Lâm Bùi (steven) - childhood

My dad was born on September 13, 1975, in Long Khánh, Đồng Nai.

He was born the only boy, and middle child, with 2 sisters. His family was extremely poor, only owning several farms assigned to them by the government. When he was almost at the age of 5 (1980), his dad left Vietnam to America before the rest of his family, in hopes of getting an education and job to help his family immigrate and settle in easier. For the next 10 years, he would not see his dad and was instead raised by his mother.

As a young Catholic, he attended Giáo Lý but did not care for it much all. "It was just something I didn't have a choice to do. I didn't care, I just went," he told me.

Not long after arriving here, my dad was faced with many struggles. He had to get used to being around his own father after 10 years apart and adapt to an entirely new country, with a different language, culture, and way of living. In August of 1992, his mother got diagnosed with liver cancer. She was in her late stages and denied Kimo therapy because they couldn't afford it, passing away on September 30th, the day after his 17th birthday. “That was the saddest moment in my life” he tells me. But now he makes jokes about my mom outliving his mom.

Fast forward to June 1993, his dad got remarried to who I now call my Bà Nộ. She’s a kind and funny woman. she took care of my grandpa, bathing him, cooking food for my cousins and I, and cleaned after our mess but she never once complained, and though it was awkward for my dad to see her as a mother, he still has a close relationship with her, more like an aunt and nephew. A few years later, he met my mom in 1996, and they got married in 2002. Along the way, in 2000 his half-sister, Diana was born, a new member of his new family. My dad and her are 25 years apart, so there wasn’t much he could do to build a brother-sister relationship ship with her, instead, she seems more of a sister to me. In 2002, married my mom, and in 2005, he had me (and two other boys in 2008 and 2014)