Memory of Tet

Right now, fireworks and firecrackers are exploding in the air.

Let’s Tet again. It’s here after so much anticipation: incense burning, monk praying (years ago, it was monk-burning and napalm exploding).
Back then, the nation prayed for peace. Now prosperity.

The economy did not do well this past year. That translates to a lot of migrant workers staying around in the cities, unable to afford their trip home.
Still, people washed their hair, their bikes, their houses, and even the mannequins in shopwindow.
The old is all washed away to make room for the new.

Children grow old men died. I read an article about an 88-year-old man, still climbing his coconut trees with machete dangling on his side to harvest his daily yield.
Keep shaking the proverbial tree, but Vietnam still hangs in tight.

My parents used to make me clean the house, the silverware and the Tupperware.
Glad to be of service. After all, we, kids get new clothes, and li-xi (lucky money). Bonus for bad boys, even. Very much like our ” to kill the Mockingbird childhood”.
We were allowed to gamble for fun. The neighborhood was in a good mood. After all, it’s Tet.

Debt and disputes are put on pause. The five-and-dime store owner visited us on her customer-retention route. Once a year, she put on ao dai and make up.
Now with McDonald’s and soon, Wal-Mart to join Starbucks, Burger King, and KFC. Good luck to receive and greet merchant-turn-guest.

It will be a different kind of buying experience e.g. fast-foods, fast greetings (I doubt workers in uniform will ever visit you during Tet).

You can tell Tet is here: flowers and flags, drumbeats, and rising prices.

My parents would pen their poems and read to each other while making sure I get home before midnight. I wouldn’t want to be the first person entering the house on New Year. We got to wait for a respectable uncle the next morning, always early, every year, like clockwork, on his bike and dressed in a bow tie, to bless “xong dat” our house.

It’s a collective society. I am my parent’s son, brother of my elder siblings, etc… always in an ecosystem that include times past i.e. ancestors.

Vietnam got its past alright.
But it experiences fits and starts on the path to modernization, with add-ons like Christmas and Western New Year, Valentine’s and Halloween.
No Thanksgiving ( Only the Vietnamese American ex-pats in District 7 would celebrate that.)
Tet renews the spirit of optimism: our best days are still ahead. It’s both traditional and radical, inclusive and inspirational.

So much preparation was for the three days: sticky-rice cake (which won the first prize: the throne, our first “less is more” lesson in product design) to fermented onion and bean sprouts. Stores are all closed. Service workers are sons and daughters too. So they have to be home, wherever and however far that may be.

Railway or highway, people are on their way. Where once again, like a line in Green Field,’ hearts are no longer on the roam”.
Tet reshuffles and resets the whole deck of cards. It gives us a reboot and reclaim that we are sons and daughters of so and so….as similarly illustrated in “Ngay Tro Ve” by our beloved Pham Duy (me lan mo, ra truoc ao, nam ao nguoi xua ngo trong giac mo”…

Another spin another shot at life could be heard at Lang Ong. Hope anew, nightmare at rest.

Memory of distant Tet is that of war. Today, peace and prosperity in a relentless pursuit of happiness, with an intensity unseen and unmatched. Its yearning to join and be connected to a larger world be it Trans-Pacific or Trans Continental is hard to miss.

No more an island, but an identity and a player on world stage.
Young workforce, young families with aspiration and perspiration.

Tet gives everyone a new start. Cutting across class, politics, and race.

I should by now have forgotten about distant Tet. Only a small fragment remains in the back of my mind. Of loving parents who nudged me on to life-long learning and the love for music and literature (Chopin, Maugham and Maupassant, Hemingway, etc..) and drilled “nhan hau” (paying forward) into me. I realized their struggle against inflation (caused by the in and outflux of the dollar against the dong). Always “luong ba coc ba dong”, with austerity we lived and not in luxury.

Years have passed. The theatre of war has moved on.
But being who we are, creatures of conflict and dysfunction, chances are more lives will be lost through war, anywhere at any given time.

But not here and not now. It’s Tet. We pray for peace and prosperity.
For the nation and the world. To all four corners of the Earth. For people who hurt us and people who help us. And I, with reluctance in self-designated role of memory keeper, cannot stay unaffected.  I am going to put some money in those li-xi envelopes to give out or at least, for reciprocity.

Keep paying forward, since I have received plenty. Tradition is something that has been tested time and again. It seems to be working, at least for the billions who recognize this day as sacred. \

Let hope and optimism reign in their hearts and mine.