My mother - LE, KIM-CHI

Dr. KIP REDICK
Religion RSTD 337
LE, KIM-CHI
January 27, 2007



My mother and her activities



My mother is a Vietnamese lady. She had a good education in her city. She was very delicate and active. Most people in the city knew very much about her.
She had grown up in Sadec, a small city in the Southwestern part of the former Republic of Viet-Nam. My mother has repeatedly said to us: “Sadec is only a small city, so don’t have any opportunity to performing what I want to do.” My grand parents sent her to Saigon, former Capital of South Viet-Nam, in order to pursue her study at a famous College there. After accomplishing the college degree education in Saigon, she then returned to her home city to organize and open a private elementary school and a home economics school of which she has run by her self. She was very successful with her schools. The registered and attended in those schools is progressively up and up while in the public school it lessened and lessened. After few years, the mayor of her city invited her to join (her talented) the city to run school together. She refused. Finally, the mayor forced her to close her elementary school. Then she could only run the home economics school. I remembered on one day, she taught how to prepare the ‘LE HA” boneless chicken to a class of about ten students. Each of them had prepared stuffing ready and put it in each separate bowl, then placed a fresh hen with intact skin in front of each student. My mother also had one. She held up the chicken and showed it in front of the class, then step by step she explained to students how to work to debone the hen. Students listened took notes. Then she started from the body and cut off each leg at thigh joint. With short sharp pointed knife, she makes an incision the length of spine, cutting through both skin and flesh. She holds the tip of knife as close to the skeleton as possible, she pushed back skin and flesh as bones are loosened. From the shoulder blade, she cut from side to side until she reaches the center front breast bone. Now the bones can be removed easily. Then she took all the bones out. Now, she holds the deboned chicken and said start. Her students started then she went around looking what they were doing. Some of them did very good job, but some did very funny that tear off one leg, one wing, in front, in the back etc…This was a very interesting class, I like it the most. Then were stubbed in their chickens and baked. After they were done, the chickens which were not torn look very pretty. The ones which were torn look very funny.
In the home economic class my mother used to wear pants and blouse with short sleeves, limited jewelry, little make up, she look very strong. When she taught in the elementary class, she wore a Vietnamese long dress, plenty jewelry on. She is very thin about 111 lbs., 5.5 feet high. She has dark brown and shining eyes. Her forehead is large. Her nose is delicately flared. Her lips are rosebud. Her beautiful smile with perfect white teeth lit up a room like the rising sun in an early summer morning. Her hands are long with tapered fingers. She looks very strong on her yellow skin. Her hair was black and long, she made her hair like a flower which made people admired her.
My mother was very intelligent and courageous. She took care of her children very careful. My father died when she was very young, but she didn’t marry again and stayed single until the last day of her life. She died in 1972. I will miss her forever.