Maderville

My Hero

Today is Memorial Day and this is a day that makes me really think about my Daddy. I think about the men and women that served with him while he was on his many tours to Vietnam and Korea that did not make it home like he did. I think about the Mama's and Daddy's, the wives and children and the friends and family members that had to go on with out them. Sometimes the ones that do make it home have just as hard of a time wondering why they were spared and their buddies were not. War is confusing at best for everyone. There are so many perspectives and people that are affected. No one is completely right and no one is completely wrong. I do know that if there was one good thing came out of Vietnam, it was me and my sister having the opportunity to have a better life. I believe we are a true success story and we have two great parents to thank for it.

When I was in the 5th grade, I had a 'boyfriend' and he wrote me a note one day telling me that we had to break up. In my fifth grade way I was crushed but I was even more devastated when he told me why. It was because his Dad didn't want him to have a girlfriend like me. 'Like me' meant being Vietnamese. It was one of the first real life experiences I had to deal with in racism. I had a Caucasian mama and daddy and 4 of my siblings were Caucasian so why didn't this kids' daddy like me? We were all the same, right? I think he referred to me as a 'chink'. It still hurts me to write that word. I heard that word more times than I care to remember growing up and it still stings when I hear it. I will never forget the day his Dad came up to me while I was cheering at a freshman high school football game and he asked if he could speak to me. I was more scared than I had ever been in my life and while I wanted to run, I respectfully walked up to the fence and stood there as he apologized to me for some thing that had happened 4 years earlier. I was speechless...and that doesn't happen often. It is a life event that I will never forget and it taught me a great lesson in forgiveness and personal growth. The reason I thought of this story is because I think I appreciate more than most the lives sacrificed so that I could be more and have more than the little girl in these pictures was destined to have. I love these photos. They are priceless to me because there are so few of them in my early childhood and it depicts a sweet moment of me and a man who would one day become my Daddy. I have no pictures of me before I was a year old. I look at the changes in Landry over the last 5 months it saddens me to think that there was a me before these pictures and I have no way of knowing what that me even looked like. I look at Landry and wonder if I was the same sweet, happy baby that she is.

Anyway, Daddy, I don't have to tell you what a hero you are to me. I hope I have made you proud and shown you what you are to me and to our family. I love having a father that I respect, love and cherish the way I do you. I am thankful that Landry has a Grandaddy that she will always look up to and love unconditionally. I have a deep compassion for your fallen friends and know that a little piece of them will always live in your heart. I know after having lost Sophie, that it is much harder for us here on earth than it is for them. We should be rejoicing that they are in such a wonderful place but we're human and selfish and that's okay. It just means that there was enough good in them that they were worth having around in the first place.