Travel Diaries: The O Family in SoCal

Thursday, October 01, 2015 Ivy O 1 Comments

My apologies for the most delayed post, ever, but truthfully, this particular blog post was drafted over a month ago, and due to some bad luck with technology, the entire text that I spent the better part of an hour typing up was not saved properly, thus being lost completely.

Please bear with me as I try to remember what I had wanted to talk about in regards to my dad's side of the family in SoCal!

When D first mentioned visiting his sister last year after she had our adorable niece (who turned ONE this last Saturday!), I told him that I also had family in California that I was interested in seeing.

My dad is the only son in his family of six children. I can only imagine what it was like for him to be the only boy with five very dramatic sisters (I got to witness this in person in Sydney, Australia, in 2011). The first time that I met my aunt (pictured above) and her oldest daughter (pictured below) was 4 years ago when my family and I flew to Australia where four of my dad's five sisters and his parents live. It was a very emotional and monumental reunion as it was the first time in over 30 years since he escaped from Vietnam that my dad's entire family was able to sit in the same room. My father, at our first meal in Sydney (yum cha, or dim sum as we call it in North America), did not even know that he was seated right next to one of his sisters until my mom quietly asked him, "Who is the woman sitting to your left?" to which he shrugged and replied, "Probably a neighbour." The reason why he didn't recognise this sister was because she was only 10-11 years old when he last saw her before his treacherous escape to the open seas from the oppressive communist regime in Vietnam. That one moment of pure shock and the eruption of emotions when he was finally told that he was in fact sitting next to his little sister showed just how much this trip meant for my father and his family members.

All of the O Family grandkids (only my sister and I actually have the last name O)

All of the O Family siblings (from left to right = youngest to oldest)

Of my father's five sisters, I had previously met three. His two youngest ones were once supposed to live with us in Canada along with my paternal grandparents, and my dad's oldest sister came to visit Ottawa back in 2008 with my paternal grandmother. There were two sisters that I only got to meet for the very first time during our important trip, and I was lucky enough to see one of the two again when I visited SoCal with D in late July/early August.

This meeting was particularly special to me because there was one single paternal cousin left that I had yet to meet. My aunt's youngest daughter and her husband were not able to make the trek to Australia 4 years ago, so it was so lovely to finally meet them, and for them to be the first of my extended family on my dad's side to meet D.