My Never Ending List

Written in verse, Ha tells us what it is like to be a refuge from Vietnam. Her father is a Navy MIA soldier and as the youngest daughter of the family, you can feel the fear and the honesty in the words and the actions as Ha adjusts to the situations around her.   Traveling by boat, the situation at sea is tense as the rations are cut back and individuals are told to sit to conserve their energy. The sight of land rises hope in everyone and when their feet arrive on dry ground, the family immediately starts to help others in the tent city. The tent city, such a change from what they expected and what they came from but the sights and the sounds are better than what they experienced on the ship. America, it is the city the family is destined for and their adjustment to this new opportunity is more than they expected. Their visions and expectations are based on what they knew and what they have been told and I hoped the best for them, as their journey already has been long. Mother feels America will provide what the family needs and as the family tries to adjust, I was laughing. Laughing, not at them but for the things that Ha said as she adjusted and tried to understand the world around, for sometimes the world does not make sense, it just is. Things are just the way they are for no other reason but only for the reason that is how they have been done forever.