A glimpse at what could have been

Life is a bunch of could haves, should haves, and would haves. "If I could have done that, then things would have been different... I should have done that..." Even at this tender age, with the little life experience that I have had, I think back to some of the choices I've made and spend sleepless nights wondering how things would have been different if I had done this differently or if on that particular day I was in a different mood and made the opposite decision...maybe... maybe....

So, I can't imagine how it would feel for a person who has actually lived many lives and was forced to make crucial life decisions that determined the thin line between survival and death. Even more difficult to grasp is how one would feel when the life they would have lived is presented to them years later, forcing them to relive a very painful past. On our trip to Cambodia, my Mom did just that.

I didn't realize how connected our family history was to this country until we entered it. Passing through the Cambodian countryside, my Mom began to tell stories of my Dad's time spent in this country as a soldier training for the war. After my Dad was injured, he was stationed in Cambodia and after he escaped from prison, my parents sold medicine on the black market at the Vietnam/Cambodia border. My parents regularly traded with Cambodians and on many instances, were kindly offered their homes to hide in.

Because of this past, my Mom has a special fondness for Cambodia, saying that all the Cambodians she met were kind to her, especially at a time when a little kindness from strangers could have led to their own imprisonment. It is this very fondness that led her to juggle with the decision made over 20 years ago to escape to Cambodia or to smuggle themselves out of Vietnam into a refugee camp and attempt to gain asylum in America.

Obviously, the better choice was made. But traveling in this country with her, it was clear to me how difficult it was for my Mom to confront the life she could have led in this country, especially when we visited the precise place she would have lived if she had chosen to live in Cambodia.

Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater river in Southeast Asia and home to a large ethnic Vietnamese community, who live on floating villages scattered all over the lake. Many of the ethnic Vietnamese that live here have no citizenship status in either Vietnam or Cambodia. It is this precise reason why Tonle Sap was an attractive option for my parents--My Dad's status as an escaped war prisoner meant that he was unable to live a life in Vietnam without the constant fear of getting caught and so, leaving all that behind for a life with literally no status was a more than attractive option.

But the downside was (and still is) that with no citizenship status in either country, those living on the lake are forced to stay there without much opportunity to leave and seek a better life elsewhere. This was the Tonle Sap my Mom came back to--a very poor floating community of displaced people.

The poverty of the ethnic Vietnamese living on Tonle Sap was traumatizing. Our tour boat first passed idyllic scenes of life on the river, of people casting wide nets to fish and taking a bath in the muddy brown river.



Then, without warning, we were all forced to confront our own privilege when children surrounded our boat to beg for money. Children, carrying snakes to attract the attention of tourists, climbed onto our boats to both shock us with these creatures and beg for money. Their practiced cries and attempts to get a few Vietnamese dongs out of us were heartbreaking. Seeing them forced to beg to survive, their parents commandeering their boats in a sort of 'this-is-all-very-normal-to- exploit-my-children-to-survive' air to them was all very difficult to take.

This little girl with the snake around her neck especially killed me. She looks so young, too young to be crying to all the boat passengers for money. But when someone did give her some money, there was a flicker between the moment she accepted the money and when she placed it into her pocket that made her look so old beyond her years. I can't explain it, but that small moment made the situation so, so sad.

We were then taken to a floating Vietnamese school, where the children all greeted us excitedly. I didn't see any books or any residue of a day spent teaching on the blackboard, just a brightly colored schoolroom with nearly a 100 kids packed into a small room and a donation box smartly positioned at the front.


The whole situation at the school screamed of exploitation to me. I can't know for sure whether this was all set up, but it all seemed odd and even more so when other visitors around me took this opportunity as a photo-op to document their own self-congratulatory acts of kindness by taking pictures and videos of their deeds. My skepticism made the situation seem sadder--that the livelihood of this community was wrapped around the dollars of self-congratulatory tourists.

But what really made it emotional was the personal angle of it all. I couldn't help but think, "This could have been my parents life...my life." At the school, I kept thinking of my oldest brother and the life he might have led here. He could have been one of those kids at the school and my parents fishermen, scraping by with what they can. The rest of us kids probably wouldn't have even been born and if we were, who knows, we might have also been one of the begging kids. The personal aspect of it, of course, hit my mom the hardest. She was crying throughout the boat ride and even more so when we left. I asked her what she was thinking and she told me that she couldn't stop thinking of us and the life we would have led there if her decision to leave Vietnam turned out differently. "Our life would have been over," she told me. I had no reason to argue otherwise.

In confronting the 'what could have beens' on this trip, my Mom was distraught at having to face the life she could have led. Both choices were carefully thought out with the sole goal to survive, but seeing the stark harshness of one life compared to the one we live now was really upsetting to her. One small shift in her decision making at the time could have changed all of our lives. For me, grasping the enormity of this one decision my Mom made years back makes me respect her even more. How could she have known at the time what the better choice was? There was no way. But, she made that difficult decision and here we are now, all of us kids getting a world-class education with more opportunity than all of our past and present family in Vietnam.

The lesson I've learned from all this is that while life can be a bunch of could haves, should haves, and would haves, we have to live with the decisions we made and make the most of it. Sometimes, they turn out for the better and while it is good to recognize the life we could have led, it is even better and wiser to appreciate the life we are leading.