Memorial Place Analysis

Memorial Place

One afternoon in June, in the summer I was enjoying taking breaks from Le Loi middle school in Vietnam. As usual, I was playing with my sisters in the front of the house, pretending to be a mother and children who learned cooking under tree shade. Suddenly from the street I saw a truck, which carried around 20 policemen, stopped in the front of us and those men ran over inside the house to enforce my father's leaving his property for their requisition. That was the last day I lived in the house.

I never thought I could accept to live in another house, but I did not have a choice. I had been 12 years in the “memorial house.” I called “memorial house” because, since I was four years old, my mother passed away and the funeral was

I liked to dance with my younger sister, so we chose middle afternoon or at night at the balcony where was imitated French’s house styles could cover us to prevent someone to see silly dancing as ashamed I thought. The music we followed was from the big radio that Vietcong (the communist people) hung on the power pole outside the street for communist’s propagandas. The balcony also was the place I sat to listen to a woman who had attracted voice telling stories every Tuesday night from the radio. My father used to tell the bedtime stories for his children, but the children almost quit before he was done because the most of the stories were underneath or ghost so that was scaring

I could recall the funny sound my father made from mango seeds with strings and the handles. When I learned to ride bicycle, my father was teaching my first riding on the big circle around entire the house. In Vietnam, there were no tricycles for children to practice riding safely; instead, I practiced on my father’s bicycle which was bigger than me. During practice, my father was patiently holding the bike while I was riding slowly. When I could ride faster, I made more mistakes than the last ride by falling and hurting myself. I cried like my father mistakes and the angry could not stop until I had some ginger