Told by Mom, who left Vietnam in 1979 and raised her family in Houston
Requested by Danny, her son, who finally asked
1979–1981
The Boat with the Blue Hull
“I was holding you so tight. You were nine months old and you never cried once.”
You asked me how we came here. For forty years you never asked, and I never told, because I didn’t want you to carry it. But you’re a father now. So, okay. Here.
We left at night, from a beach two hours south of Saigon. Fifty-two people on a fishing boat with a blue hull, built for maybe twenty. Your father paid with my mother’s gold bracelets, every one. I was holding you so tight. You were nine months old and you never cried once. I think you knew.
On the fourth day the engine stopped. The water was almost gone. On the fifth day, a big ship came over the horizon, and everybody stood up and waved shirts and screamed. It came close enough that I could see the people on the deck looking at us. And then it kept going.
Nobody said anything for a long time. Your father held my hand and didn’t let go all night. In the morning, I woke up to a horn so loud I thought it was the end of the world. It was a Norwegian freighter. They had seen the first ship pass us, and they turned around to come back for us.
We were eleven months in a camp in Malaysia. Then a church in Houston sponsored us, and in January 1981 we got off a plane in a city colder than anything I had ever felt, with one suitcase and you in a jacket three sizes too big that a church lady gave us. Your father washed dishes. I sewed. We saved.
Every year on the day the freighter found us, your father bought a cake. You thought it was a second birthday. You were right. It was all of ours.
Their story could be next
A short conversation each week, and a chapter like this in their own words the same day.