A Familial Stranger

Following the Cambodian genocide, my grandmother Simone and my mother Sara (Socheata) were living in separate refugee camps in Thailand— unaware the other was living. After my grandma was sponsored to live in Rochester, New York, she heard through extended family that my mom survived. After seven years of separation, now fourteen, my mom started a new life with a woman she didn’t recognize, but knew to be mother. At 26, they were separated again when my mom ran away to Rhode Island the night before her wedding for an arranged marriage. The next day, my grandma and her American boyfriend Mike married instead.

In the summer of 2024, I visited my grandma’s current home in Hilton, New York for the first time since I was 14. My grandma has lived there since the mid-90s with Mike, who is a retired firefighter with abusive tendencies. My mother has tried to move my grandma Rhode Island to live with her, but Mike refuses to go with her— trapping my grandma in a monotonous routine of caregiving, chores, and gardening in what feels like the middle of nowhere.

Though the house looked the way I remembered it, it had become a vessel for my grandmother’s grief. From her plants that bear witness, to the intricate displays of her memories, to the grandiose lawn and trees she trims on her own, her longing for her only living child runs deep into the soil and floats high beyond the air we breathe.