Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. We never celebrated Mother’s Day growing up - other than whatever card or art project our elementary teachers made us do. We never celebrated birthdays either after my dad passed away. I learned as an adult that perhaps I had a less than typical childhood compared to other American children, but as a child I only knew what I saw around me and I thought what my brothers and I experienced was normal. I thought my neighborhood, where the “backyards” had a few square feet of paved concrete where you couldn’t leave anything valuable in lest you want to attract burglars (day or night) was normal.
I don’t mean to imply that I had a bad childhood, but it was different. We lived in a small 2bd apartment - my grandfather in one room and myself, my mother, and my two brothers in the other room. My mom went to school at night so my brothers and I entertained ourselves with watching CBS. Even if we weren’t particularly interested in the programming or were scared by the unsolved murders, the sound from the TV felt protective, as if there were more adults in the home than my grandfather who was partially blind. Even today, I still find comfort in sleeping with the TV on when I’m alone. It would also help block every rustle and footstep whose sound carried through our thin walls every time someone passed by and would make us eye the shadows on the window nervously. Those nights are my first memory of being afraid.
They are also one of my first memories of camaraderie with my siblings. We had to devise many games to keep us entertained. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but one of our favorites was turning off the lights and locking my youngest brother in our room and taunting him by repeating “Jennifer” (not his name) over and over while we giggled. We were mean older siblings, but deep down we loved him dearly and would fight fiercely to protect him should any neighbor kids pick on him.
My youngest brother is the only one of us who has no memories of my father. He was only 4 months in the womb when my father died. My mother recalls that she was too depressed to take care of herself and he had the lowest birth weight out of us siblings. That’s why he will always have a special place in her heart because he needed twice the love. When my brother was born, my mom did not care to pick his American name so she left it up to me. I was watching a TV commercial for a car and shouted out, “Jimmy!” which (in light of all the different car commercials those days) was probably the best outcome he could have had.
But while my brother’s American name was somewhat haphazardly chosen, his Vietnamese name was quite intentional. My mother did not want a third child, but my father really wanted another baby. In the years after, she would fondly lament that he tricked her and then skidaddled and left her with all the hard work like a typical man. When my brother was born, she chose a name to symbolize how much she would always love my father, “Nguyen Anh” or chi nguyen anh which means “only you”.
Fast forward a few dozen years and it’s Mother’s Day weekend again. It’s pre-pandemic and we are in New York celebrating my youngest brother’s graduation from law school. It’s one of the rare family vacations we’ve taken - if you can call cramming into my brother’s dorm apartment a vacation. But I can see it’s one of my mom’s proudest moments - she had done it, sacrificed everything when she left her own mother (whom she never got to see alive again) to start a new life in America, put aside her personal ambitions and raised three kids on her own, protected them from the gangs and the drugs and the violence in our neighborhood, and now (finally) they were done with school. Her children were adults and she could exhale.
This year, in lieu of Christmas presents (or the birthday presents we never did), we were supposed to take an international trip as a family for the first time in over 25 years - all of us, which is difficult to do considering my middle brother has been working nonstop for years, I had many years myself where I could not take vacation and my youngest brother was only a little over a year into his new job... not to mention that my mom and my middle brother don’t share the same affinity for travel as me (and my dad, supposedly). To put it mildly, it required some convincing and negotiating, but we ultimately settled on springtime in Japan to see the cherry blossoms. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it’s the value of time. We can’t be physically together this year, but I hope we still have time next Mother’s Day for this adventure.
Happy Mother’s Day to you and yours!
I don’t mean to imply that I had a bad childhood, but it was different. We lived in a small 2bd apartment - my grandfather in one room and myself, my mother, and my two brothers in the other room. My mom went to school at night so my brothers and I entertained ourselves with watching CBS. Even if we weren’t particularly interested in the programming or were scared by the unsolved murders, the sound from the TV felt protective, as if there were more adults in the home than my grandfather who was partially blind. Even today, I still find comfort in sleeping with the TV on when I’m alone. It would also help block every rustle and footstep whose sound carried through our thin walls every time someone passed by and would make us eye the shadows on the window nervously. Those nights are my first memory of being afraid.
They are also one of my first memories of camaraderie with my siblings. We had to devise many games to keep us entertained. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but one of our favorites was turning off the lights and locking my youngest brother in our room and taunting him by repeating “Jennifer” (not his name) over and over while we giggled. We were mean older siblings, but deep down we loved him dearly and would fight fiercely to protect him should any neighbor kids pick on him.
My youngest brother is the only one of us who has no memories of my father. He was only 4 months in the womb when my father died. My mother recalls that she was too depressed to take care of herself and he had the lowest birth weight out of us siblings. That’s why he will always have a special place in her heart because he needed twice the love. When my brother was born, my mom did not care to pick his American name so she left it up to me. I was watching a TV commercial for a car and shouted out, “Jimmy!” which (in light of all the different car commercials those days) was probably the best outcome he could have had.
But while my brother’s American name was somewhat haphazardly chosen, his Vietnamese name was quite intentional. My mother did not want a third child, but my father really wanted another baby. In the years after, she would fondly lament that he tricked her and then skidaddled and left her with all the hard work like a typical man. When my brother was born, she chose a name to symbolize how much she would always love my father, “Nguyen Anh” or chi nguyen anh which means “only you”.
Fast forward a few dozen years and it’s Mother’s Day weekend again. It’s pre-pandemic and we are in New York celebrating my youngest brother’s graduation from law school. It’s one of the rare family vacations we’ve taken - if you can call cramming into my brother’s dorm apartment a vacation. But I can see it’s one of my mom’s proudest moments - she had done it, sacrificed everything when she left her own mother (whom she never got to see alive again) to start a new life in America, put aside her personal ambitions and raised three kids on her own, protected them from the gangs and the drugs and the violence in our neighborhood, and now (finally) they were done with school. Her children were adults and she could exhale.
This year, in lieu of Christmas presents (or the birthday presents we never did), we were supposed to take an international trip as a family for the first time in over 25 years - all of us, which is difficult to do considering my middle brother has been working nonstop for years, I had many years myself where I could not take vacation and my youngest brother was only a little over a year into his new job... not to mention that my mom and my middle brother don’t share the same affinity for travel as me (and my dad, supposedly). To put it mildly, it required some convincing and negotiating, but we ultimately settled on springtime in Japan to see the cherry blossoms. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it’s the value of time. We can’t be physically together this year, but I hope we still have time next Mother’s Day for this adventure.
Happy Mother’s Day to you and yours!
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