Our daughter Aileen graduated from Bowdoin College on her birthday, May 23rd. 1998. The day before, my husband Brian and I had driven up from Rhode Island to be with her. At noon we had reached the Bowden campus. The sun was bright and the air was cool. The tall pines and the red brick buildings looked so peaceful. Aileen had been waiting for us. She looked great with her short haircut and her tan. Her beautiful face and her happy smile went with her personality. We were so happy to see her. We hadn't seen her for more than three months.

Aileen, the fifth of our six children who went to college, had been All-American soccer player in high school. Her first year at Bowdoin she was chosen to play on the varsity team. A few games into the season, injuries ended her soccer career. Today, six operations later, Aileen can walk without pain. She can also skydive, with her teddy bear tucked in her parachute, and bungee jump off cliffs in New Zealand, and Heaven knows what else she hasn't told us about. Still, after four years of hard work-- and `well trained boyfriends' her father says-- Aileen was to receive her B.A. in Biology.

Nothing makes a mother more happy than to see her children do well. On the long drive up, Brian and I had reminisced over our children. We couldn't believe the last four years had gone so fast. One by one our children were leaving our nest. In two years our youngest, Eirene, will graduate from Brown University. It is both exciting and sad to see them grow up and leave us. I know I have been blessed. Especially since I have also found my own long-lost son.

Near the end of World War II a young girl named "Mai" was born in Quang Ngai, one of the poorest provinces in central VietNam. Mai's grandfather, the patriarch, was a major landowner in the valley and possessed hereditary power and wealth. He had also chosen, in a valley of Buddhists, to become a Cao Dai. One night, when Mai was one year old, jealous local Viet Minh came to her home and killed her grandfather, her father and her uncles. They threw Mai's mother, seven months pregnant with her fourth child, into jail. Then they seized the family home and slaughtered all the animals for a banquet. As their excuse, the Viet Minh-- who were also Mai's neighbors-- said Mai's grandfather was supporting the Japanese. That was a cowardly lie. The truth was that he was Cao Dai. He had worshiped the wrong religion.

Mai grew up with her older sister and brother, and her youngest bother. She had no father, and the family no longer had wealth. Mai's mother was in and out of jail so many times she soon stopped caring what happened to her. She became fearful and angry, hard and full of hatred. She beat up her children whenever her fear took over her heart, which was quite often as Mai remembered it.

Even as a young girl, Mai knew she was different from the other girls in her village. She had her dream and her goals. She dreamed to be educated, to be a teacher, to be free. She would not accept the traditional roles her village society would allow her-- either to marry someone she didn't love or become a man's `second' or `third' wife. But such dreams as she had were forbidden for a girl without family wealth. When she was thirteen, her mother forced her into marriage. Because of Mai's strong will, that was the beginning of terror for her. Mai did everything she could to stop the marriage but it was no use. After two years of rape and beatings, during which she had a son, Mai decided enough was enough. She couldn't live like this any more. She took her child and ran back home to her mother. But in her village the married woman no longer belonged to her family. She was her husband's property, either she like it or not. So the husband and the father-in-law came to her mother's home and dragged her outside and beat her nearly to death and left her in the rice field to die. Somehow Mai lived, and very soon she ran away again, with her child. So the story went on and on, a long sad story.

And in the end, Mai's child was taken from her.

Later, and with God's help, Mai would meet the most wonderful woman, in Saigon, who would take her in, and give her a faith, and teach her how to forgive herself. And one day her luck would change forever when she would meet and fall in love with a handsome, young American naval officer, and they would marry and have six children together, and her life would become like the movie `The Sound of Music' . But always the memory of her lost child would be a knife in her heart.

This is my own life, a life I am still trying to understand, to heal. There are so many things I need to write --the stories of my life that run through my head and keep me awake so many nights. I am working all the time to learn correct English but it is hard. My friends, my family, all tell me not to worry so much, that if the computer can't fix it then they will correct it. I try. So here I am, sentence by sentence, trying to connect my worlds, writing the only way I know how.

That afternoon went well. Bowdoin College was showing its best. The sun was shining and the birds were singing to welcome this special, warm day of Spring. Proud parents and their sons and daughters with happy faces were strolling around the campus. There was laughter, and cheerful handshakes, and the congratulations to each other for the job well done. For our family also, it was a shining day. Our four daughters were together again: Maura, the dance choreographer and director, had come up from New York City with her boyfriend Perry; Maeve, the artist, had flown home from Spain; and Eirene had just finished her finals. Our sons Bernard, in Hollywood, and Patrick, in Ireland, couldn't make it. And my son Anh, in Florida, had just become a father again.

We went to the Baccalaureate Service in the old white church on Maine Street.