When I saw Vietnamese women on motor bikes with helmets, masks, sunglasses, messenger pouch, gloves, and Ao-Dai, it brought back memories of Mom’s dress.
She was a school teacher, deeply committed to her role as mother, teacher, wife, daughter-in-law and friend (to other teachers who had graduated from the same French Lycee, which in her time, a big deal!).
Having spent her semi-orphan childhood in dormitory, she determined to give us a loving home, where home-cooked meals were regular stables.
Not a good cook, she tried her best. After all, she had a good assistant: me. Here, hold the live chicken legs while I slit its throat (all the while, she would pray for its soul to R.I.P.).
Then she would place the boiled chicken on the altar as offering to our ancestors on days that led up to the New Year (Tet).
I learned by observing, by helping (run to the market and get me ginger) and by cleaning.
And clean I did, on the cusp of New Year. Then Mom would put on her AoDai at mid-night to burn incense and pray to the four corners of the Earth. There were something very sacred counting down to the New Year.
It was inspirational enough for my parents to compose and read aloud a stanza to each other.
I meanwhile tried to finish up the last rinse for the floor after watering our little garden.
Back then, you could still hear occasional boom and bang of the firecrackers (Chinese enclave was known to spend a fortune on firecrackers, whose spent shells carpeted their lawn in red).
The whole region threw a big New Year party for both the living and the dead.
Years later, Ao Dai evolved in style (Madame Nhu), hence w/out collar.
But not for my Mom.
She stayed on with that teacher’s style all the way to America, where once again, she trekked snowy roads to be at the Temple on New Year’s Day. I knew then and even now, she had prayed for me, her youngest who has never traveled the traditional safe path.
I have taken the Road Less Traveled. The first few meters were the hardest as I saw her wave from the right rearview mirror.
This made it harder for me the whole way to Chicago, to grad school and to a life unknown.
Her picture has been on my altar. I wonder what gift I should buy to make a Tet offering she deserved (bean bun, bouquet and beer?) Banh chung, bong cuc va bia?
Perhaps the best way to honor her and keep her memory alive is to be the best that I can be.
I don’t want to look in the rearview mirror and see a long shadow of regrets. I realize now the only way she could have let me go was for further education. Of any one in my family, she would be the one who understood this inherent drive.
When seeing the younger versions of herself in scooters, masks, glasses and helmets, but still in Ao Dai, I was reminded of her, a woman who was so sacrificial to the point of being selfless, a role model in its absolute meaning and carried an existence that made our human family all the richer.
Si tu n’existais pas, I wouldn’t be here. As a keeper of fine and fond memories. Mom’s Ao Dai.
Thang Nguyen 555 