April marks 19 years since my family fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City), and thousands of other Vietnamese escaped to find a new home in America. I am the narrator of my family's history, but I am not the one that holds the memories. I was 3 years old when we left Vietnam. These stories are from my sisters and parents. Although they are not my own, they are a part of me.

When it was his turn in 1975, my father stood opposite a Navy midshipman -- one foot on one ship and one foot on the other ship -- straddling the two vessels, their legs like wishbones. Both men cautiously picked up one child at a time and placed him or her on the second ship.

With beads of sweat falling from his face, Trong Van Dang was ever so careful not to drop any of his children. Not like the woman next to him who screamed and fainted when her daughter slipped out of a tired soldier's hands, and was crushed to death between the ships as everyone watched helplessly.

His heart tightened and his arms grew tense as he thought about the woman's pain, determined not to let that happen. Not saying a word until he finally counted five girls and one boy. He and my six-months-pregnant mom, Duom, silently gave thanks and climbed aboard the ship to join them.

It was April 29, 1975, during the fall of Saigon to the Communist troops of North Vietnam. Wearing army fatigues with only his name sewn above the pocket -- no identification at all to show that he used to be an army colonel -- he watched as the land became smaller in sight.

As the ship moved into international waters, this proud man who was my father stood quietly next to my mom. Both looked back with sad, brown eyes, and wept for a lost homeland. It would be one of the few times any of us would see them cry.

My sister told me that no one wanted to leave but that some had no choice. Like my dad, many were career military men who fought beside the Americans against the northern Communists. He could no longer stay in a country that did not want him, a country that would either kill him or put him in a re-education camp for the rest of his life.

Although this is my family story, it is a familiar story for many of the refugees (about 130,000) who left in 1975. Most of them were of the Westernized intellectual segment of society and of the military elite. They were people who could no longer feel safe in Vietnam because of their political stance and loyalty.

It wasn't until 1979, during the second wave of refugees, when a more diverse group of people -- fisherman, schoolteachers, villagers, etc. -- secretly planned their escape and left by the hundreds of thousands. Most of them crammed into fishing boats and were later called "Vietnamese boat people."

As many people like myself (Vietnamese-born, college-age students who have lived in America for most of our lives) look back, we only hope and pray that some day we, too, can return to the home we recall through stories we have been told by our relatives.

With the lifting of the crippling U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam by President Clinton in February, that dream is becoming more of a reality.

Many Vietnamese now see a brighter economic future for our country that was ravaged and left poverty-stricken by the war. Within the last year, over half a million Vietnamese refugees returned home for the Vietnamese Tet, the celebration of the new year.

And as my family members begin to return to Vietnam -- my mom visited two years ago, and my sister visited with my mom in December -- we remember the past.

We remember the long, frightening journey and the people we left behind. We remember the people who never made it through the trip. We remember the many friends and strangers who helped us to get here, and we remember those who helped us survive in our new world. And for many of those children of Vietnam, we remember everything our parents did to help us get to America safely.

My 33-year-old sister, Thanh Liem, who has the same gentle demeanor and soft, brown eyes as my dad, remembers the night of our leaving as if it were yesterday. She remembers a once-vibrant city turned to a "dark, ghost town."

"When we left, I remember Dad giving the keys to the neighbors and telling them that we would be back in three days," my sister said. "Only we didn't go back. We snuck through the city in the dark -- it was about 9 p.m. -- hoping to make it in time for the last ship leaving Saigon."

In what seemed like an eerie, dead calm, the only noise to be heard was gunfire and fighter planes chasing each other through the sky. The only thing seen was the silhouette of tanks and soldiers patrolling the city. Not a light was on because of the 24-hour curfew.

As the ship was about to leave and the ladder already hoisted up, a stranger generously threw a rope ladder down and the family climbed up the side of the ship.

Behind us, thousands of Vietnamese pushed against the gates of the naval yard, some trying to climb over to get a chance at freedom.

We quickly exchanged ships after the first one ran aground -- where my father passed us up to the second ship and the woman was fated to lose her child -- and switched once more to a tanker in the Philippines for the rest of the voyage to Guam.

The entire trip lasted 17 days through stormy seas and chilling rains. Many people died, their bodies thrown into the sea, and many others slowly starved. If it weren't for my mom, a woman who can make friends with anybody, we would have starved to death, too. She appealed to the kindness of the sailors on board and brought back enough rice and fish sauce to feed us and several other people.

"We finally arrived in Guam where the immigration camps were )) located. We thought the worst was over," said my mom, who will be 54 this year. "But the wait for sponsorship to America was very long, and we lived in camps and barracks for four months while your dad got the paperwork done."

And during that time, my mom gave birth to -- and almost lost -- her youngest child, a healthy 7-pound baby boy. My father, a former high-ranking officer left now without a trade, agonized over how he would support his large family. My parents decided to ask the Red Cross to find a new family for my new-born brother.

"I knew that we were doing the right thing for him, that we were giving him a better home and a better future than the rest of us," my mother said with conviction. "But when it was time to sign the papers in front of the judge, I just started crying. I couldn't help it. I didn't want to lose my baby, my family. The judge saw that, and within a few days, the Red Cross returned him to us."

Perhaps it was fate, she said, because soon after my brother came home, sponsors were found for all nine of us, and we were on our way to America. The journey would lead us from Guam's Asan Camp to Honolulu, where we would change planes to go to Fort Chaffee, Ark. -- an Army base that served as the immigration processing center for refugees.

When the last-minute paperwork for sponsorship was finished, we flew into the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Bundled up in donated sweaters and wool coats in the month of August -- Dad was a bit off in his calculations of the seasons -- we met our sponsors from Harford County, who opened their arms and their home to our family.

During the first week, we lived with the family of Jerry Krueger, an Army captain who befriended our family during the war and made our escape possible. They wasted no time in trying to find work for my dad, enroll my mom in English classes and my siblings and me into school.

After the first week, my dad landed a job with a car dealership when he told them he had experience with cars (until then, it was only a hobby). But for the next 17 years, it would be the means by which he supported his family.

"The beginning was hard for all of us," recalled my sister Minh Duc, 31. "It was difficult adjusting to our new home. Mom and Dad worked hard to create a normal life for all of us. Dad committed himself to being a good mechanic and provider, and Mom to raising her seven children.

"When we were all old enough, we found jobs, too, to help lessen their burden," she said. "Survival has always been a group effort for us. We survived the cards that fate dealt us, and all we ever had was our parents trying to protect us throughout everything."

Since then, we have made new lives in America. But despite our new lives, we have not forgotten our old ones.

Minh Duc's visit back to Vietnam with my mom in December adds one more chapter to our story.

As the plane was about to land, people all around her leaned anxiously toward the windows, hoping to get a glimpse of the country. Over the intercom, Bing Crosby's voice wafted through the air as he sang, "I'll be home for Christmas."

An eerily appropriate song, Minh Duc said to herself as she became teary-eyed. Appropriate because it was Christmas, and because it was the first time she would return to the war-torn country she fled at the age of 12.

Appropriate still because the song triggered a bond between the strangers on the plane -- all Vietnamese men and women forced to flee their homes years ago and now eager to return -- who suddenly felt a connection to one another as they remembered the past and mourned a country lost.

As the airplane door opened at Tan Son Nhut airport, Minh Duc looked around her as she stepped out of the plane and onto the steps outside. Grass was growing through the many cracks in the runway. Gone were the days when international flights carrying important military and government people flew in and ,, out of this airport every day. All that was left were three Vietnamese Airline jets waiting for passengers.

Overwhelmed with the view, she realized it wasn't the same idyllic country she thought she had left years ago. Instead, it was a country and a people who suffered and lost much through war.

The war took millions of lives, and despite our escape, the war still managed to steal our dad away too. Like two of his war colleagues who passed away a few years before him, my dad died in 1992 of liver cancer and hepatitis -- diseases they contracted while working as weapons specialists with chemicals like Agent Orange during the war.

"I don't know what I was expecting," Minh Duc said. "It's still the same country, but there's a different feeling over there now. When we lived there, it seemed more open and carefree. Now, you are the focus of everyone's attention when you get off the plane, because we're the Americans. It's a very funny feeling to be seen as an alien in your own home.

"But regardless of the changes, you don't lose that feeling for your country," she said. "You don't focus on the poverty or the pain, but on the beauty and hope of the country, and the idea that things will improve for our people. You always remember the past -- it made us who we are today -- but we also look toward the future."

And although most of all the places she remembered were still there, the memories she had were of a time from long ago. It was from a time when Dad took the family to Vung Tau beach every week; when he piled the the kids and mom on a blue motor scooter to take us to a Kung Fu movie at Kim Chau movie theater, and when we all dressed up in brand outfits to celebrate Tet along the busy streets of Saigon.

"It was incredible journey back," Minh Duc said. "I only wish that Dad could have lived long enough to go back with us. By taking Mom back, it was to let him know we were grateful for everything they did for us. It was like going back for him. And for me, it was more or less a healing process, just as it probably is for so many other Vietnamese."

Dan Thanh Dang is a senior at University of Maryland College Park and an intern at The Baltimore Sun.