I felt the stares of the people I was with at the bar.
“I just haven’t seen anyone order Budweiser in ages. Or maybe ever.”
Said the friend who has returned to being a stranger to me again.
“I thought this classic beer would do for tonight.”
I didn’t need to tell him he didn’t have to know that when I drink Budweiser I see a photograph of a stone, park table a few cans of Budweiser vintage now the sun, high, illuminating healthy, old trees in the foreground my father in a white tee and denim button down grinning happy his arm slung around his best friend
I didn’t need to tell him he didn’t have to know that when I drink Budweiser I feel the brisk evening air coming off the lake as I watch Grampy at his 70th birthday party in his chair at the table on the patio with Nana nearby remembering their ritual of cracking open their first evening beer together and toasting to each other before taking a sip
“I will never be like him,” she laughs, as he recalls a childhood memory of his, the time he almost swallowed and choked on a whole baby mango because he didn’t want to share it with his siblings. He seems energetic and happy at the wobbly dinner table, surrounded by mismatched chairs. When he’s done eating, he leaves the table abruptly to smoke a cigarette outside and commands the family to clean up. She sweeps the floors, the easiest task for the youngest. Her brother puts away the leftover tum makhoong that Pa had made and the rest of the khao niew, still half full in the woven rice baskets.
“I will never be like him,” she ponders admiringly, as he builds a shed in the corner of the backyard to store gathered scrap wood, tools, and spare knick knacks that the house can’t hold. “Jao het heuan hai mah, boh? Are you building this house for our dogs?” she asks innocently, 6 years old, hoping that that’s the case. He doesn’t respond. “I guess he thinks that’s a dumb question,” she thinks, as she walks away to play in the herb garden that he’d grown, searching for snails to bother.
“I will never be like him,” she mopes, as she watches him sitting stone silent, staring at the rain pounding against the truck windows, immobile, stuck, hungry, as she waits to gather her school things and to go inside the house. “Pa,” she murmurs. It had been a long day for a second grader. He makes her wait in the truck with him until the rain subsides. They don’t speak.
“I will never be like him,” she tells herself, over and over, tears streaming heavily and quickly down her face as she watches her mother put the household back together after another of her father’s rage episodes. She helps take the belongings that aren’t broken out of the trash and takes them to the kitchen sink. Her mother moves just as slowly and deliberately as he had moved so rapidly and destructively. She hears him crack open a Budweiser in the next room over.
“I will never be like him,” she screams internally, watching, helpless, as yet again, another of her siblings takes a whipping for his irrational “reasons.” This time, she throws herself across her sister’s back in the hopes that he won’t strike his smallest, youngest child. She is wrong.
“I will never be like him,” she walks away reluctantly but still without hugging him goodbye, as he remains seated in the living room of his care facility. He wears a scarf around his neck, gifted to him by her loving brother, taken off of his own neck just moments before. Pa said he was often too cold inside the building. She vows to return, to interview him and ask him the questions he has promised to answer, to write his story, the family’s story, but she never gets the chance. “Bye, Pa.”
“I will never be like him,” she declares, out of the corner of her mouth, lighting a cigarette, drinking a Budweiser, sitting on the tailgate of her truck. She waits.
It was easy to spot him in a sea of people. He was wearing a black cowboy hat and boots, having fallen in love with Texas fashion upon arriving from Laos in ‘89. I thought he looked a little silly but loved him for it, even as a teenager who deeply cared about appearances. Pa walked up to me with flowers in hand, grinning from ear to ear. The lilies were a little expensive, but they reminded us both of plumeria, in fragrance at least, which grew abundantly in his hometown in Laos. He presented them to me and then pulled me into a hug. I could tell that he was radiating pride for his youngest daughter graduating from high school, and, at that moment, I was proud to be his daughter too.
My high school was quite small – a graduating class of 58. It was tradition that the graduation ceremony was held at a historic church in downtown Dallas. The stained glass windows cast warm shades of red and yellow along the hall where families were gathering. It was the perfect golden hour on a Friday evening: laughter, chatter, and hugs all around. Young adults on the verge of the next big step of their lives. This moment in time was a milestone for both of us. Pa was a man of few words, but he really didn’t have to say much. We understood each other.
—
This time, there were more people. I graduated with an Integrative Studies degree from the University of North Texas, and the ceremony was in the coliseum, and the crowds were dense after the graduates were all released to find their loved ones. Flowers in hand, again, Pa was waiting by the steps, a strategic place for me to find him. Smart, I thought. I wondered if always finding a good lookout point was an instinct leftover from having fought in the Secret War. He was a clever, resourceful man, always creating.
It was a warm day in May and the sun was high. I couldn’t wait to eat at the Thai restaurant in town that had the savory and funky flavors in their dishes that were closest and most pleasing to our Lao palates. I was impatient when I was hungry, much like Pa. We waited for the rest of the family to find us. This graduation was enough for me; I opted not to attend the ceremonies for my master’s degrees. Achieving an undergraduate degree was the highest education anyone in my family had earned at that point, and I knew, again, the amount of pride my father held for me then.
—
And then Pa was tying white threads around my wrist at my wedding reception. I shed a tear as he wished for my health and prosperity in Lao. He said that Mae had been up so early that morning, preparing the threads, the boiled eggs, and the steamed rice desserts for the ceremony. Pa had a tenderness in his eyes when he spoke of her.. He complimented the blending of Lao and Texan traditions, grinning at the cowboy hats that several of the wedding party had donned on their way in. He loved my partner as his newest, youngest son.
We whispered inside jokes and teased one another on the dance floor, relishing in a moment together and chuckling to get through our nerves. He twirled me a few times to an old country song, but we’d established during the wedding planning that he was too shy to dance for a whole song. So off we went to raucous applause at the end of our very short father-daughter dance. It was bliss.
—
Across the pha khao from me, Pa is cradling a Budweiser can in his left hand as he eats khao poon with chopsticks in his right. I’m annoyed at the slurping noises of approval at my cooking but also so happy to see him enjoying the food I prepared. It’s our favorite Lao meal: red curry and coconut milk soup with somen noodles, spicy, just a hit of sour, fresh, and so texturally fun to eat. “Saap e-lee,” he tells me, grinning and nodding. “Thanks, Pa,” I respond, laughing as he abandons his beer to lift his bowl and drink every last drop of soup.
—
If only these scenes were real memories. If only Pa were still alive. I would tell him how much it would have meant to me to have tried to heal our relationship, so that I could share with him about those milestone life events from which he was absent (I wasn’t ready to invite him). Though I’ve imagined these scenes from the perspective of “wishing my father had been the kind of loving, caring, delightful, compassionate father that everyone deserves,” I am also writing it from the perspective of “this is who I wish I had been too.” We are both not without our flaws.
I would apologize for subconsciously punishing him by avoiding and excluding him, and that my anger at his mistreatment of me, of his own family, felt justified. So I never called. I never considered inviting him. In my distance and protecting my peace and happiness, I was safe. It turns out, I was still afraid of him, despite his aged and frail body, he was still the monster my younger self saw. Feeling righteous and powerful, I was adamant that my abuser would not be allowed in my presence. Power can delude you, too.
And trauma can cause you to make decisions you might deeply regret with perspective but it is part of the healing process and cannot be discounted. You have to be gentle for treating people how they time and time again proved that they needed to be treated to protect yourself. For making choices that you wish you could change (but would you?). I don’t remember the last time that I hugged my father. (But why would you hug your abuser?) It goes on.
Grief has twisted its tendrils around every bit of me, sometimes binding me so tightly, I am incapacitated.
Perhaps, reader, you have gathered that I did not invite him to either graduation, nor to my wedding. We also never shared moments like eating a meal that I had made together, and it pains me that he never got to try (and criticize but maybe lovingly) the Lao food that I make these days with pride.
My father had crippling PTSD that went untreated, and his actions my entire life necessitated distance from him. I thought I might be able to log an interview or two with him after some years of my own personal work in therapy, but COVID took him from this plane of existence and that was that. I thought I had time, and that is a misconception that we all make and must forgive ourselves for. I am here, fatherless, and without ever having the chance to invite him to any other milestone events again, even if I chose. Even if it were a possibility. And I live with this. It doesn’t get easier; but we get stronger.
February 11th marks one year of my father’s passing, and a little under one year since I’ve published a blog post. I would love to say that this was intentional, but it wasn’t. I was just dealing with a lot of shit and spending too much time away from what feeds my soul (more on that in another post that’s been fermenting).
I love the momentum of a “new year” whether it’s literally a new year or a turn around the sun (birthdays) which is why I mark significant dates as anniversaries during which we are “starting anew.”
February 11th marks one year of my father’s passing, and a little under one year since I’ve published a blog post. I would love to say that this was intentional, but it wasn’t. I was just dealing with a lot of shit and spending too much time away from what feeds my soul (more on that in another post that’s been fermenting).
When you lose someone as significant to your life as a parent, you’re transformed. This is something I found myself declaring in the early days to my therapist and anyone who would listen post-father loss. I felt a seismic shift within myself but didn’t know what that would look like. But there are some earth shattering experiences that you can’t go through without unlocking a part of yourself that needed to be let loose at some point so you can become your whole self.
So here’s my year-in-grief-review, picking moments that stood out to me and felt connected to my father-loss.
I told a friend that I felt like I could “kick doors down” and that I “wasn’t afraid of anything!” and I think it was the adrenaline from the shock of my dad’s death speaking at the time. But little things started taking shape and manifesting.
In the wake of anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes, I took my very Asian name back o f f i c i a l l y, the one given to me by my parents: Lasamee Kettavong.
I embodied the “kick doors down” power and somehow no longer gave a fuck whether someone liked me or not. I began to let all of my colors show, wherever I went and with whomever I spoke. Life is short and the unexpected will happen (which you CAN expect, ha. ha.).
I’ve thought about what my epitaph would be and what my tombstone would look like since the time I learned what an epitaph was (probably in high school english class). My tombstone sure as hell will NOT read “Laci” because that’s not who I am. My name means something synonymous with “celestial light” and I can’t live with myself avoiding embodying that brilliance that my mother gave me, so here I am, nice and shiny (read: oily, lol) for ya.
Throwing myself into learning more about the motherland and connecting with other Lao folx has helped me feel like part of a community and that I belong and am accepted. That’s mind-blowingly heartwarming for me. For some reason, my dad didn’t really help the family become a part of the Lao community when we were younger, and that’s a shame; my mom is a social creature and extrovert.
Blake and I finally got married this past year, which we were planning on doing anyway, but … now I actually had an easy reason to tell people why my dad wasn’t present. Before, it was “My father has complex PTSD and can’t be around people” with a big, fat, loaded silence following it. “He’s dead,” is a much easier to digest and say reason, plus, no one wants to upset the bride the day of the wedding and bring up dead dad, right? (Sorry, this is my sense of humor and how I talk … dark and maybe a little blasphemous?) My sweet mama walked me down the aisle.
Me, trying not to let fat tears roll down my face during a moment of silence for the people who couldn’t be with us on our wedding day
As the day of the dead/Dia de los Muertos rolled around, I’d planned to read a letter to my dad at an open mic but ultimately that didn’t happen. It’s okay though – I wrote one to him anyway, and now it exists in the world and has helped me do some healing. My therapist was excited for me to take this major step (publicly announcing my father), but that will have to wait.
What else did I accomplish? Finishing a podcast, The Untitled Dad Project, which for me is monumental. I’ve only finished listening to one audio book in my lifetime because I can’t stay focused on longer audio pieces.
And last but not least, my partner and I started our small business, Good and Golden, which aims to share Lao food and culture (lookin’ for partners here!) with people who don’t know what or where Laos is!
And, I learned a little more about what forgiveness looks like for me.
I hope that he didn’t suffer
January 20, 2019 was the last day that I saw my father in-person at his care facility. My brother and sister went with me. We’d had brunch and mimosas. We pulled in, parked, and my brother and I shared a cigarette, while my sister climbed a nearby crepe myrtle. She gets her anxious energy out in weird ways; my brother and I have our own coping methods.
Samout, climbing a tree and being silly before seeing our dad for the first time in years
I noted the automatic sliding door, the decorated entryway, the fake plants, the office-like feel to the environment, and the front desk person greeted us, asking what we needed and who we were there to see. I was in family historian mode. “Nai Kettavong,” we said, as she searched up where he might be and on what floor. We got on an elevator.
“Oh no one ever visits Nai,” the staff person on the second floor responded. I cringed. The place didn’t feel real. It felt like a dream where you know that you’re asleep and intuitively, you know where you are and feel like you’ve been there before. This was the first time I’d ever stepped foot in this facility.
We were lead to my father’s room, and it was empty. I panicked a little inside.
“He might be watching TV in the common room,” our guide said, and we followed him, completely silent.
There he was. My dad. The man who I had feared for most of my life and felt some dutiful love towards as his daughter. He was alone. There were chairs here and there in the room and a lonely couch, a couple of small cafe-sized tables along the wall. At least there was a window, wall to wall, behind him. We pulled up a couple chairs to the round table that he was seated at, a walker nearby.
Playing on the television was some mundane show about wildlife or something that I didn’t particularly care about but was glad there was something for all of us to look at when we needed to look away from one another.
He looked so much grayer, pale, and older than I remembered. He had the same smile though, somewhat sheepish and shy. Perhaps he felt as if he were dreaming too. His children were actually there to see him. Chasms of guilt rippled through me.
“Do you remember me?” my sister asked.
“Yes,” he replied calmly.
I’d suspected that the language barrier between my father and staff contributed to my father’s diagnosis of early dementia. I would observe a little more closely, I thought to myself.
“How are you?” my brother asked. “I’m fine here. I get a little cold,” he responded.
Later, my brother would take the scarf that he was wearing and give it my dad because of the comment about being cold, which I’d notice in all of his photos in the years following. Our oldest sister would become his caretaker in Texas City, where he would be moved to in just a few months following this visit.
The conversation was slow. The three of us assessed the situation, asking questions here and there. Speaking Lao out loud to our estranged father was quite the task. And we were electrified by being in his presence again, I think.
I asked him if I could ask him some questions for a project that I was working on, and he said, “Go ahead, ask, and I’ll tell you everything.” That was the last time we spoke. I didn’t get to ask him any questions again.
Gray is how I feel when I think about this. Like hand torn paper pieces that have been mixed with water to become pulp and and then pressed, to live a different life. Lumps. Speckles. Wet. Shapeless until the next step. Amorphous and gray. Lacking any brightness, any warmth.
Recently, I realized that a confident sign that you have forgiven someone who abused and terrorized you and your family (even if it was their own family) is that you pray that they did not suffer during their last days. That hot, boiling rage that you used to feel when you cursed them into oblivion turns into just your body temperature as you sigh and think about them.
The ‘rona finally got me after two years of the pandemic, and it was days of body aches, fever dreams, sinus pressure, sneezing, coughing, and mucus. The first night, I rolled over and said to Blake, “I hope my dad didn’t suffer,” and tried to get a good cry out. It didn’t work. I finally cried typing “He was alone,” in the above paragraph.
It took another couple of days for me to think to myself, “Ah. Yes. I did the work. I have forgiven.”
My father died of COVID complications last year, and we still have not been able to take his ashes to his final resting place. For Lao folks, this is usually the temple in the community. I know that this is the case for too many at this point in the pandemic. I am so sorry.
It’s been nearly an entire year since I’ve published anything on this blog, and it somewhat symbolizes where I’ve been with my grief: in the in-between. Which, I suppose, is where we could say my father’s physical being is too.
If you are in the in-between, I will meet you where you are. If you need help, please let yourself shoot that text, make a call, send an email, or call an anonymous hotline. It’s worth it; you’re worth it.
I’ve made this spicy, funky, sour, mortar-ed and pestle-ed shredded, green papaya salad (thum makhoong) dozens of times. Sometimes if the Thai chilies and garlic that I’m crushing pops out of the mortar and gets into my eyes, I’ll cry.
This time, I’m crying because I’m remembering how my dad used to make thum makhoong for family meals: very sour, not too sweet, little bit of funk from the padaek (fermented fish sauce) and extremely spicy. Lao people eat thum something (papaya, cucumber, carrots, so on) with nearly every meal.
“Am I going to do this every time?” I ask my partner, as he gives my arm a squeeze, and I scrub at my face. It was day nine post-my father’s passing, and we were managing to stay warm and survive during the worst winter storm of my life, exacerbated by Texas’ energy grid failings (but that’s another story), and I have been moving through the days in a blur. I had consistently been able to cry while listening to “Live Forever” by Billy Joe Shaver to avoid emotional constipation. For whatever reason, the lyrics “I’m going to live forever, I’m going to cross that river” magically floated to the front of my mind on the day of his death. But other moments lately, I’m quite unsure what will bring tears to my eyes.
Mostly memories make my eyes sting but the pain is moving more toward thinking about what could have been and never was. What can now only be dreamed.
On hot summer days, when pa would water the herb and plant garden in the backyard, fragrant with spearmint and Thai basil, vibrant with giant green gourds and adorably wrinkly looking bitter melon, I’d play in the shower of the garden hose water, always hoping the sun would gift us a rainbow.
When pa smoked a cigarette after dinner, I’d bat at the plumes of smoke that he exhaled. Summer nights outside feeding june bugs to the chickens and feeling the sticky heat of the day slowly leaving.
I am comforted by the scents of mint and tobacco to this day.
I used to run into my father’s arms after pre-k and kindergarten classes. How I hated to be away from home in a foreign place those days, away from my caretaker and the family pets, and the creature comforts that a 5 year-old has, no matter how sparse they were.
Pa had a temper, but he also had tenderness for growing, living beings.
I questioned him here and there, perhaps foolishly, but when you’re young, you’re naive.
“Why do you get to watch your Lao comedy shows, but you don’t let mom watch her Thai soap operas?”
Crickets.
“Why won’t you let me participate in academic clubs and sports?”
“Why can’t we visit our friends’ houses?”
The concerns of a little girl, of course.
I never got to ask him certain questions that I was sure would help us repair our relationship, someday.
“Why won’t you tell your sons and daughters that you’re proud of them?”
“Do you love us?”
“What happened in the war?”
“Where were you born?”
“What was your relationship with your parents like?”
“Do you feel any remorse for what you did to your own flesh and blood? The woman you married?”
“What happened during the interrogation by the Thai police?”
“Would you ever want to visit Laos?”
“What do you miss about Laos?”
“What’s your favorite meal?”
The Saturday before my dad’s death, my siblings and I had a Zoom call for the first time, ever. We don’t talk much but do try to stay in touch and check in every now and then. We have a group chat but somehow managed to avoid Zoom even during the pandemic that burns slowly on.
The last time we had a call with all five of us was when my mother had a minor stroke in November 2016. Our parents somehow always bring us together even if one of them (my father) tried to drive us apart.
We arranged this Zoom call because our father had COVID. He was in a care facility in Texas City where my oldest sister lives.
He’s “okay but not great” is what the woman on the phone told me when I called to check on him. She hesitated. I felt the silence.
I asked if we could arrange a time to FaceTime.
She told me that would be “hit or miss.”
That it’s her and one other person taking care of the COVID unit. Her and Laura.
I asked for her name. Nicole.
Said “Thank you. Take care.”
Hung up.
Hours later, my sister told the family “Dad just passed away!” Time slowed down and sped up. Chaos ensued. Calls missed, FaceTimes urgently popping up, having to tell mom. Having to figure out how to breathe. Having to persevere. Having to hurt. Grieve.
Everything feels fragmented and disjointed when I try to think about the reality of what is happening right now. Like I don’t know how to use words and form sentences properly. Like I have brain fog, but I’m not the one infected.
Have I done all that I could? Probably not.
Would it be enough for me even if I did? Never.
Many things have come of this upheaval of life.
For one, I trust my cards, and I trust my intuition. The two times that I have felt a deep calling from the universe the way that I have regarding my mother’s health and my father’s death will remain distinct, incomparable, and telling.
This sense of urgency and inexplicable connection to them, to the universe, to some web of our collective unconscious, that struck me as “something profound is happening” comforts me, even if historically it has been a harbinger of bad news. In the future, should this sense overtake me again, I will know that I need to act.
I have to believe in the power of this sense and its source. Or else I can’t believe that my father knows that I forgive him, can hear me tell him that I love him, and I’m sorry. And that he loves me still, too.
My siblings and I have talked more than we ever have in the past few weeks, the five of us, as far as I can remember. We’ve shared emotions and tears that we never did when our father was alive. This has to mean something too. Thanks dad.
Some moments in life when they’re happening you think to yourself “I will remember this forever.” Some moments happen and you’re unaware that they’ll remain with you for the rest of your life, even if you resist and even if they’re buried deep within you. Occasionally, they will float back up to the forefront of your mind. Sometimes you won’t be prepared for it and you will find yourself crying at work. Or in the supermarket. Or just on a walk in your neighborhood.
Those moments with floaty bits that come to the front of your mind can be sparked by seeing and experiencing a piece of mail in a backpack (before she left, my sister asked me to save her mail for her…so my secret place as an 8 year old was my backpack), crayon boxes (dad thought new crayon boxes were completely frivolous if last year’s were fine, which is NOT what a first grader thinks AT ALL), white bread and vanilla ice cream (IYKYK, my Southeast Asian fam) in a way that is connected only to you and your life’s history.
Thunderstorms. Pepper packets. Puffy, blue winter coats. Go Fish. Phone books (remember those?). Sometimes they’re not objects but scenes. You might witness a sweet-nothing moment and feel something tugging at your heartstrings. Or the smell of a sterile place makes you feel sick.
These moments are like Portkeys that snap you to a time and scene rather than a place. You’re transported. You feel like you did on that day, in that moment, in the monster’s presence. Your heart races. Your throat tightens. You are a naive adolescent again.
How did I get here? Let’s start with an on-again, off-again relationship.
Which is what my relationship with my counselor was for a while (yea wow millenials all cringe at the sight of those words in relation to something between another person). The spring that my fiance proposed to me, I “graduated” (my words, I think, not my counselor’s). I had been relatively healthy, mentally, and we put a pause on my previously bi-monthly sessions in therapy.
It was a wonderful summer. Picture perfect, in my memory. Freshly engaged, loving my work, life on the upswing, looking forward to a trip to Hawaii to visit family I hadn’t seen in years. Occasionally the depression and anxiety would knock at my door and I’d slam the door shut in it’s fuckin’ face, dust off my hands, and pour myself a celebratory drink.
And then one day, a sweet little child in a baseball uniform popped into my workplace, walking next to his dad. I watched them talk and laugh, head towards his dad’s desk, and the little boy plopped himself in an office chair and spun around. Joy. His father worked and he read (or was he playing a video game? Probs.) and I sat at my desk. Wanting to sob. I felt a few powerful emotions all at once. “This is so sweet!” “I wish I’d had a dad like that.” (See previous blogs if you don’t know why I’m saying that.) “Why am I about to fuckin’ cry?” So I called up my counselor later that day and told him I’d just had some childhood trauma pay me a visit. “When can I see you next?” [Insert millenial joke about dating here.]
My general questions before deciding to either do things or not do things include “Is my life inhibited by this?” and “What will the repercussions/consequences of my actions be?” and “If x is preventing me from living my life to the fullest, being present, and enjoying x, then I need to do something differently/do something about x.” Seeing children happy in the company of their dads should not make me want to cry.
So therapy was on again. Hello darkness, my old friend. Let me fight with you again.
Then, last fall, I met Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, Hunger, and many others. Sitting in the audience with two of my best gal pals, I hungrily swallowed up her words and tried to memorize her voice and listened to the brave and fortunate souls who were able to pose questions to her at the end of her readings.
If you have read anything by Roxane Gay, you will know how profoundly her writing can affect you.
You will think, “Yes, demons, come forth and let me slay you!” She calls them nemeses.
And so it was, for me. I was profoundly touched. I prepare for battle. I am mother of cats. I am a Lao princess warrior, and I have an army of elephants, and I will smash. my. trauma. into the. ever-lovin’ ground. (That actually is written in Lao history, elephants in battle – and then! A general was crushed by his falling elephant and that was that. More on that later, it’s from a A History of Laos by Stuart Fox.)
But the thing with trauma is that you do not know when you will be challenged to a duel. You do not know what object, scent, or sound will call out to you, “Heeeey girl hey, I am about to mess. you. up.” And so, how do you prepare for battle when that sneaky bastard, childhood trauma, doesn’t play fairly?
Yeah, I don’t actually have a complete answer to that question either BUT I will say that understanding how and why this happens has been empowering.
The thing with Portkeys is that you’re not transported anywhere unless you touch them. Now I know how to handle Portkeys; some of them, at least.
Lao word of the day: euy (sound out each letter and then say it, real fast) and you’ve got it. It means “sister.”
“Describe your sister. In Lao.”
I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch in my counselor’s office and not as present as I should be, confused as to why I’m irritable and miffed about my relationship with my eldest sister. It’s a late fall day, and I’ve been hating how short the days have been getting as we approach winter. I don’t feel like cooperating.
But I’m in therapy for a reason, so I take a deep breath and start.
“She was loving. Kind. Thoughtful. She used to let me pick out my outfits when I was getting ready to go to school in kindergarten.”
I stop. My vocabulary in Lao isn’t what it used to be. I don’t know the verbs and the adjectives to describe my memories in Lao like I used to. It’s hard to think of what words to say. But it’s not the words that get me.
“Go on,” he urges gently.
“She raised me. She was my best friend growing up. We did everything together. I followed her like a shadow.”
…silence… weight. the familiar feeling of heat in my throat. I can’t swallow. Clear as day, in my mind’s eye I see me and my siblings piled into an old tub pretending it was a pool in the backyard on a summer day, an activity engineered by my eldest sister for her kid siblings.
“I miss her.” I choke this out in Lao and then I say it in English. (I mean, this dude has been listening to me speak in Lao for a few minutes after all, so throw him some familiar words right?)
And now I’m fucking sobbing. I keep on sobbing. I suck in air. I breathe. Now I guess I’m just crying, normally. OOP nope, sobbing again. It’s a painful however-many minutes for me. It’s the kind of cry that aches from deep within that spans time and space and what I know and don’t know.
My counselor is quiet, supporting me from across the room. Listening. Waiting. Patient. It’s not the words that get me; it’s the language I’m speaking.
When I was young, my sister inspired me to (eventually) write song lyrics by once encouraging me to “make up the words” to songs that I didn’t know that played on the radio when she was driving us somewhere. It was a lightbulb moment for little me. It delighted me and stayed with me forever. I wrote then, and I write now.
She would make something out of nothing – in a good way. Cutting and pasting pictures from junk mail to make collages with me. She even made an entire card deck so that we could play Go Fish (money was tight) and to me, she was an incredible artist. In so many of our family photos, she’s holding one of us in her arms. The best big sister we could have.
She was always there for me. Until she wasn’t.
When I say “my sister ran away” many people ask, “Well, how old was she?” and I stop and think … she was at least 18. Leaving home is common for 18 year olds in American culture. But not for my family, and definitely not under my father’s controlling watch. To leave was to break a family, household rule.
There were circumstances that I didn’t understand that lead her to go. I realize now that I forgive her. Was there anything to forgive in the first place?
Suddenly, I was alone. I didn’t have that kind of bond with my other siblings (not yet at least). I felt abandoned by someone who was the world to me. Left behind. And I held on to that feeling for decades.
I missed her. But who could I tell? So I held it in. Until that seemingly normal, “I’m grouchy” day in therapy.
Language has the power to unlock memories and emotions.
“Discovering your Self in language is always an epiphany, even if finding the words to describe your inner reality can be an agonizing process.” – The Body Keeps The Score, Bessel Van Der Kolk
I’d been hitting a wall with describing how I felt about my eldest sister. Why was I so annoyed with her? What couldn’t I understand? She experienced so much pain and trauma; she did what she had to do. How could I continue to be upset with her for something that I felt like I understood now, as an adult? How had I forgotten this initial upset that was followed up with so many other things I could. not. understand?
Until my counselor asked me what language I spoke growing up.
Lao and English, interchangeably, was my response. My parents mostly spoke Lao, and my siblings were the ones who taught me English until I entered grade pre-school.
How much I had loved and adored my big sister when I was a little girl, and the pain that I felt when one morning, the family rises, and she is gone … returned to me only when I described her in Lao.
She and I have lead very separate lives for a very long time it seems. But we’re okay. We’re re-building our relationship. And I miss her. I finally told her so.
Love you, fam.
-Lasamee
Our most recent hangout, post cry-fest in therapy: my sisters (the one closest to me in age & the eldest), me, and ma.
I’ve deliberated about a project that I’ve thought about for most of my lifetime: telling the story that my family carried with them away from the mountains of Laos across the Mekong River through the skies and to Texas. But I’ve mostly been still, immobile, glued to my spot, and unable to move. And I’ve been silent, afraid, pensive, anxious, sad, playing memories over and over, thinking about how best to paint these pictures as genuinely and honestly as possible and to honor the people within them.
“Why does it feel so wrong to be me? Why am I afraid for people to know who I am and where I come from?”
“The long-term consequences of trauma?” offers my counselor*, a couple of years after we’ve started digging in and doing the work that might enable me to speak. In 2018, he recommended a few books to me that I’m still working through. How on earth did I get through grad school?
True, but maybe not entirely the reason. I realize that a lot of it is shame, for things out of my control.
When I was a child, I was ashamed of being different from everyone else. Different in the sense that I was isolated and couldn’t visit with friends after school or attend the countless birthday parties and hangouts. Different because no one had ever heard of Laos. Different because I didn’t know certain American cultural references. I didn’t meet another Lao child out in the world serendipitously until college. And even then, we were legally adults. Magically thrown together as roommates at the university. I have a feeling we might have been the only 2 Lao girls in that freshman class that year.
Growing up, I was ashamed of being poor. My refugee parents tried their hardest, and we always had food on the table and our basic needs met. But that didn’t mean that I didn’t have to pick through bags of donated clothing to find “new” shirts and pants that would fit me. (And with my tiny, southeast Asian frame, hand-me-downs, especially from strangers, never fit me correctly.) That didn’t mean that I could afford to participate in any extracurriculars that might cost anything to the family, including time for my little hands to work and help at home.
I was ashamed that people would know that my father was traumatized by the war, traumatized by so much else he couldn’t and wouldn’t talk about, and belittled in a country in which he thought he would be welcomed as a hero. And because of these things, he traumatized his entire family, the ones from whom I wish he could have sought solace. Shame for being my father’s daughter; I am sorry.
I was ashamed of my name even. Moving from grade level to grade level, class to class, apologizing that it was “hard to say” (it’s only 3 syllables), raising my hand to pronounce it correctly and feeling a burning sensation in my throat. Until I finally adopted “Laci” which doesn’t even honor the way you say my real name; it just has similar phonetics. La-suh-me. Lasamee Kettavong. Now, my heart swells when people learn my name and work to say it correctly. To me that is an act of love.
Me and my sweet mother, who gave me my name.
Shame prevents you from doing a lot. Fear eats the soul and paralyzes you. But we only have so much time to really get to know ourselves in this realm of living, so I’m shedding the shame and swallowing the fear.
I’m not certain but pretty sure that I have taken on this project because I am the last child in my family and the one born in America a few years after my family’s arrival on Halloween Day, 1989. No one’s asking for this story, but it’s one that threatens to have me implode if I let it simmer and leave it alone. There’s no pressure from any of my siblings or my mother; just support, happily scanning papers that arrived with my family in their International Refugee Committee bag of official documents when I ask for them. I feel that our family’s story is not so different from immigrant families stories today, and that we have a lot of work to do. Together, with, and for others.
I can’t imagine the agony that my mother and father would have felt having arrived as refugees and asylum seekers only to have their children ripped away from them and kept in detention centers. It is horrendous that this has happened to so many.
I’m not certain but pretty sure that there’s no better time than right now to do something about the horrendous things, shed the shame, and swallow the fear that maybe has kept you from moving.
—-
*Important to note: I started going to therapy after a shitty breakup in 2013 and on the advice of a dear friend who’d also recently started therapy and it improved their life immensely. I’ve gone from counselor to counselor, for various reasons, and finally really dug in to working on childhood trauma with this particular counselor. Don’t give up if you feel like therapy will help you/your mental health but you’re not clicking with someone. Search around. It can change your life.
In Lao, you call your dad “pa” (pronounced like “paw). The last time my father was in our family home, he told me not to call him dad. I was stunned, and knew that he was in a mood. Nothing was out of the ordinary, aside from my late return home from school because of a volunteer activity. I am done trying to rationalize his behavior but for years, I spent energy on trying to do just that.
“Don’t call me pa” was a warning, and my instincts told me that things were about to go south. Go south they did.
For my father, a mood could be:
Grumpy silence
Stomping through the house
Yelling about something or someone to anyone nearby
Cleaning and loading his shotgun
Aiming said shotgun at family members, like his 10 year old daughter, and asking “Do you want to die?” (What a peach, amiright?)
Waving a knife around and threatening to kill family members
That night, he was in that last mood in the list. My older sister, mother, and I managed to calm him down somehow. Or were we pleading for our lives, but in different words? It felt like hours.
Finally, he put himself to bed in the living room. (If you’re wondering, I am and have been in therapy for quite some time and have made slow and steady progress in unpacking all of this.) I stayed in touch with my best friend, messaging her that I might have to ask her to call the police to my house. My sister told me to discreetly pack a bag, pack a bag for mom, and be ready not to return to the house after school/work the next day. I still do not know how she could think so clearly. I doubt anyone in my household slept at all that night.
And that was it. The last time he was ever a part of my life in any kind of meaningful way.
We filed a police report, and he was picked up. I don’t know the exact details of how that happened, but it makes me sad to think about it. I have compassion for my father despite many, many episodes like the one described above in the years he was the oppressor of his own family.
He is a strong but broken man. He is a monster but also my father. He is a veteran of the Secret War. I am certain he has PTSD that has never been addressed. He is a Lao refugee in a land that is so far from home to him, literally and figuratively. This is what I think about on Father’s Day.
My father, Nai Kettavong, veteran of the Secret War, refugee living in the U.S. photo taken in Laos in the late 60’s or early 70’s for his military documents
It’s not all darkness, violence, and family secrets though.
I have two amazing, funny, smart, and loving older brothers. And they are incredible fathers to their children. I am in awe and admire that they are so caring and supportive of their kiddos despite not having known that growing up themselves. I am proud of them for breaking the cycle.
I am fortunate to soon have extended family that includes fathers who protect and provide for their loved ones, rather than the opposite.
I see love all around me, and I am ever thankful for it.
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Musings 