Eternal Worker, Eternal Mother

WRITTEN AND PHOTOS BY JASON GREEN

My mother immigrated from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. She was almost two when she arrived in the United States with my grandma, grandpa, aunt, and two uncles. She was sponsored by a Catholic Church in Pennsylvania and arrived with little money. A family friend convinced my grandma to move to California and she only knew how to speak Vietnamese. My mother, on the other hand, managed to learn English by watching TV.

My grandma was a farmer who pushed all of her being to raise four children. With little income, my mother used to make up games with my uncles and aunt. She considers her childhood to be a happy one. A fond Christmas memory that still echoes and stays with her was receiving food from the community.

My mother had to work three jobs when she reached high school, concurring with her classes. She was a scorekeeper for the women’s basketball team. It was there that she met my father, who was a highly skilled athlete in the men’s basketball team. They grew closer on a three hour bus together as they talked all to a basketball game. My dad even started to sneak into her calculus class to be with her.

She graduated top 10 in her class and headed to the University of California, Irvine, where she would eventually drop out after becoming pregnant with my oldest brother. Motherhood took precedence over academics until she re-entered school 3 years later at a community college while raising two boys. She studied industriously to get into California State University, Fullerton, and earned her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

After college, she found herself working at a school district as an accountant technician, but life is a volatile beast and she had to overcome new challenges once again. She became pregnant with me, her youngest and most difficult pregnancy, the only child with significant disabilities. I was a special child. While in the womb, the doctors already knew something was wrong. They found that I had excess fluid in my brain. My mother grew worried and the doctors wanted to deliver me early, however, my mother did not want to since the fluid was said to be relatively normal. She held onto hope. My mother, father, and even the doctors could not predict my quality of life after birth. Whether I could talk, walk, or achieve usual milestones of development was unknown. All they could do was hope.

Once I was born, my disabilities came into full fruition. I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at one month old and had to undergo heart surgery at two months old, for I had a hole in my heart. In all, by the age of eight, I had already done three heart surgeries. I remember my mom telling me the severity of her worry and anxiety during my first heart surgery. A long deep breath in, waiting and waiting until a nurse approached my parents. I was an aggressive little patient. I managed to pull out a medical device, prolonging the operation. After my surgery, there was heavenly relief. I had to have two more heart surgeries due to leftover tissue. With these two heart surgeries , that same feeling did not go away and the level of relief never faltered for my parents. This was also the case in the other surgeries that were unrelated to my heart. It was instinctual. When my third heart surgery came around, I knew I could hold my mother’s hand for support.

My mother wanted to further understand my disabilities and the education system for me. It is common for parents with disabled children to conduct research themselves to fight and advocate for their child. An unfortunate and unjust reality is that parents have to fight the education system to support their kids in the first place. My mother embarked on another academic journey with earning a master’s degree in School Psychology in order not to be lost. She was going to school full-time, working full-time at a school district, and had the never ending job of being a mother to three boys. To this day, I don’t have an inkling of how she managed three herculean obligations. My mother slowly made her way up in education, going from an accountant technician to currently a chief business official, showing her talent and resilience. She is not only someone that one can depend on as a leader, but she is someone that one can depend on as a mother.