Of Bamboos and Fuchsias

Of Bamboos and Fuchsias by Lê trung Chính To my wife Jeri, and to Ben and Jen, and all in our Lê Thẩm family, with love 1 Of Bamboos and Fuchsias Table of Contents Introduction pages 2-5 Book One: Việt Nam 1. Father and Mother pages 8-45 2. The Village of Triêù Khúc pages 46-58 3. First homecoming pages 59-64 4. Letters from Hà Nôi, 2001-2004 pages 65-112 5. Baby Mơ pages 113-122 6. Đất Nước through silk painting pages 123-127 7. Hà Nội, my kind of town pages 128-136 Book two: America 1. The Bodega Bay years pages 138-181 2. Susie pages 182-193 3. Summer 2000 pages 194-208 4. All things right and relevant pages 209-246 Epilogue: Who am I? pages 247-252 2 Introduction Every book needs an introduction, which is the moment for the author to step up to the podium to answer two simple questions. “Why do think you should write a book”? and “What is it about?” Then, there is another question: “What will happen to the book after it is written?” Ironically, even the few “successful” writers who get their fifteen minutes of media fame will experience the most humbling literary journey: seeing one’s book go within a few months from the shelves of a chain bookstore to a $0.99 “used-but-like-new” book deal on Amazon.com, and finally as a $0.50 bargain at a thrift store or someone’s garage sale. What, my life story for 50 cents? It is true that there are too many books out there already, most of them never read or just gathering dust, and that I actually don’t have much of a story to tell, or to sell. I am not a “survivor” of any great human tragedy, and I don’t have an interesting “immigrant success story” to brag about. But writing is first and foremost a personal matter. We write for our own sake. Writing a book is probably like working on a painting. It starts with our basic human need to express ourselves and interpret our world. So to answer the above questions, I would like to reproduce the first few lines of my “Bodega Bay journal”, which I started on August 28, 1988. “Why should a man start a diary at 40? Perhaps it is the urge to put down in writing fleeting or recurring thoughts, like a blacksmith working the iron when it is hot. We write believing that our thoughts and feelings are worth saving for posterity, or for the need to feel better understood, someday... Or maybe starting my diary at 40 is just a mid-life crisis, a time for reflection.” I did not write because I felt morose about the years past and gone, like a Marcel Proust “à la recherche du temps perdu”, who subjected his manuscripts to endless revisions to recapture or recreate time through unconscious memory. Nor did I write to search for the meaning of life, like a Rod McKuen lamenting in his song “Looking Back at 30” the deception and the passing of youth. If I had a middle life crisis at 40, I am not sure that it was about looking back, or looking ahead, as much as it was “living for today.” My diary entries were reflections about events that crossed my mind on a particular day, like paintings of clouds drifting across my sky. They were essentially “interior monologues”, as it has been said of writings that explore the inner self. Now, I am at that stage in life when the days, and months, and years are passing ever faster, when the past is flashing back ever closer, the future sounding more uncertain, and fleeting thoughts of old age and death are 3 becoming as inevitable as leaves must fall from trees in late autumn. It is time to pause for a moment, revisit the journey and confront my own nature and mortality. Most books are about the past, not only because the present can be best understood by analyzing the past, but because the present is to some degree made up of the past. However, this book is not an autobiography: let’s face it, I am not eager to write my own obituary - not now, nor later. But I am using my diary as the main foundation of this book. For I just realize that keeping a journal is actually writing one’s memoir at the instant when things happen, when feelings run as a turbulent stream of consciousness, like the tumbling flow of a mountain stream before it hits the dam below, where suddenly the water stands still, only to be later released in calculated measures. In rereading my journal entries spanning the past 20 years, I was at times astounded at how much I had forgotten of the actual events as they unfolded then, and how my initial “raw” feelings had faded away over the years through the selective process of my memory. In contrast to the tendency of a memoir to rearrange and reshape events, then fix their place in history, diary pages are direct recordings of the heartbeat and pulse of our past. They are not to be “whitewashed” or redressed for posterity. And so, here are the voices and the pictures of my past, unfiltered. The book also contains stories about a few patients who have walked into my life for only a few episodes, but nevertheless have left a profound mark on me. As a history lover and a practitioner of medical sciences, I have always believed in the reasoning power of facts and statistics. Personal stories were but “anecdotes”, fit for novels and after-dinner conversations but with no “academic value”. Now that I realize how history is always being rewritten, and how statistics and facts can be manipulated, I have discovered the real dimension of individual stories, of lives infinitely insignificant in the pages of history, yet profoundly representative of our human condition. These stories, recorded as they happened, are as real as the flesh and bones of the patients who grabbed me by my white coat and inspired me to write - stories without added coloring or touches of make-up to turn them into likable works of fiction. It doesn’t mean selecting what segments of my diary, e-mail letters, stories or essays to publish, and editing my spontaneous scribbles of years bygone is without some “reorganization” or re- packaging. Many themes were recurrent in my original writings, or were of trivial value, and therefore are condensed, reframed, or simply omitted. I subjected my e-mail letters from Việt Nam to a vigorous “cut and paste” operation, and merged them along major themes. However, there might be some repetitions, some feelings told and retold, because I want most essays to be able to 4 stand on their own, fully endowed. Most of the editing process is, first, to improve the grammar and clarity of the original diary entrees. For this, I am most thankful for my wife, Jeri, and our friends Dorothy Foytik and Sandie Helmick, for their patience in correcting the many syntax errors in this awkward ESL work of mine, and for asking me to clarify some muddled expressions. Second, in my own editing, I have sometimes found it necessary to expand on the themes and feelings that were true when they were first put down, but I have resisted the temptation to justify or “sugarcoat” them. Thus, this book is not a collection of “confessions”, Jean Jacques Rousseau style, for there is no retreat from, nor apology for any of my feelings that could be negatively interpreted by others. Nor is it a Faustian strife to understand the infinite, or a quest for the fulfillment of a soul infinitely aspiring and never satisfied, although I would agree with Goethe that a man’s life, anyone ’s life, is an unfinished poem. If some facts may no longer be accurate because things have changed and answers are different now, the reader should remember to reset their clocks to the time of my original writing. This collection of my observations of the world around me is not edited to fit the current picture or later course of events. It only tells it the way it was, then and there. Now, what will happen to my book once I finish writing it? I hope that these “reflections” or interior monologues, initially written for myself, will someday resonate with my son Ben, with his “partner-in- life” and our “daughter-in-love” Jen, with my nieces and nephews, sisters and other relatives, and with a few close friends scattered across the continent and around the globe. This book is to make up for the time we could not spend together, for the evenings we did not have together, evenings I wish we could have to open our hearts and minds to each other by the glow of a fireplace, or share stories while watching the waves rolling in. Some stories may be inconsequential, and some feelings not so relevant. But you may also learn about some people, events and values that have shaped my life, our lives, and perhaps discovering along the way some parts of you that are in me. And so, I dedicate this book to all of you, family and friends, my loved ones, for here I am to share with you my bamboo roots, grown in Việt Nam, and our fuchsia plants, blooming in America. Each garden created with its own climate, soil and water, wind and sun; the two lands I call mine, where many had nurtured me, and to whom I am most thankful.

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