I could not fathom circumstances that would make a person so desperate as to leave the country that had been his home since birth on a rickety fishing boat with an unclear destination. His pithy response: “You don’t understand. You eat rice and I ate salt.” My father loves his cryptic Chinese and Vietnamese sayings. No, I would never understand the suffering that compelled my parents to emigrate halfway around the world, risking their lives and their children’s lives for the nebulous promise of a better life, a good life.
