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Social commentary + memoir = disaster
Dear friends,
Please send over some tips for holiday gifts!
The nearer the lunar new year is approaching, the more frustrated I am to curate decent gifts for the family’s juniors – younger cousins, nieces and nephews.
As much as I enjoy them mistaking me to be 22 year-old, the distance between us is undeniable.
I’ve avoided handing lucky money during Tết since I started earning a living and being able to support myself.
First, it personally feels outrageous to give away hard cash for the sake of gifting, especially when none of their families are struggling financially.
And second, I want to think of myself as a cool auntie/elder sister who makes them say “She knows me. She really knows me”.
In fact, I don’t know them at all.
Yes, we are friends on social media but it feels like I can never wipe the hazy glass separating us to see them clearly.
I can just buy them my favorite books like I used to but: 1. They are all teenagers now and (I suppose) developing their own tastes. 2. I don’t know any books in Vietnamese for young adults – Harry Potter, perhaps, how about Hunger Games? Giving away the first volume only is even more outrageous than cash.
I don’t know what they’re up to, what they’re really passionate about out of the molds of a small town’s public schools. What they dream about before they go to sleep – we’ve never talked about it.
I remember summer days well-spent at my auntie’s house with elder cousins, burying ourselves in Dragon Ball and filling our stomachs with cucumber salad. Parents were terribly busy so my cousins took care of me, making sure I wouldn’t opt for any stupid adventure, i.e: sailing my neighbor’s bamboo boat with some fellow youngsters (we did).
When I was a little bit grown-up, auntie let me tag along on her business trips, entering exotic places. We talked a lot during endless car rides, under the open sky on a military island or in a leaf hut by the Vietnam-Laos borderline.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. The village is now taken down, I guess.
One day, I opened my apartment door and saw a granny holding her grandchild. They looked at me unintentionally. I nodded at them and left.
Their door had been always open and they had been like that – waiting at the doorstep for a random conversation, for someone who was willing to exchange an exclamation on how gray Hanoi’s sky looked on that day.
It’s easier for us to resort to our cocoons than voluntarily spare a couple of minutes to pay attention to others, let alone wholeheartedly listening to a not-our-kid.
Life was not easier back then. I wonder how society, too big, neighborhood and family setting developed a net of care around a bunch of children.
When I was 11, my neighbor, who came back after ten years working in Moscow, presented me with a set of blue striped pajamas which I wore till it was torn. Her daughter, one year younger than me, who stayed back in Vietnam, asked for it using our landline.
She dropped by frequently to have dinner with us and waited for a phone call from her parents, four hours behind.
Till next time,
T.
P/S: I bought books for my juniors, eventually – those I like the English versions or know authors/translators personally.
This week’s top picks
Dan Wang said the 2022 letter would be the last. Then he sent the 2023 one.
Brilliant takes on third places by Mina Le
Spectacles wipes by Muji. I say it once and I say it twice: if you wear glasses, it helps you look at this world on a brighter side, literally.