Mother's heart

"If you have no relatives, I will be your relative"

Originally from the medical field and having worked in drug rehabilitation, when she first moved to the Family Area (in 2012), Ms. Trang felt "panic" at the number of children there. At first, she simply thought "I'll try to get home by 5 p.m."

Tấm lòng người mẹ và hành trình Thi đua yêu nước tại Làng Thiếu niên Thủ Đức - Ảnh 1. — Trang's daily work contains the immense love of a mother.

"But the work here is usually from this morning to the next morning, so I challenged myself to stay with the children at night. At night, mothers often let their children hang mosquito nets to sleep. When I saw baby TA (who has leukemia and is paralyzed on one side) limping and hanging the mosquito net by herself, I felt so sorry for her. I thought, 'How can she have the strength to hang the mosquito net by herself and then put it up properly?' At that time, I thought, 'Where are her relatives that she is left here?' Then I told myself, 'If she doesn't have any relatives, I will stay and be a relative to the children,'" Trang recounted the first months of being a mother to her children.

My dream is to build a house so that when my children grow up, they will have a place to return to. When they grow up, start working, and have families, they can still bring their spouses and children back there to celebrate Tet, have a hot meal, and have someone waiting for them. For those who no longer have relatives, that will be a true "home".

Ms. Thach Ngoc Trang

Since then, Trang's daily routine has followed the children's schedule. At 5:30, she wakes the children up, "sorts" the primary, secondary, and high school children to prepare for school, the preschool group takes care of hygiene and breakfast. At 7:00, she receives food, goes to the kitchen, cleans, does laundry... At 11:00, she has to cook dinner to pick up the children from school, bathe them, feed them, and put them to sleep. At 1:00 p.m., she wakes the children up to prepare for afternoon classes. On rainy days, Trang boils warm water to bathe each child, then dries and ties their hair. At 5:45 p.m., the children have dinner, at 6:30 p.m. they go to the study table, the time that, according to Trang, is "the most stressful of the day".

When her child is sick, Trang's mother takes him to the doctor, when he is hospitalized, she takes care of him. There is a child in the family with asthma, when the weather turns cold, she sets an alarm to wake him up in the middle of the night and goes to his room to check if he is okay. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she stayed in the village for 7 months straight. Trang's house is in Tan Uyen Ward (HCMC), her husband is used to his wife "working long shifts", so whenever he has free time, he comes down to visit her.

Dream of a home

Entering the profession with "empty hands" in terms of skills, Ms. Trang went to study social work and child psychology. However, the thing she kept as her "guiding principle" was very simple: to accept her children.

The Family Area is a place that welcomes children with deep emotional wounds. Ms. Trang had to face children who did not say a word for many days or complicated cases like LK, the child who was abandoned by his biological parents, leaving that image forever in his mind.

"K. lost faith and was so hurt that he just said "yes" to everything I said, but didn't do it or did the opposite of what I told him to do. I understood that this was his way of seeking my attention, his way of defending himself against insecurities. I had to stick with him and reward him at the right time. I took care of my children in the most natural way, like how my biological mother took care of me when I was little, without saying dogmatic things or preaching morals. Every child has a part of innocence, as long as adults don't rush to mold them," Trang confided.

Tấm lòng người mẹ và hành trình Thi đua yêu nước tại Làng Thiếu niên Thủ Đức - Ảnh 2. — Ms. Trang is the spiritual support of traumatized children.

And not all children are good. There was a child who was so "naughty" that the whole neighborhood was helpless and sent to house 12A for Ms. Trang to "rescue". After a heart-to-heart talk with her, the child returned to normal. She smiled: "It must be fate, the "chance" of the job."

The current model at Thu Duc Youth Village is that children from 4 years old move to the Family Area, girls stay here until they graduate from university, and boys when they are 12 years old move to the Male Management Area. There was a time when 7 boys of age moved out at the same time, the house suddenly became empty, Ms. Trang was so sad that she wanted to quit her job. "I raised him from 3 to 12 years old, I have never been a mother but I loved him like my own child. When he suddenly left, I felt so disappointed and hurt. But I tried to stay because the other children still need their mothers," she shared.

Trang's greatest joy is watching her children grow up. She emotionally talks about Thao, her adopted child who has gone to college, gotten married and now has children. She and her husband even represented Thao on her wedding invitation as her biological parents. "When I married Thao, I didn't think that she would come back to visit or anything. If she comes back, that's my luck. Now I'm a grandmother, I'm so happy," she laughs.

Tấm lòng người mẹ và hành trình Thi đua yêu nước tại Làng Thiếu niên Thủ Đức - Ảnh 3. — Ms. Trang hopes her children will grow up to be good people and have jobs to support themselves.

During her 13 years working at the Family Area, Trang has always been concerned about the children's loneliness. She said that at night when her children were in bed, she had a habit of standing at the door of the room looking at each of them. "The children have blankets, pillows, and sleep together on the bed, but they still feel lonely. One of them even told me that when they grow up and get married, they will only marry someone like Trang's mother," she said with a choked voice. She understood that she was the only model of a relative that many children here could feel.

So every Tet, Ms. Trang asks the Board of Directors of Thu Duc Youth Village to take her children to her mother's house (Tan Uyen Ward, Ho Chi Minh City), which she affectionately says is to let the children go to their maternal home to celebrate Tet. The children can wear Ao Dai, go to the pagoda... to know what the family Tet atmosphere is like.

"My dream is to build a house so that when my children grow up, they will have a place to return to. When they grow up, start working, and have families, they can still bring their spouses and children back there to celebrate Tet, have a hot meal, and have someone waiting for them. For those who no longer have relatives, that will be a true "home", Ms. Trang expressed.

Ms. Thach Ngoc Trang is one of 478 typical advanced examples in the Patriotic Emulation movement for the period 2020 - 2025 of Ho Chi Minh City.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/tam-long-nguoi-me-185251104183911404.htm