Lives

When I was rummaging around in some old storage boxes and suitcases a while back, I came across this empty cigarette pack.  I wondered why on earth anyone would save such a thing.  Normally, something like this would just be trash you would throw away without a thought.  So I asked my mother if she knew anything about this.  When I showed it to her, she paused, started to say something, stopped, took the package from me and held it in her hand, looking at it as if it was the relic of a saint.  She brushed a finger across it.  I waited.  She said nothing, but just kept holding the package, looking at it.  Finally, I said, "Well?"  Then she explained that this was a package of cigarettes that my aunt, the one I wrote about in my post Conversations with a Ghost, had discarded and that she, my mother, had retrieved and saved.  She had forgotten all about it and wanted to know where I found it. I told her and she spent an hour going through the worldly remnants of a life, not speaking, sometimes picking something out and holding it, pressing it to her heart, reluctantly putting it back.  Afterwards, we had a long conversation not only about my aunt, but about many, many things, especially how brief this life is, and how much we should treasure each moment, and each other, because soon enough we will all be gone and nothing will be left of us but a suitcase or cardboard box filled with old books, out of style clothing, empty cigarette packages and other useless junk that sooner or later will be thrown away by those to whom these things mean nothing.

The famous photo of Kim Phúc.

  I also found this little booklet that belonged to my mother. She bought it when she was a volunteer with the Barsky Unit of the Children's Medical Relief International hospital in Saigon in

Kim Phúc being treated in the Barsky Unit.

the early 1970s. The Barsky Unit treated burn victims, many horrifically burned by napalm.  You've seen the little girl running naked screaming.  That was Phan Thị Kim Phúc.  My mother treated her among many, many others. 

Kim Phúc (center) recovering in the CMRI burn ward.*

Glancing through the book, the phrases it taught don't seem like they would be of much use to a burn care nurse.  Before volunteering with CMRI, my mother was an army nurse serving in Viet Nam, based in Cu Chi.  She wouldn't have had much use for a Vietnamese phrase book then as her patients were American soldiers.  She won't talk about that time of her life and only reluctantly talks about her time with CMRI. Outwardly, the only sign she ever reveals that shows she was in Viet Nam is that she hates the sound of helicopters and she can detect the sound of a Huey or Chinook before anyone else can hear anything.  If she is outside when she does, she goes into the house.  If she is inside, she goes into the bathroom and turns on the exhaust fan.

*The grease pencil marks on this photo are because it was used by my mother's home-town newspaper in a story about her service as an Army nurse and volunteer with CMRI shortly after she returned to the States.

The Japanese woman who emigrated to the States back around circa 1980, whom I've written about before (Next Generation), seems to be losing her English. Having learned English at an adult school when she was in her thirties, she always had a heavy accent and vocabulary largely limited to business and commerce -- she would "issue" a check, never merely write one, for example -- but now sometimes her English is unintelligible.  When I ask her to repeat what she has said, she grows peevish and barks, "Listen!"  I'm the stupid one because I can't understand; it's my fault.  So I listen more intently but all I hear is gibberish. Her mind is retreating into her earlier life.  She's growing old.  That's all.  

These days, she often reminisces about her life in Japan.  Among other things, she talks about when she graduated from a commercial high school -- one that taught employment skills for those not college-bound, and applied for work. She thought if she worked hard and was loyal to the company she would advance, but she discovered that in ultra-sexist Japan that was not going to happen.  In fact, in one job, her boss told her that she would never be promoted because she was too ugly.  The only women who got raises were the tee-hee tootsies who giggled at the boss's jokes.  On a trip to the USA, she was astonished to see female department heads bossing around men.  From that moment on she was America-bound.  And, indeed, once here, she did very, very well for herself, as I've written.  I also wrote about her mother (A Life), who dearly loved America and Americans, owing her life to them. (I wrote in her profile that she is still alive, but since I wrote that, she has passed away.)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”
~ Anais Nin.