Last week, two men came by to fix floor boards damaged by a leak from the new refrigerator. The two had pulled up all the damaged boards and left the concrete sub-floor open to the air. The next day, while I was at work and Mom was home to 'supervise' the process, the two (immigrants from Vietnam) came by and laid down the new flooring. They did this beautifully. She talked to them while they worked (and all the while advised them to go to night school, which is the way she would talk to anybody and talked to my brother and I growing up. Go to school, go to school and work hard!) and when I got home from work she told me what they had told her. One of the young men went into a refugee camp at 14, hoping to come to the West, and made it to the US several years later. "People don't know how good it is here," he said to her. Mom asked him, "weren't you scared to go to the camp?" and he answered," I was young."
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