Found these posts tucked away in my email. I must have edited them out at some point.
This will be my final day in my twenties. What is it about rounding the next decade of your life that makes you want to evaluate your whole life's progress? Ten years ago, I remember what I thought I wanted. I wanted to be wealthy by working my way up through either the corporate ladder or owning my own business. I was determined to be a success story, even if it meant working 80 hour weeks and sacrificing a little partying to get work done. I had, after all, escaped from a childhood of abuse and domestic violence. My dad shot my mom at a nightclub when I was four years old. By ten, I was living between my mom's house, a children's shelter, and a foster home. By the time freshman year in high school started, I had attended ten different schools. For a kid who had a rap sheet of spray painting on the school walls, cutting school, and smoking cigarettes all while in the fifth grade, I knew I had to make something of my life. Success was the only option, and I was willing to put in the work and jump at every opportunity to attain it.
For ten years after high school, I worked, sacrificed, and put everything behind my priority to succeed. I managed to buy my first BMW 5 series when I was 19. I bought a Porsche at the age of 25. I was always laced up in Versace and Armani suits to my sales meetings. My vision saw money as the only measurement of success. My significant others always took a backseat to my plans on being rich, and I've burned many friendships along the way doing so.
Today things are much different. I drive a 2003 Mazda Protege5, and the last time I splurged on clothes was at TJ Maxx, which was a purchase of two pairs of shorts for roughly $20. What I do have is a beautiful home and a loving family. As I'm writing this, my 20 month old son is playing in his fort, which I built out of a large Home Depot box.
He has a beautiful mother, whom I deem to be one of the smartest women I know. She graduated with a degree in Journalism, written countless articles, worked at CNN, attended fashion shows and rubbed elbows with people on TV. She is an awesome wife. She always considers my happiness, and puts up with all of my rather strange antics.
I live in a comfortable house in a safe neighborhood. And while you won't see my pictures in the VIP room of any club, you'll find plenty of pictures of me and my wonderful family all over my house. It's a pretty humble lifestyle, one that would hardly create a ripple in history's timeline, but to me, it's a great success story. While I haven't created a rags-to-riches story like JK Rowling, I at least didn't turn to a life of crime like some of my foster brothers. More importantly, I didn't allow my circumstances to cripple my chance at happiness.
This is my first time making an attempt at writing out my thoughts and sharing them with a public audience. For many of my friends, this blog will reveal quite a contrasting life to my easy going personality and my quickness to smile and make light of any situation. It's not a subject I'm comfortable bringing up, though writing it seems to make it a bit easier. This site will be an avenue to tell not just my story, but the stories of the other kids I ran into in my nine year journey as a foster kid lost in a system that didn't work. Like a kid named John, who was two years my elder, and was my bunkmate. His mother was a prostitute, and his father was one of her clients. Like me, he never knew who his father was, but that was the least of his worries. To the other foster kids, we knew him as the 16 year old son of a whore who couldn't ride a bike and was a serial bedwetter. And we made sure to taunt him about it when we could. The way we saw it, we were all from a shitty situation. If you couldn't pull yourself together and be strong, you deserved to be mocked and bullied.
How I wish I could talk to them today, each and every single one of my foster brothers and sisters. What I regret the most is that we always treated each other as rivals, competing for attention from our legal guardians, fighting through a system that cared little for the success of our lives. Instead of building a bond from our commonalities, we fought one another and schemed how to be higher on the totem pole, to assert our importance in a life that was designed for us to be insignificant. Where are these guys today? The last time I heard about one of them, he was in prison. I think another joined the Marines. It would be interesting if I could find them and tell their stories. That is my goal for this blog in the future, to write about the stories and lives of those who may not garner that attention of, say, the Kardashian sisters, but they are nevertheless interesting. First, I will start with my own.
Birthdays are a joyous occasion. For the young, it is a day that sleep cannot contain. They jump out of bed, without the prodding that is usually required on a school day, excited about their friends, presents, cake, and games. For those who work at a job, it comes with the hope of not jumping out of bed until they are prodded by the text messages and facebook notifications from their smart phone. And then it's dinner with friends and family, and an ironic plethora of birthday liquor to help make it memorable. For those who stay home with the kids, if it's a weekday, it's business as usual, followed, hopefully, by an evening out with the family and close friends.
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After three decades of witnessing an event so universal to the world, it's still a rather foreign feeling for me to celebrate my own birthday. To make my case, I received a phone call from my mother yesterday, the day of my birthday. As I looked at the caller ID, I thought how strange but pleasantly surprising it was to hear from her. She had after all, forgotten to call for a few consecutive years. And I write that with no amount of spite or resentment, but as a matter of fact. It's the relationship my mother and I have.
When I was 16, I ran into her at a popular shopping plaza in San Jose, CA known as Lion Plaza. It was the type of place that first generation Vietnamese settled in to sell their wares and set up their practices. There was a large grocery store that smelled of fish and rice grains, a restaurant where you can see roasted pigs and ducks hanging upside down, shops selling Eastern medicine and Buddhist statues, and a handful of young doctors and lawyers looking to establish their own practice within their community. I saw my mom standing outside by a couple of large Chinese dog statues. She was illegally selling flowers and candy from a plastic bag to passer-bys. I hadn't seen her in a few years, and I remember walking up to her with some apprehension.
Buy some flowers? Candy? she asked in Vietnamese. I knew she wasn't well, but I never expected her to lose her memory. At that time, my social worker had stated that she wasn’t allowed to visit me. She was most recently diagnosed with Schizophrenia, after the doctors decided that Bipolar Disorder wasn’t the right fit. As I said, our relationship is a rather peculiar one, but I’ll get more into that another day.
Our conversation yesterday started in its usual abrupt manner. As with most Vietnamese parents, my mom isn’t one for pleasantries when she wants something from her son.
Did you buy a lottery ticket for me yet?
For the past few months, she has been adamant on having me buy lottery tickets with her set of numbers. With her surefire system of praying to Buddha and to the spirit of her deceased mom, she has been churning out numbers to me every week. I also receive calls five times a week to check if her numbers had won, even though I keep telling her that numbers are only drawn Tuesdays and Fridays.
No, Mom, we haven't won yet. It's only Wednesday.
Ok, just keep remembering to buy me tickets.
Hey, you know what day it is today?
No, I haven’t been keeping track.
It’s August 29th.
(Long pause)
It’s my birthday today, Mom.
Oh, then for sure you need to buy the tickets. Today is your lucky day!
That’s my mother ladies and gentlemen. And sure enough, on Thursday, another phone call from her to check on our status.
The funny thing is, the numbers 08 and 29 show up often in her sets of numbers. I don’t believe that she has forgotten or that she doesn’t care, she just doesn’t know how to express it. And vice versa. On September 28th, I try to get in touch with her and say Happy Birthday, which is always followed by an awkward silence. In a sense, I’m grateful that she has this lottery plot on her mind. It reminds me of better days with her, when she was healthy. This was before she started working until 2am at night clubs, before the drinking, and before the foster homes. I was nine years old when my mother and I last celebrated my birthday together. Since I was placed into the foster care system, my birthday was as lost as the other kids I grew up with. When you’re living in a house with nine other foster kids, and the first rule the guardian points out is: “I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t steal from this house or get brought home by a cop.” It’s sometimes hard to get your birthday noticed. So as all children of the dust learn to do, we banded together, and celebrated collaboratively. We’d select a day that was in between, and celebrate that day as our birthday. If you were lucky, you had a birthday that wasn’t around anyone else’s, so we’d celebrate on the day of. Of course, all it meant was that you were bought a slice of pizza and a bottle of coke, or $5 worth of tokens at the arcade, but hey, that was alright with us. It wasn’t what we received or what type of special events were planned, it was the acknowledgement. It was someone saying, Hey, today’s your birthday isn’t it? Happy Fucking Birthday. And that’s how I’ve enjoyed my simple birthdays for one whole decade.
But things change when you have a significant other in your life. All of a sudden, you are the spotlight of the day. August 29th is no longer just Michael Jackson’s birthday (may he rest in peace), it was Tony’s day! And no longer is it the usual quick acknowledgement that I have grown accustomed to. It is elaborate and lavish with planning and thoughtfulness and presents. Like I said at the start of this post, the familiarity with it all still eludes me, but I am truly grateful for it. In the past three days, my wife has:
- taken me out to Korean BBQ
- taken me out to my favorite Japanese Ramen place
- bought me a gourmet cake of my choice
- booked and planned a bed and breakfast getaway
- booked me a massage
- taken me out to a French restaurant, Café Gallery
- given me things that as a gentleman I will not disclose.
Most importantly, she has taken the time and effort to make this 30th birthday meaningful. In 40 years, I may forget about the name of the French restaurant or the kind of cake we had, but I’ll never forget how my wife made me feel. Kind of a "Holy Shit, I love that you did all this for me!" Although it’s something I’m still getting used to, it doesn’t mean I appreciate it any less. Thank you to my beautiful asawa and to all my friends for never forgetting to say, Happy Fucking Birthday.
Look at this guy always smilin' and shit. My platoon sergeant liked to point me out to the rest a lot. Staff Sergeant Fett* was a seasoned soldier. Anyone could tell that by looking at him. His face was weathered by war. When he smiled, it seemed as if he had just donned a samurai's face mask. The grin from his mouth only seemed to accentuate the terror-inducing intensity from his eyes. He was a guy you felt comfortable with leading you into battle. He was what you called high speed, a term soldiers use to label people or equipment as bad ass or hardcore. Hell, even in the civilian world, whenever he would go back to his vehicle, he would walk around it first, get down and inspect underneath it and check for leaking fluids, IEDs, and whatever else he thought could be compromising at a grocery store parking lot.
What you smilin' about Vo? You get laid or something?
No Sarge, just a good day to be alive I guess.
I don't think I ever met a soldier who smiles so goddamn much! I bet you'd shoot a haji in the face with that smile.
I was used to this kind of observation because it's true. Not the shooting someone in the face part. For the record, the only shooting I've done was for training. I smile often because I always have a good reason to.
Of course, most people assume that it's because my life has been rainbows and fluff cake, which I don't care to correct or impart a sob story upon. In reality, it's because I know there are always bad days, and that those bad days are just never that bad. Even in my teens, the worst part of my life, I always had hope. I knew that somebody had it worse. Many times, when we're depressed or upset about our life or something that's happened, we're overcome with the negative emotions of anger, sadness, hopelessness or the feeling that we've been specially selected by a clandestine group to be a victim of a bad life. This is especially true when the people who surround you seem to have no problems, and you seem to have them all.
In the end it's all a matter of perspective. And hearing the stories of others helps to keep things in perspective. Stories of people like Cpl Todd Love, a former Marine who lost both of his legs and his left arm to an IED. For many, the pain of losing limbs could throw us into a world of Why and How could this happen. For Love, he recently completed an event called the Spartan Race, a physical and mental challenge of obstacles over a span of 10.5 miles. He and his team ran the race while wearing a protective gas mask, which reduces the ability to breathe by 30%. He's also skydived, wrestled an alligator, and learned to play the piano.
Then there's Scott Neeson, whom I read about this week. If there ever was a story that needs to be shared, it's this one. In fact, I hope the link I provided gets more shares than my own whimsy blog. He was a Hollywood movie mogul, the President of 20th Century Fox, earning a million dollar salary, attending Academy Awards, and taking beautiful women on dates in his Porsche and yacht. During a backpacking trip in Cambodia, he witnessed the poverty stricken lifestyle of families working and sometimes living on a garbage landfill. In a dump that was filled with waste, hypodermic needles, and even aborted fetuses, young children worked and tried to salvage anything they could find to resell and feed their families. Mr. Neeson has long since left his comfortable position and has moved to Cambodia, where he is fully committed to helping the kids through education. As with many places in the world it is a much harsher reality for these kids than it is for any of us in America, where we worry more about the things we want rather than what we need.
I'm not saying it's wrong to want things. There isn't anything wrong with wanting to drive a nicer car or to have a better body, but if wanting those things causes unhappiness, perhaps it's time to reevaluate. If the hooptie you drive is starting to wear on your pride, you can at least enjoy that you have a faster way to travel then by foot. If you don't have the job that makes you happy, continue to strive for the one that does. In the meantime, continue to collect those paychecks for which you ardously earn every week, because most anything beats working in a factory for $2 a day. Not happy with your sex life, or lack thereof? Consider the many wounded soldiers and marines who have lost that ability when they stepped on an pressure-plated IED. For me, I like to always think that I have it good. I'm well fed, clothed, housed, and free of debilitating disease. My body works as it should, and my brain can still function. And while I could use a constant reminder that being stuck in traffic isn't as bad as being the guy who caused the traffic (thank you New York City for my road rage), I am generally happy with where I am and who I'm surrounded by. And when you're happy , it's hard not to smile.
Cpl Todd Love's story:
Scott Neeson's story:
