It was eighth grade when my social studies class discussed Medicaid, CHIP, and food stamps — all of which my family has relied on. I never felt embarrassed about it until kids in the class started making fun of those who use financial aid. Lazy. I kept hearing that demeaning adjective being thrown around the room. My classmates were indifferent to the self-conscious Asian girl sitting in front, attentively listening to the lesson.

I felt so little in that corner of U.S. History class.

On August 11th, 2009, we arrived in the United States of America, the land of opportunities. I remembered my father saying “America is paradise” as we were soaring above the Pacific Ocean.

Paradise for who?

My father was a vice principal at his high school, had a large house, and had many friends and family members living a few steps away; even though we only got to see our mother every summer, our family was very happy. During the forty-six years of his life, Vietnam is all my father has known. So, how much of a paradise could America be for my father?

It did not take me long to realize that America was not meant to be his paradise, but my sister’s and mine.

My father started working as soon as we settled down in my grandpa’s house, and my mother resumed her job as a cosmetologist. My father was a well-respected vice principal, who now collects shopping carts at a local supermarket. As a hardworking man who goes above and beyond for others, he was taken advantage of and bullied by his coworkers. The drastic change took a toll on my father’s fragile emotions and the stress emerged in his fits of frustration towards my mother and us. I witnessed my parents’ difficult relationship and questioned myself,

“Is this the paradise we have prayed for?”

Like many immigrant families, my parents could not afford childcare services. Instead, my sister and I would accompany our mother to her workplace. My mother came to America 9 years before we came, taking up job after job to meet the sponsorship requirements. For nine long years, my mother suffered and struggled alone in America while supporting us, and never uttered a single word of complaint when she called or visited.

I never understood her struggles until one day, my sister and I witnessed a customer running out on her after receiving her service. The customer was getting her nails done as my sister and I watched our mother breathing in toxic acetone fumes and nail dust. Despite coming to America 9 years prior, my mother never properly learned English. Her English resembles a messy patchwork of fabrics, coherent for the most part, but missing the technicality of grammar and fancy vocabulary. Regardless, our mother tried her best to entertain the customer with her broken English and thick accent. When the customer ran out, my mother weakly grabbed onto the woman’s bag, as if by some miracle her hard work would be returned. My sister and I watched helplessly as the heartless woman took off in a rusty green sedan. I could not remember my mother’s tears – her immense strength was all that I could recall.

My parents immigrated to America for our sake, but most importantly for my sister’s healthcare. At the age of two, my older sister was diagnosed with a severe form of beta-thalassemia. This genetic disease required her to receive a blood transfusion every month and brought her numerous other health complications. However, whatever my sister lacked physically, she made it up in other areas. My sister was unrelenting in her pursuit of knowledge. She competed in chess competitions and successfully moved on to regionals. She won the excellence award in Mitsubishi’s 9th Enikki Festa competition at the age of eleven and was invited to Hanoi, the
capital of Vietnam, for the art exhibition. She was always an honor roll student despite missing many classes due to her monthly hospital visits. Out of her many positive traits, my sister never took anything for granted. In one of her art for the Mitsubishi’s competition, she captioned, “I’m grateful for the blood transfusions that keep me alive. Thank you to the doctors and nurses who have taken care of me. Thank you to my mother, who works hard for me far from home. Thank you to my father, who does everything for me.”

My sister was my role model and my whole world.

When our family looked for a school to sign us up for fifth grade and seventh grade, the admission officer showed us a McDonald’s logo and asked us what this represents. McDonald’s in Vietnam was not widespread, and we did not live in the city, therefore this was entirely new. My sister somehow realized it was McDonald’s and said MC-DOE-NA. The officer laughed and remarked that we should consider retaking fourth grade and sixth grade. In Vietnam, my sister and I were always the top students. Our family consists of a long line of educators, and we never wanted to fall behind. My family always put a strong emphasis on education, and to repeat a grade was something my sister and I could not wrap our heads around. To console us, our parents said, “It’s okay kids, you will have more time to catch up to your peers.”

When I first came to class and introduced myself to my homeroom teacher, she could not pronounce my name. The anglicization of my name gave me a new identity — I was no longer “Nhã,” but “Nah” and quickly adapted to life in America, while my family lagged. My parents were busy making ends meet, and my sister continued missing classes to receive blood transfusions at the hospital. When my sister started chemotherapy for her bone marrow transplant, my mother quit working to care for her. Now with my father as the sole provider of the family, life became harder. English was still challenging for me; thus, I could not help them with many hospital documents. My parents relied on government support to afford food and other necessities for us. Despite everything, my mother enrolled us in piano lessons with the little money they had.

After my sister passed away, I strengthened my resolve to become a doctor. Just like how the doctors and nurses have worked so hard to save her life, I want to do the same for others. “I will buy a mansion for you guys when I grow up,” I blurted out to my parents at the age of ten. They laughed at the notion then, but even now they always reminded me of it. I knew how happy they were to hear my ambition and gratitude towards everything that they had done for me and my sister.

The road to medicine is definitely the road less taken — it is embarking down a prescribed, externally-defined trail of rewards. There will be times where I feel inadequate, exhausted, and burnout. However, I will continue to remind myself to combine focused pursuit and resilience; to be aware that pursuing medicine is not gaining achievement for the sake of achievement, but to strike a balance between achievement and appreciation. As an aspiring doctor, I want to carry on my sister’s legacy by becoming a wonderful daughter to my parents and a useful person to society. With every year passing, I come closer and closer to my goal. One day, I hope that my
parents will be included in the American paradise that they have built for us.