Prologue - The Pineapple Ring

I don’t remember the boat. Not the panic. Not the pirates. Not the sickness. Not the water lapping at the sides of something barely holding together.

I’ve heard the stories. Stories of how we fled with nothing. Of how close we came to dying. But none of those memories are mine.

We escaped by boat to Malaysia, packed in with other families who were just trying to survive. We stayed in a refugee camp until we were sponsored by the Australian government to resettle. Most of Mum’s family went to Los Angeles. One brother and his wife ended up in Italy. My Dad's family stayed in Vietnam. We were the ones who came to Australia.

We arrived in June 1979.

There’s a black and white photo of Mum holding my middle brother in one arm and me in the other. A board hangs from her neck with our names and refugee number printed on it. Like she was a prisoner. It was a photo for the system, but it’s also one of the only images we have from that time. I still look at it and wonder what she felt. What I felt.

It’s been fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War. As I approach fifty myself, I find myself wondering. What if my parents hadn’t made that journey? What if we hadn’t survived the boat trip? Or hadn’t ended up in Australia? Who would I be? Would I even know the difference?

Losing my dad last year opened up a space I didn’t expect. Not just for grief, but for reflection. I’ve spent more time thinking than I ever have. About where I came from. About what was never said. About how survival shaped not just my family, but me.

When my cousins and I get together, we speak English in four different accents. Australian, Italian, American, and Vietnamese. It’s disjointed, beautiful, and sometimes absurd. A reminder that we belong everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Mum used to tell me that her father, my grandfather, was so in love with me that he begged her to leave me behind when we fled. She didn’t. I don’t remember him. He died when I was around nine. All I’ve ever seen is a black and white photo. A quiet, dignified Chinese man who didn’t speak Vietnamese, married to my grandmother, with whom he had nine children.

What I do remember is the flight to Australia. The quiet hum of the plane. A moment of stillness. A dessert. A single ring of tinned pineapple with a red glacé cherry on top, balanced on a plastic tray.

That’s the first sweetness I ever remember. After war. After hunger. After fear. It was artificial. Slightly metallic. Too sweet. And absolutely perfect.

For years, I thought of it as a sign. A signal that maybe life here would be kinder.

We landed in a place called Cabramatta. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t speak the language. None of us did.

We were sent to a refugee apartment block. Mum told me later how crowded it was. Families packed in together. The building always noisy. Men drinking. Women cooking. Kids running around barefoot, yelling, banging doors.

One day, Mum went out to buy milk. On her way home, she realised she was being followed. Two white men taunted her. They shouted racist words she didn’t even fully understand. She ran all the way back.

That was our welcome to Australia.

The building buzzed with life. It was chaotic, but it was ours.

And yet, in that one quiet moment, mid-air, I was just a little girl with a tray of food and a cherry-topped pineapple ring. A moment of softness in a world that would not stay soft for long.