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Dear Hmong Parents:
Don’t let your children forget the green hills from which you came, the way the mist would fold over the mountains and weave its way through the trees and around the thatch house that your father built.
Please don’t let your children forget the way the frogs sang when dusk began to settle and the sticky air cooled as your mother in her wrap skirt appeared through the worn jungle path, how upon her back were stalks of sugar cane and reeds of rice.
Don’t let your children forget the songs your long gone sister used to sing when you were still too small to work the fields and it was just you and she who watched the house.
Don’t let them forget your older brother, who at thirteen was too young to marry, but old enough to carry that M16. Don’t let them forget the tears that left trails in the dust on his face as your father told him to be brave and that he too was now a man and not to cry.
Don’t let your children forget the unmarked trails we ran through in the night, the way we huddled together under the stars, lips pursed, trying not to cry for fear of discovery. Don’t let them forget how close we were to Death. How for some of us, Death was a foe; while for others, he was a friend who could not come soon enough.
