldest brother got beat up pretty badly because he took a job away from an American. He was making minimum wage washing the floor, the type of a job I learned later was called “blue collar” or "hard labor". To this day, he still has a scar the size of a small key lime on his right temple to show it, and still has been working at that company for the last 35 plus years.
Pre-America time
We were taught to remember the written textbook word by word and had to recite it. We didn’t understand the content and couldn’t self interpret either. I got suspended from school one day because I was expressing my interpretation of the story we read in class, and the teacher didn’t like it so sent me to the principal office for being undisciplined and lazy.
The principal told me that the only way I can get back to school was to have my parents come to talk to them. I can’t even picture myself asking my parents to come to school and listen to the principal telling them I was a disrespectful student. I asked, well more like sugared coated the situation, my brother Nghia, to talk the principal into letting me come back to the school. This is a brother-sister secret we kept from my parents.
My sister Odile and I also shared a school secret that we kept for many years until I told the story to her oldest daughter, Laura. I had been talking to our mom about Sunday school, seemed I was always there. Odile was worried and asked me a million questions about why “I” had to go. Odile was explaining to our mom that she had volunteered to go to Sunday school to help a friend on a project. As it turned out, that next Sunday we were both in a same class “project” that was doing time for getting into trouble!
A few friends come to memory when I reminisce. There was Phoung, an only child. Her dad was an engineer for the government. Lan, a Japanese-Vietnamese girl whose family was rich. Then there was Phi, her mom was a prostitute and she had at least 7 younger brothers and sisters who all had different fathers.
Phi missed school a lot whenever one of her siblings got sick. I used to run to her house and do her homework. I liked to hang out with Phi; she was a genuine nice and caring person, matured way too quickly for her age. She used to feed me whenever I ran to her house; and she used to make me eat before I ran home. I used to get stomach cramps and thought it was her food, little did I know it was because I was eating before a run.
Post-America time
I discovered a thing called DISCO, Robert Dunn, the BeeGees, Bob Dunn, Doritos, Robert Dunn, the mall, Bob Dunn, and what a “joint” was. By the way, I truly believed my hero, President Clinton, when he said he didn’t inhale! I also “fancied” my chemistry teacher. The word my high school counselor referred to instead of “crush”.
I had a bad crush with my Chemistry teacher. I studied harder in Chemistry than any other subjects. Once in a while, well more like one a week, I left a little note on the windshield of his car. It must have boosted up his ego because the next day he would make a nice comment about note, almost as if he was thanking "me" for the note, or the note was funny. It also freaked him out when I gave him a nice valentine card because I spent time on the councilor’s chair for few weeks after school.
I can’t bring myself to share some of the stories without resentments or regrets. I think a share a poem I wrote about our first kitty Max instead.
To be continued on a sunny in Sacramento!
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