Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 30, 1993 TAG: 9301300024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
TORN BETWEEN 2 WORLDS, A WOMAN WRITES, HOPES
THE VIETNAMESE New Year just began, and for a Salem woman, it's brought a painful yearning for her homeland. Every night, she stays up late, pouring out her heart in poetry and journal entries about her return to Vietnam for the first time in 25 years.
Kathy Varney settled more than 1,000 Vietnamese refugees into Western Virginia.
As founder and social worker at Roanoke's refugee resettlement program, she's located homes, refrigerators, cars and jobs; and she's comforted Vietnamese families through homesickness for the past 15 years.
All the while, she lived with her own.
Kathy Varney was born in the Vietnamese city of Phan-Thiet on the South China Sea. Her name was Diem-Phuc, which means "beautiful happiness," but as a little girl she called herself Kathy. She learned English from Baptist missionaries and dreamed of going to America.
She met Nick Varney in the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, when he was a young airman and choir director at the Baptist church where Kathy played piano. He returned to Vietnam after his tour of duty to marry her and to live there as a civilian.
In 1967, at the age of 24, she launched a new life in the United States with her husband. She earned a bachelor's degree in social work from Roanoke College in 1990, and she's about ready to start work on a master's. The Varneys had two children, a daughter, Kim, who's preparing to go to pharmacy school and a son, also named Nick, who's a star athlete at Glenvar High.
But Kathy Varney, who turned 49 today, has spent a quarter-century worrying about Vietnam and her parents there. Constantly reminded of her country by the struggles of the refugees she counseled - "Every day, I relived my country" - she fretted through the Vietnam War and followed every wrinkle of political change since then.
Last month, literally trembling in the customs lines, she went home for the first time in 25 years.
She has returned feeling torn. She's been a citizen of the United States since 1980. She loves this country and that one, too. She longs for whichever one she's not in.
"I left so much here," she said of her four weeks in Vietnam, away from her husband and children, "and I left so much there. I'm somewhere in-between."
For years, she feared her return would endanger her and her relatives. Then travel restrictions were lifted in 1990. More and more Vietnamese-Americans went - and came back safely.
The Vietnamese New Year, a time when families gather and visit friends, always makes her sad. "All these years, every year, every New Year, I am longing to be home with my family."
In 1991, she took a Baptist mission trip to Brazil. Looking down from a mountaintop onto a small coastal settlement, she saw banana trees, palm trees, coconut trees, vegetable plots. "That village, it was just like my home," she said. "I thought I was in Vietnam. Tears just rolled down.
"I said, `Why am I not home? It's been too long. No matter what, despite all the rumors and all the risks, I'm going home.' "
She'd heard rumors about Vietnamese soldiers stalking travelers. She had left in peacetime, so she'd never even seen Communist troops.
In Tan Son Nhut airport outside Ho Chi Minh City - formerly Saigon - her body quaked as a customs official checked her passport. Then he stamped it without a hint of concern.
She walked outside to a crowd of 500 waiting for friends and relatives. She'd never seen one of her two sisters, who was born after she left, but somehow they instantly locked eyes through the fence.
She brought her family chocolate and blue jeans - and pictures of Nick and their children.
She couldn't sleep on her first night home. Punchy with jet lag, she lay in the darkness, laughing, talking and keeping everyone in the family awake.
Her mother has a heart problem and had been sick with worry the two weeks before Kathy's arrival. "But as soon as I got home, she perked up."
Kathy donned a silky black pajama-like pants and top - the leisure wear of her people. She walked the beach where she rode her bike at 15. She felt as if she'd never been away.
"I mixed right in, like I was one of them. I went to the market. I squat down" to eat. "I did everything everybody [told] me don't do - `Don't drink the water, don't eat on the street.' " It was fine.
Her father, a cabinetmaker, and her mother, two sisters and brother survived the war in good health. A teen-age brother who was 6 when she left Vietnam died in the war.
Although her family looked good to her, "They think I'm fat," she said, laughing.
Kathy left Vietnam so young, she'd seen little of the country. Last month, she roamed the countryside and gave talks to church groups. On Christmas day, she sang "O Holy Night" in Vietnamese at a church.
She saw few signs of war around Ho Chi Minh City. "I see signs of capitalism there, privatization." Merchants are rapidly opening stores in shops long closed by war and economic stagnation, she said.
She heard about government corruption, she said, "but people are really excited. Before '90, the whole country was idle."
It was hard for her to leave.
Every day, something triggers her Vietnamese memories. Sometimes it's a whiff of french-fry grease at the Roanoke airport when she picks up refugees. (It reminds her of a soup they sell at Tan Son Nhut airport.)
"I still dream at night about Vietnam," she said. "My soul's still on the beach." Fixing Vietnamese food and listening to Vietnamese music keeps memories of her visit fresh.
She writes and writes.
Of the coconut trees that fenced the beach, of the "still, green waters," of the gentle hills, and of the hot sand under her feet.
When her husband retires from his teaching job at Back Creek Elementary School in about seven years, they might split their time between Salem, where they've lived since 1975, and Vietnam. She'd keep her U.S. citizenship, maybe teach college there or do social work for the Vietnamese government. Right now she's teaching English as a second language at Salem High when she's not doing her refugee work.
She hopes to visit Vietnam again this summer. And if somehow she can't live there again, she wants to be buried there.
In the meantime, she keeps writing:
If someone asked me "How do I feel for this?"
My response will be, "Why do I wait?"
For so long to see such a beautiful place?
What else can replace? Sweeter mother land
For my heart has ached for all these years
Of longing for this moment
To touch and feel the warmest of water
To let my heart sink deep into the dream
Sweet dream of 25 years apart
Wiping my tears to say farewell once more
Someday, soon I will be back to this beautiful shore.
Keywords:
PROFILE