I love my mother.

She was one of eight, born to a couple living in Laos. Her mother came from Vietnam and married a Laotian soldier, in the years before the war. Most people think that Laos, Cambodia, basically sub-china, is all jungles, swamps, and wild, when in truth it is actually more mountainous. I would love to see Laos; something in my heart is calling me there, to help ease the suffering that has scarred that land. But that is another tale, maybe one for my future children to tell.

As I said, my mother was one of eight. Two of the young children died before the age of two, and the rest had to help to support the family. But this is a different culture, a different way of life. Here, the whole family helped, in fact the whole community, to work together and survive. They raised each other, built and repaired neighbor's houses, watched community flocks, and shared whatever they had. My mother tells me life was a lot more peaceful before the war started. She was a champion bike rider, the inter-village champ. She loved rice; they cooked it inside of bamboo, and the leaves inside of the stalk would sweeten the taste of it. She used to play soldier with her siblings too.

But then the war came, and so did the soldiers. The Vietnamese resistance occupied the Laotian villages quickly. My mother's father went away, and eventually became a deserter, never to be heard from again. Life became a lot harder in a few short days. The soldiers came into their homes, stranger from another country. They took their food, their blankets, and sometimes, their friends and family. Luckily, all of my mother's family stayed safe.

My mother told me a story of a school field trip she would never forget. Because Laos was occupied by France, the top students got educated by the French representative government. She was chosen, and they took a yearly field trip to the capital city. On their way, their bus of about forty got pulled over by communist soldiers. They were lectured for two hours about the American swine, how they were dirty and uncivilized. No one dared laugh; they carries AK-47s, and many other firearms, and could of shot at anytime. There were sometimes news of entire buses of people killed, or missing. They were released, however, they threatened to kill some of the boys with long, American style hair. But they let them go too, and the boys immediately got haircuts afterwords.

My grandmother shortly left the children to provide for them, but in one of the most dangerous ways possible. She went to work for the United States Government. They assigned her to a secret service agent, whom she cooked for, took care of, and guided through the mountains. Once, when she was walking to work with her pregnant daughter, a tiger approached them with it's teeth barred. As she pushed her daughter and future grandchild up a nearby tree, an elephant emerged from the brush and started to fight it. In Laos, elephants are usually as dangerous as tigers, but luckily, again, they were left alone.

My mother soon afterwords went to work for the United States hospital. She wasn't exactly a nurse, but she helped clean up. Communist soldiers usually targeted families who aided the United States, so my mother was in a real danger. She had to work, however, to supply for her family. With their mom in Vietnam, she was the one in charge. My mother was chosen out of their family to find help in America, so her eldest sister was left in charge. Working with her mother's agent, she was able to get a flight out of Thailand, but the border was constantly watched, and people got shot everyday trying to cross the Mekong River. She had a friend who owned a boat on the river, so the day before she left, she gave her friend all of her possessions that she could take with her and hid them on the boat. The next day, they went down to the dock in the early morning, and confronted the border guard. They told him that they had a sick cousin who needed medicine from a nearby village. Her friend flirted for a little, and they got through. The next day, three people were shot trying to cross the river, and she never heard from her friend ever again.

Now an illegal immigrant, my mother fled to the airport, where she flew across half of the world, to a little town about sixty miles outside of Chicago...