A Mother and Child Reunion : Family: A Huntington Beach woman, who was given up for adoption during the Vietnam War, sees her birth mother again after a 29-year separation.

Mary Reed, born Nguyen Thi Thanh Hien in Vietnam, waited anxiously Friday night at Los Angeles International Airport for the mother she hasn’t seen in 29 years.

Surrounded by close friends and television cameras, Reed, a Huntington Beach resident, searched for Thanh Dao, who had given Reed up for adoption by a Thousand Oaks couple in 1964, during the Vietnam War.

After three decades of separation, the women were not even sure in which language they could communicate. Reed speaks only English and Dao speaks French and Vietnamese.

But when Thanh Dao’s flight from Paris finally arrived, speech was not necessary as Reed rushed to hug her mother.

Both women cried.

“I’m holding her,” Reed said. “That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. “

“How do you . . . How do you do?” Dao replied.

Reed and her friends had clogged the exit from the Tom Bradley International Terminal. Two people held a pink banner that read, “Dreams do come true! Welcome Thanh.”

“Because of the war, I couldn’t feed her,” Dao said in Vietnamese. “I wanted her to have a better future.”

Dao wrote to her daughter until 1966, when she lost the address during a bombing raid on her village.

In 1990, Reed asked the American Red Cross for help in tracking her mother. Three years later, in July, a Red Cross worker called to say they had found her mother living in Paris.

In a recent letter to her daughter, Dao explained: “I found you by returning to the neighborhood where you and I had lived, and by chance one old woman told me that you had tried to look for me. So I asked a service in Vietnam to look for you.”

In the letter, which Dao wrote with the help of an English-speaking friend, Dao said she worked with a theater company in Vietnam when Reed was a child. Reed’s father was the company director. At some point, he abandoned the young mother and her child, according to the letter. “Dear Thien, if you could speak Vietnamese, we would understand each other better,” Dao wrote.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do it either,” Reed said. “But I know we’ll get our message across, how much we miss each other.”

Reed said she will have bilingual friends help her understand the story of her mother’s life. But she and her three children also have been practicing basic French and Vietnamese phrases.

“Bon jour,” said Denny, 5, as he ate toast in the family’s kitchen earlier Friday. “How are you?” he asked in French, and giggled.

“We’ve been listening to French tapes,” Reed explained.

Her daughter Jenna, 9, practiced Vietnamese phrases in the living room with Phuong Dao, Reed’s new-found sister-in-law. Phuong Dao, 23, flew from France on Thursday, one day before her mother arrived.

“Hello, Grandmother,” Jenna said in Vietnamese, getting ready for her first meeting. “I love you, Grandmother.”

“I’ve just been so overcome with emotions in the past month,” said Reed, who is separated from her husband. “I feel like my life is so full now. I have family.

“The kids have been so entranced by Phuong,” Reed said. “They call her aunt now.”

Reed still wonders exactly why she was separated from her mother for so long. And she wants to know exactly why she was put up for adoption. Had her mother meant to find her again after a few years, she wonders?

“I guess, according to Phuong, she never really stopped looking for me,” Reed said.

Phuong Dao said Reed’s mother “always gave your photograph to people and asked if they knew you. She cried very much because she didn’t know if you were alive or dead.”

As the family waited for more than an hour for Dao to clear U.S. Customs Friday night,Jenna Reed, 9, fidgeted anxiously.

“Are you sure she got on the flight?” Reed asked Phuong Dao, who nodded affirmatively.

“You called her this morning, right?” asked Reed.

“Yes,” said Phuong Dao, who squeezed Reed’s hand.

The family left the airport for Reed’s home, where Dao will stay for one month.