趙蕙燕 or “Bright Orchid Swallow” is the Chinese name my grandfather gave me before I started Chinese school, but everyone knows me as Raechel Zhao. My grandfather and his family were rescued by the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War in 1979. By the grace of a generous family from San Antonio, they were sponsored to come to America as Vietnamese refugees. It wasn’t long after this that my mother was able to come to the United States as well in 1984.
My parents are the epitome of the American dream. Time and time again, they showed me that you can overcome any obstacle. My dad, for example, barely knew simple math such as multiplication and division because he started working in a factory at the age of 12 in Vietnam. My mother taught him the math that my dad knows now. My father worked his way up from being a shop welder to a draftsman the old fashioned way – via apprenticeship at his work place. My mother tells me should could have been a doctor in China, but she chose to come to the US because of the opportunity. Even though she had a college education, my mother started as a seamstress at Levi Strauss along with all my dad’s sisters. She learned English by going to bible study, and eventually they both saved enough money to help my mother go to school to become a nurse full-time.
The year was 1997 when tragedy hit our family, and I lost both my siblings in a drowning accident on Father’s Day of all days. It was the same year my mother was supposed to finish nursing school, and help alleviate the financial stress from my dad who was providing for a 7-member family. I can’t begin to explain the amount of grief we went through for several months. To this day, I don’t know how, but my mother still managed to finish nursing school on time. Soon after this, we said goodbye to San Antonio and moved to Houston in order to start a new life away from the constant painful reminders of the past.
Since the move, our family decided to tell people that I am “an only child” because we didn’t want to deal with the pitying eyes, effort to explain, and the painful reminder of what was. But the loss is very apparent in changing who we have become as a family- stronger, more loving, and more compassionate towards each other and others. I also became a compulsive planner and developed a “life plan” because life is short. You can never be over-prepared. If you must go, you now have plans that someone else may be able to fulfill.
The life plan was to go to college at 18, go to a medical school at 22, and get married at 26, and have kids at 28 – nothing special, but it was MY plan. Of course, life or God has continually reminded me that I really don’t have control. Instead, I became a pharmacist. I got married at 28. I am 30 with fertility problems, and I may have papillary carcinoma – a type of thyroid cancer.
I’m seriously shit-out-of-luck, right?
No! My life is just a reminder that things can always be worse. This is why I am a perpetual optimist looking for bigger and better things. In fact, I had to marry a pessimist to balance out my often times fantastical ideas of reality, including my sense of time management! My mother told me that “The Bright Orchid Swallow (趙蕙燕)” is supposed to instill a feeling of hope, love, kindness, and intelligence. I try to live up to the Chinese name my grandfather gave me all those years ago.
Raechel Zhao: The Bright Orchid Swallow (趙蕙燕) 