A personal essay by Hannah Tran
You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
— Desmond Tutu
The Art of Being a Twin
― Zig Ziglar
Imagine two little girls, not even two years old, sitting on the floor, surrounded by a sea of Cheerios that they spilled in their efforts to eat from the box of small, sugary loops. Even though I am one of those girls, the only reason I know of the incident is from a photograph my mom kept all these years. In a way, I am just as much an outsider of this memory as anyone else.
The other girl in the photo looks remarkably like me. Her name is Rebekah, spelled the way that Rebekah is spelled in the Bible. She is my twin sister and has been since before I can remember. It is different for all twins, but for my sister and I, we were inseparable.
Early in life, we were similar in almost every way. Our glasses prescriptions were the same. We liked the same hobbies, were in the same friend groups, enrolled in the same classes, and shared the same clothing, experiences, and other personal items. I didn’t realize until later what the effects of being joined at the hip were. Looking back, people probably often saw us as the same person or didn’t know how best to approach one of us over the other. I tend to use the pronouns “us” and “we” simply because I’m so used to being with her and talking as if she is also involved in the situation.
It’s hard to expect people to break out of treating us as the same person because we can be just as much culprits of it. At least for me, Rebekah was always someone I could rely on, and so I didn’t really need anyone else to stay in my life. Friends came and went, but Rebekah was a constant. I sometimes have trouble doing things without her because I just expect her to be there. She was all I needed, or so I thought, but as we grew older, we realized we needed to be more independent.
It wasn’t until fourth grade that Rebekah and I were put in different classes. I don’t know why that was, as other twins in our school were separated before fourth grade. We had to learn to deal with the fact that we weren’t always going to get the same things. Rebekah had a better fourth grade teacher. I met a really good friend. For the first time, people could see us as individuals.
In our junior year of high school, Rebekah was called to be the Laurel President of our ward Young Women’s group. At first, it seemed to me that I was as much the president as she was. I was in on all her plans. I helped her prepare for meetings. I made personalized birthday cards and decided on personalized gifts for women in the group, as this was one of her first decrees as president. And yet, I wasn’t president, like Rebekah was. She had her responsibilities, and I had mine, and I had to accept that they weren’t always going to overlap. She and I were alike, cut from the same cloth, but also fundamentally different, as God intended.
Father-Daughter Relationship
My dad isn’t exactly your basic father … I just don’t have that kind of dad.
— Kelly Clark Hinton
When discussing the intricacies of my family’s dynamic, I must, at some point, talk about my dad. His life was a hard one, hard to live, and sometimes, hard to understand. As a young man, he went to school, helped his mom take care of chickens, and earned money from doing errands for U.S. soldiers. He tells us of how U.S. dollars were equivalent to several hundred Vietnamese dollars, so the money he earned would enable him to buy bowls of noodle soup and other tasty meals from street vendors.
As he grew older, one pastime my dad took part in was gambling. I don’t know how serious it was, but apparently his older brother didn’t take too kindly to my dad’s behavior when he found out. Thus ended my dad’s gambling career, and he learned to be responsible and work hard for his money. Occasionally, when I was younger, he’d still show my siblings and me card tricks and shuffling skills he learned growing up in Vietnam.
The cultural food my dad has introduced me to is definitely my favorite part of being half-Vietnamese. The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to the strange Vietnamese delicacies that my dad eats is called balut. It is a Filipino term for a duck egg that has a developed duck embryo inside. The common reaction of learning about balut, I have found, is shock and repulsion. There certainly isn’t anything like balut in American cuisine.
There are other oddities in my dad’s diet. He never took a liking to many popular dishes that we grew up on. A common occurrence in our home was us kids vacating the kitchen when Dad was roasting dried squid or when Mom was chopping up raw fish. There are other foods that my dad introduced to me that I remember more fondly. Especially around holidays, he would ask my mom to make pork egg rolls or bánh xèo, which we affectionately called “yellow cake”, or hot pot. Food brought us together more than anything else, despite my dad’s acquired tastes.
One story my mom likes to tell is of a time that my dad and her were at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. They were in the aviary enclosure, and they saw a toucan up in the tree. Dad pointed up to it and said “Those aren’t good to eat.” Just another testament of how different my dad’s life was. I don’t know specifics, but when my dad fought in the Vietnam War, he had to forage for food in the jungles of his homeland. He dealt with extreme hunger, fearing for his life, and countless other challenges that I have never had to experience.
After the Vietnam War, my dad realized that he could not stay in Vietnam and tolerate the communist government. Through some connections he had, he was able to hire a boat to take him and his family to the Philippines. In the dark of the night, my dad, his wife, and his nearly one year old son began their journey down the river toward the vast sea ahead of them.
The men that he hired the boat from, however, planned to purposely tip the boat so that they could steal the possessions of those who were riding with them. My dad and those with him were tossed out of the boat and into the cold water. Fortunately, he was able to recollect everyone, including his wife and son, and convinced the boatmen to take them to where they had promised. Once my dad arrived in the Philippines, he stayed in a refugee camp and learned English while waiting to be sponsored to go to America. He arrived in the States and went on to earn a master’s degree in electrical engineering. Our family would not be where we are now without the hard work that he did, both in Vietnam and in the States.
A Mother’s Love
— Abraham Lincoln
Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that my parents are older than the parents of most people my age. They are also nearly nine years apart; my dad was born in 1952 and my mom was born in 1961. Particularly with my mom, the fact that she was older changed the way that she raised us. My dad is a bit distant compared to other family relationships, so Mom was the biggest influence on our personalities, likes, and dislikes. I would describe myself as old-fashioned. I never learned how to do makeup, style my hair, or anything that a typical teenage girl would do. I grew up listening to 60s and 70s music. I spent more time reading and doing homework than being outside or hanging time with friends.
Sometimes I wonder if I would recognize my parents early in their relationship. It seems so different for them not to have four kids, two cats, a dog, and over twelve acres of land. My mom fell in love with my dad because she could see how down-to-earth and responsible he was. She herself is very practical and could tell that he was someone who could provide for his family and stay dedicated. There was one concern that both my mom and her family shared however: my dad is not a member of the Church.
I don’t doubt my parents’ love for each other, but I know that raising kids in the Church without the support of a husband was not easy for a mom. There were many Sundays where my dad asked my mom to go to the store to get something or did not understand when we needed to go to a Church activity during the week.
I grew closest to my mom, though that’s a common enough bond between mother and child. She was always there for me. There to drive me back and forth between school, home, and Church activities; there to talk through frustrations about people at school; there to read and reread all my essays throughout high school. Oftentimes, my dad also took priority and she couldn’t give us everything she wanted to. We didn’t travel much because my dad didn’t like to leave home. We didn’t visit family often for the same reason. We spent our childhood watching our dad build and sell houses and watching our mom make many Home Depot runs to get cement, pipe connectors, wood framing, bolts, nails, and various other components of a house. Though our childhood was quite unique, Mom loved us through it all the same.
Family Comes First
My dad often reminded us how important family is. He’d gather up a handful of chopsticks and show us how much harder it is to break them altogether rather than individually. Or he’d explain to Rebekah and I because we separated from the same egg, hurting each other would be like our right hand hurting our left hand. He would repeatedly reference Larryboy and the Angry Eyebrows whenever we were upset with each other, saying “Larryboy was angry, but he learned to let it go.” It took me a while to really take that to heart, but once I did, I was happier.
Would I say my family is weird? Different? Chaotic at times? Absolutely. But they are mine, and I am theirs, and we are stronger together. There are good times, and bad, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
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