Category Archives: Personal

Grandma

(Written earlier this year of 2020, with my family in mind, when I traveled for my Grandma’s funeral)

Grandma was an amazing person with an amazing life. I always wished I knew the TeoChew dialect better so that I could talk with her more and ask her questions about her family, what life was like for her, what she felt, and about her experiences. She lived through so much. Born in China in 1926, she didn’t get the education my generation has been able to receive, or actually any schooling at all. (Education had costs, and most girls where/when she lived didn’t get to go to school.) She lived through much political instability, hardships, and wars. She and Grandpa left China for a better life and settled in Cambodia, where they enjoyed peaceful living for a little while. She gave birth to twelve children, though four were not able to survive (likely due to illnesses that can be easily prevented/treated today.) Then in the 1970’s, the family lived through one of the darkest times in history in Cambodia. But Grandma and Grandpa tried to keep the family together and watch out for each other, and somehow after making it out alive after four years, they eventually made it to a refugee camp and were able to come to the United States. (Though the family could only come separately and the Kho family ended up in three different states.)

We have an amazing family. I was so glad to be with the family to remember and celebrate Grandma’s life together. I remember when I was a kid, and 2nd uncle, 2nd aunt, 3rd uncle, 3rd aunt, and their kids lived down the street. I found out Grandma, Grandpa, and the rest of the extended family were going to move to Georgia and live on our street! That was so exciting. Soon after, 4th uncle and aunt joined us in our neighborhood too. I’m so thankful for the richness of our great big family growing up. Many of my friends didn’t have that experience. It was and continues to be so wonderful. I’m so thankful for Grandma and Grandpa’s sacrifice and leadership to grow our family and help shape us to be the tight knit group we are. It helped them to survive Cambodia, and helped us to survive and thrive here in the United States.

Grandma would sometimes take care of me, if my mom had to go out or had something to do. One reason I loved going to Grandma’s house was that Grandma would offer me chocolate chip cookies, which were not allowed in my house. I think those cookies may have belonged to Little Uncle or maybe someone else. I remember one particular day when I was hanging out with Grandma. We were sitting on the deck, and I was trying to figure out where we came from, why we exist. So I asked Grandma where she came from, and she said her mom. And so I responded and asked where her mom came from, and she said her mom’s mom. And so I asked where did her mom’s mom’s mom come from. Guess what she said? She came from her mom. Eventually I could see our discussion wasn’t going to get me the answer I wanted, and so I moved on. But the fact that Grandma patiently listened to me, a child, and responded instead of dismissing me, that meant a lot to me.

Grandma was also very protective of me. And because of that, I didn’t get to do a lot of things my older cousins got to do. But she slowly let go. I’m guessing she was the same with many of her kids and grandkids. She cherished us all.

I was a curious child and I had some interests that some people might consider odd. And someone pointed that out specifically to Grandma. I remember being a little nervous as I overheard that conversation. I don’t remember what she said in response exactly, but something about how these things are normal for a kid to do and it’s totally fine. I breathed a sigh of relief. Grandma didn’t make me feel like I was weird or odd or that anything was wrong with me. And so I felt more secure in exploring my interests. That’s something I’ve carried on with me into my adulthood.

When someone has lived through so much, you know they have a lot of strength and grit in them. Two years ago, she was in the hospital, and then in hospice care. We thought we’d lose her then, but somehow we got two more bonus years with her. I don’t know how she survived these last two years operating on just 2% function of her kidneys. I got to chat with her some while she was in hospice care. I understood that she felt the purpose of her life was to take care of us. She just wished to take care of the family. She couldn’t do it anymore because she was older and weaker; she had taken care of us as much as she could. She was at peace with it being her time to go soon.

I think Grandma gave the best hugs in the family. She’d grip me tight and I could really feel it. There is nothing like a grandmother’s hug. We had a bit of a language barrier, but some of the things we didn’t express in words were expressed in the gift of presence, in actions, in food, and in hugs. The last time we hugged was when I visited her at her house this past December. I think she was watching Judge Judy or MacGyver or something when I visited. I wish I could have held on a little longer or could turn that hug into something physical that I could carry with me. While I was there, Grandma gave me some advice- don’t get old. I’m not sure how I can do that. But I do hope I can live with the same strength, and with the same love and care she had for us all.

Thank you Grandma, for your sacrifice, leadership, chocolate chip cookies, for your attention, for your hugs, and for your love. We will try to take care of each other. We will all miss you so very much.

Juggling

I’m returning to one of my favorite hobbies for the month of September – juggling! My goal is spend at least 15 minutes a day juggling. I hope to pick up some new tricks! Would you like to join me – only 15 minutes a day! 🙂

Here are two things I’m working on:

3 ball chops

5 ball cascade

According to many various research studies, learning to juggle changes your brain structure, increasing the amount of white matter and gray matter in certain areas. Also, what seems to matter is not how “good” you are, but the fact that you are learning and practicing.

If juggling improves my hand-eye coordination, peripheral vision, reflexes, and other motor skills, I wonder if my game on the basketball court and in other sports might also improve!

My older brother

Born in 1978, towards the end of the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, my older brother entered the world at one of its low points in history. The physical circumstances were unfavorable – my mom had already endured three years of malnutrition and sunrise-to-sunset forced labor. All “intelligent” persons, including doctors, had been killed three years ago and there were no hospitals or medicines. Sickness and death were well known.

My brother had trouble entering the world. (But then, who would want to enter the world at that time?) He was oriented the wrong way or something like that. There was no “professional” to help with the delivery. One woman was there to help my mom, but she was inexperienced. My mom had sent for an older, very experienced woman to come help, but she was at another delivery. Luckily, that delivery finished quickly and she was able to come afterwards, though late. She pushed and manipulated my mother’s body to make the baby come out. Giving birth was very dangerous, and my mom was just so relieved that she had survived the process. Many other women had died during childbirth.

But my brother did not make it.
He lived a day or so.
He didn’t eat.
He let out some cries.
He took in a limited number of breaths
…before he breathed his last.

….

In college, I wrote a family history paper for my American Women’s History class. I wrote about my family’s time in Cambodia and how, because of their family unity and strength, no one in my mom or dad’s immediate family had died. During one of my professor’s reviews, she wrote “except for the baby boy” in the margins. That caught me a bit, and I’ve thought about it often in the years since then.

I don’t know why I didn’t count my brother’s death as a death. I guess I was thinking of the “net” life. Entering into the rule of the Khymer Rouge, my family had X number of members and when the nightmare ended, the same X number survived. Simple math. Or perhaps in my young mind I thought my brother didn’t have much of a chance anyway given the conditions he was born in, so his death was not really a death as he really had no chance to begin with.

….

But his life counts. He was a person. And it has become clear to me that his death resulted from the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. He would have had such better chances for living otherwise.

And I’ve come to realize that you can’t just simply think about “net” life based on the numbers before and after. In every generation there is growth (cultural, economic, population, etc). Any growth that would have taken place but was destroyed/kept from happening is a part of the damage that was done.

No written record of my brother’s life exists (the most is perhaps this blog entry.) No birth certificate, no birth announcement, no photo, no record of death. In those reported death tolls from the Cambodian Holocaust (estimated 2 million+, with an additional 60,000+ dying from starvation AFTERWARDS), I wonder whether those babies who were born and died or lost in miscarriages were also counted.

….

My mom says I looked a lot like my older brother when I was born. I asked my mom whether she gave her baby a name. “No.. we just called him Di Di.” “Di Di” means “little brother” in Chinese.

Di Di, you’ll always be my big brother.

New projection

I’m currently writing this entry using a new monitor I’ve acquired this year. It’s not a super nice monitor, but it is a nice 24″ IPS monitor.

I mainly got it because I do a lot of photo editing and printing. And my laptop screen wasn’t working out as well as I’d like. I would edit photos and they’d look great on my screen, but then when I printed the photo or looked at the photo on a different display, it would look slightly different.

So, finally I got a better monitor. I plan on getting a calibrator eventually, but what I have has been a great improvement. And because it’s IPS, I don’t have to worry about having it at the wrong angle. (With your non-IPS laptop, you may notice that when you tilt the screen a little, it will look slightly different. What a pain if you edited all your photos with the screen tilted at the wrong angle.)

It’s kind of astonishing to me to think that I could have gone through my entire life using my own computer/monitor, not knowing that the image was off… with all my photos looking great on my monitor, when they perhaps are actually not as bright, or of the wrong tint. If I never calibrated my screen, or if I never saw my photos displayed on other people’s monitors, I would have never noticed that they were slightly off/different than I expected.