Hung talked to his mother, sharing his dream: “I want to become the President of Viet Nam so that I can bring you and your friends back.” Thang, his elder brother, continued: “Hung will become the president and rule bad policemen.” “No, if I rule them, I will be just as bad,” Hung replied, “I will just tell them to do good deeds instead of bad things because people pay taxes for them.”
Hung and Thang are sons of Ms. Tran Thi Nga. Though Ms. Nga has been released and the family left for the US for a while, Hung and Thang’s present days haven’t completely got rid of hard memories of the past, as well as happy moments thanks to Ms. Nga’s presence with their growing up.
Hung, the youngest child of Ms. Nga, was going to kindergarten school when his mother was convicted and detained. Since that young, Hung has always been a thoughtful and sensitive boy. On the first time visiting his mother in the detention center, months after Ms. Nga was taken away, Hung put both hands to his face to prevent tears, couldn’t help but cry and say that he’d already known she was in jail.
This was because, on the day of arrest, Ms.Nga didn’t know how to properly inform her two children, so she decided to tell Thang, Hung’s brother, to look after him for mother. She told them she would be away to learn Aerobics and English and return. This story became an inside joke from their daily life. The two boys kept poking her fatty belly and insisted that she had to do more exercise.
Unlike Hung, his brother Thang shows more of his carefree side. Thang was definitely that child who calmly answered, “Mom went to jail, she was not guilty, but she went to jail,” when friends at elementary school asked about his mother. Thang was also the child that easily reassured his scared younger brother, “we are in America; we are not followed by the police.”
However, it is not as easy to give up thinking of hurtful past days. They usually caught the old memories in their new normal life, such as the time when Thang saw his mother eating ‘bun dau mam tom’ (a Vietnamese dish that has shrimp paste); he exclaimed that he didn’t like this smell which was poured on his head by the police, and the time the television program’ animal world’ had him recall how the Vietnamese police brought snakes into his house. Time after time, the whole family can’t help living in the past, yet Ms. Nga has been slowly teaching her sons not to nurse hatred and to move on.
Though experiencing special childhoods, Hung and Thang are just little kids and have full of dreams. Hung wants to be the president to assure his people’s fundamental freedoms. Meanwhile, Thang goal is to have tasty foods, become a Youtuber, and make money to travel because his mother also loves traveling. Hung and Thang love their mother and stay close to her in their own way.
The present life is much easier now that Ms. Nga can accompany Hung and Thang in person and see them grow up. The difficult past couldn’t destroy but contribute to shaping two nice boys with their precious dreams. Thank you, Ms. Nga, for standing bold to become the mother that her sons are proud of, as Thang once expressed: “Paradise is anywhere I am with you.”
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Tran Thi Nga is a labour and land rights activist in Viet Nam. She found Vietnamese Women for Human Rights to support Vietnamese migrants abroad. She also monitored land seizures by the authorities and participated in peaceful anti-Chinese demonstrations relating to the East Sea issue. After more than half a year after her arrest on January 21, 2017, Ms. Nga was sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment and 5 years’ house probation on charges of distributing “propaganda against the State” under article 117, Penal Code 2015. In early 2020, she was released and is currently living in the US with her husband and two sons.
