Gardening with the Seasons (Part I)

Gardening in the northern hemisphere, with seasons is completely unlike gardening in tropical Brisbane. Yes, you read right here, breaking news, paradigm shift, etc.

I have a very laissez faire approach to gardening. This is because (1) I grew up in Brisbane and (2) my father is the most amazing gardener ever and his approach always seemed very ... at ease.

Whenever I asked my father for gardening tips, he would look at me, shrug and say something helpful like, Are you watering it?

My mother spent her time discouraging me from gardening. On my visits home after I moved out, I would occassionally take cuttings of plants or uproot seedlings for my own garden. My mother would follow me around the garden telling me not to bother, that if I wanted whatever plant it was I was collecting (usually herbs), I could just come get them from her house. She also used to berate me if I went to the store to buy herbs (especially mint), when they grew in such lush abandon in my parents' garden. I often found myself trapped into giving answers that would permit my mother to berate me for one reason or another:

Um: What do you cook to eat?

Me: [shrug] Lots of things, pasta, rice, noodles.

Um: Do you cook Viet food?

[Here, it becomes a choose your own adventure]

Option 1: Say yes and demonstrate your goodness

Me: Yes, I made goi cuon just the other day.

Um: Oh. Where did you get the rau cai*? (*A miscellany of green - lettuce and herbs etc)

Me: I bought them from Hong Lan (local Asian grocery store).

Um: Why did you do that? What a waste of money! You could have come here for them.

Me: [splutter.]

Option 2: Say no and demonstrate your badness

Me: No, I just come home.

Um: Then you must not miss Viet food very much because you don't come here very much.

Me: Sometimes I go to my sister's house.

Um: She never calls me when you go there. I never see you.

Me: Yes you do.

Um: You could just move home again if you miss Viet food so much you have to visit your sister for it.

Me: [splutter.]

Option 3: Demonstrate how downright evil you truly are.

Me: No, I just come home.

Um: Then you must not miss Viet food very much because you don't come here very much.

Me: Sometimes I go to my sister's house. Or a restaurant.

Um: What?

Me: Er, sometimes I go to a restaurant.

Um: Why? What a waste of money! Just come here.

Me: Sometimes it's too late to come here. (My parents go to bed very early)

Um: What do you mean? What time are you eating?

Me: Er. Sometimes, quite late.

Um: How late?

Me: Er. 8. 9. (I do not have the faculty of lying to my mother to make my life easier.)

Um: That's not very good for you. What time do you go to sleep then?

Me: Um. 11. 12. Depends. (Well, I can lie a little)

Um: [splutter.]

That was a bit of a tangent. I miss my mum. I even miss her nagging that I used to find so aggravating. Now she's just sweet as all-get-out to me on the phone, because I am so far away. Wish she'd just nag me again.

I intended to tell you about how I planted bulbs. Next post, then.

Old Age

Everyone my age is bemoaning their age. I teeter ever closer towards being thirty. I'm not worried about how old I am but sometimes, something jolts me and I think about age, about time passing, about memory, and, as ever, about me.

My eldest nephew is 18. I did not do anything for his 18th. Did not send him a card nor even an email. Oops. In my defence, I thought he was turning 17 this year. Obviously, I am wrong. He finishes high school soon. He has a girlfriend. He's probably, you know, doing the dirty. We are friends on Facebook and I am loving how proud and subversive he is about his Asianness. He tags 'FOB' rolls (banh mi thit aka pork salad rolls; FOB stands for Fresh Off the Boat. I only learnt that a few years ago, from Sume). He is surrounded by Asian faces in his photos; I wonder, if I had as many close Asian friends when I was in high school as he has, would I have been as comfortable with my Asianness as he appears to be with his?

This does not make me feel old. It makes me feel the passing of time. Although, perhaps, I am just playing with words there. I don't feel any negativity, is all I am saying. When people say they feel old, they are using old as a perjorative. Yes, I feel my age (though I don't often behave it, so I am told). But I don't feel it as a bad thing. I feel the weight of history, when I discover my nephew is 18. Eighteen!?

I remember his birth, quite clearly. I remember the first few photos of him sent to me by his proud parents. I am astounded 18 years could have passed. I have to resist doing things such as sighing about what a cute baby he was (and he was) and remarking on how he was as small as a teddy bear, once (I have the photograph to prove it).

I lived with him and his parents for a short period of time when I was the age he is now: the age of asserting adulthood. That time feels both far away and not so long ago.

When I was his age, a newly discovered older cousin told me, sighingly, how he remembered me when I was as long as his forearm. My tart, witty response? I don't remember you from then.

When I was his age, I threatened his father, my eldest brother, that I would jump out of his moving car and then telephone our father if he took me to a function and left me there on my own. I did not want to go. My brother promised to remain at the function with me.

When I was his age, I lied to my parents about not crying when I phoned them on Tet to say hi and chuc mung nam moi and what are you doing and do you miss me and yes, it's cold in Melbourne.

Things have not changed so much. I still resort to snarky comments when I cannot think of how to make conversation with someone because they say something to which there is no response (and to pre-empt you: no, polite but ambiguous silence is just not an option (for me)). I still use guerilla tactics on my siblings when I don't want to do something they want me to do. And I still lie to my parents, partially through pride, partially through not wanting to let them know I'm sad or struggling or sick or ... anything negative, really. Ha. I ain't so grown up. But I must have, right, because ...

He's 18. Can you believe it?

Um & Soy Sauce

Recently, it was my mother's birthday. But I did not call her, because I forgot. Luckily (for me), my family don't really celebrate birthdays - at least, not on the actual day. Birthdays occur when they're celebrated, so when they're not celebrated, they don't occur. Make sense? I think so!

I call my mother Um. This is not a common thing to call one's mother, even if one is Vietnamese. It is more common to use Me or Ma, or even Vu, which really puts your mum in her place because vu means breast.

When I was young, I knew I was different from the Aboriginal, white, Greek, Italian and Lebanese kids at school, but I did not realise that I was different from other Vietnamese kids, until we talked about our mums. Or asked for soy sauce. These were the two greatest differentiating factors between me and other Viet kids. Perhaps there were a few others.

Um is pronounced like Oom. Or like mmm, but you start with your mouth open. It is sometimes used by Chinese/Viet kids as a title for distant older relatives, the same as Bac in more mainstream Viet. It's a term of distant filial respect. In my father's family, Um means mother. This is to avoid confusion with my father's mother, who was the supreme ruler of my father's (rather extensive) clan. Everyone called my paternal grandmother Ah Ma, and calling anyone else Ma or even Me would have been just too confusing. I guess. Now, my mother is Ma to all her grandkids and Um to all her kids, in-laws included (well, the ones who speak Viet at any rate).

I have a strong recollection of my first "but you're Viet and you're different from me!" experience. I would have been about 6 years old. My Um had sent me to the corner shop to buy some soy sauce. I knew the particular bottle like it was a close friend. (It kind of is, actually. Soy sauce, that is. Steamed white rice and soy sauce, now that's comfort food!) I wandered around and around the narrow aisles, looking for the particular bottle my mother preferred. Eventually, I gave up and went to the counter and asked where they kept yi tam. The woman behind the counter looked at me. There was another woman with a young girl at the counter. The young girl was about my age and she looked over at me like I was some strange specimen, speaking another language.

The woman behind the counter asked me what I wanted and I repeated, yi tam. The other woman said, I think she's Uncle #5*'s daughter. She's after si dau. Si dau is the more common term for soy sauce, but I did not know that at the time. I said (because it was true), I don't know what si dau is. I want yi tam. The other woman's daughter looked at me aghast. You don't know what si dau is? I said to her, No. Why should I? The other woman went and got me a bottle of soy sauce - it was just the bottle I was after. The daughter said, That's si dau. And smartarse me said, No it's not. It's yi tam. We both just looked at each. I thought the girl was very stupid. She must have thought the same of me.

(*Uncle #5 (Bac Nam) is what everyone who knew my dad, except people who were actually related to him, called him. Actual relatives called him by whatever the family relationship was. He was not any Viet person in Australia's fifth uncle, because very few of his extended family emigrated from Viet Nam.)

I took that bottle of yi tam home and showed it to my family and told my story about how strange the people were in the corner store. Um laughed and laughed. So did most of my older siblings. Ba too. Everyone laughed at me, and I honestly had no idea why. I learned, shortly afterwards, a salty lesson in diversity.

Um told me all the different names for yi tam and I was astounded. In the north, they tend to call it nuoc tuong (which is rather confusing because it literally translates as sauce water, or if you're being pedantic, water sauce). Some call it si ieu and some si dau. Me? It's yi tam and nothing else (although I will no think you're stupid if you call it si dau. Swear.)

NT and Wandering Chopsticks both expressed curiousity about why I call my mother Um. I'm no good at being brief in my answers, so this is my answer. I am also no good at staying on topic.

Now it really *is* the New Year.

It never feels like a new year until Tet arrives, and speeds away again. Chuc Mung Nam Moi to all my friends out there, the lurkers (I know you're there!), the folks who stumble here looking for banh canh recipes (sorry, kids), and the randoms who post such intriguing comments as this informative snippet on my post about the ao dai:-

I like to wear comfortable dresses which I like to buy from Brooks Brothers and Old Navy stores through couponalbum.com

Good for you, buddy. I decided not to delete the comment. When I first read it, I was very confused. Then I giggled. Ms Couponalbum.com, you amuse me for the left-fielded-ness of your comment. If we were having a conversation, I would have raised my eyebrow at you. But I am not fooled. I have not visited those websites.

This morning, I telephoned my family to wish them Chuc Mung Nam Moi. I had received, through my email, a notice for all and sundry to descend on my parents for the usual Tet festivities (food, bau cua ca cop, food, other card games, more food). Sadly, due to the lengthy commute, I had to decline. I have been trying to telephone my parents for the last few days to have our usual chat (time in our respective locales, weather, health, cost of phone call, hang-up), but without success.

I telephoned from my mobile, at work. 10am my time, 8pm theirs.

My brother answers the phone. "Hey O," he says, completely unsurprised to hear from me. "Hey bro," I reply, as if I don't miss him madly and as if his brief, prosaic emails to me don't bring tears to my eyes. "Happy New Year!" We both say at the same time. And then, because we have been brought up terribly politely, "Huh? What?" also at the same time. I give up on this game first, "Is everybody there?" I ask. "Yep," he replies, "It's really noisy." I laugh. I can hear in the background all my nieces and nephews squealing away, and talking over the top of each other. "Who's winning?" I ask my bro. "Grump is. She put some money on bau and it came up triples!" "What's happening now?" "Ba's trying to teach them cat te." "Who's he teaching?" "All the little ones: SpiderBoy, Grump, Princess, MyGirl."

Cat te (I have no idea if that is the correct spelling) is my father's favourite card game. I do not remember when he taught me; it seems as if I have always known how to play. Like riding a bike, I don't ever expect to forget. The eldest of the little ones listed above is 5. Cat te involves six cards, and playing tricks by suits, and a pot of money in the middle, called the 'heo' (pig), which is collected by the winner. It is a difficult game to describe, and requires demonstration. I like it for its flourish at the end game. I cannot imagine any of the little ones grasping the idea of the game. It's difficult enough teaching them the rules of 'catch'. Ba is an impatient man, but unnervingly patient when it comes to kids and card games.

My mother comes onto the phone. We deal with the important things first: (Are you well? Yes I'm well. What's the time there? Morning, and you? Night. How's the weather? The weather's sunny, and you? Oh it's been raining here non-stop!) I tell her that I have been trying to call, without success. She tells me that, due to the incessant rain*, the phone line has been playing up. The only way to get her is to ring my parents' mobile, or to ring my brother's mobile who will then ring her and tell her to ring whoever rang him. I have no idea how ringing my brother is an efficient way of getting onto my parents, but Um seems to think it is. I don't bother trying to get her to explain. I wish her a happy new year, and she wishes the same to me and my partner. Then she says something like, "Oh, I think that I... Old man, talk to your daughter," and the phone is handed to my father. I assume she has gone off to check how some food is going, but I cannot say for sure. I have the same brief conversation with my father.

*Yay! Brisbane, Rain. Yay!

I can hear my siblings in the background, and distinguishable voices float out at me. That's the Big Boss laughing, and the Accountant telling a story. I can hear the little ones clamouring for my father's attention. I can tell my father is distracted from our conversation as the card game is still going. I say goodbye, as I am at work and shouting Vietnamese in my office. It's not billable.

After I hang up, I sit still for a while, and stare out the window, re-composing Lawyer Oanh, as opposed to Daughter Oanh. I smile at the clear picture I have of my family in my parents' living room, seated on the ground playing cards, and scrambling noisily over each other whenever more drinks, more food or trips to the bathroom are required. I wish I was there. Suddenly, I begin to cry.

Unfortunately, my tears roughly coincide with a knock on my door, and I have barely any time to become Lawyer Oanh when The Boss walks in. I do not initially look up at him, but I know I will have to. I am one of those people who, when they cry, end up with red splotches all over their face. I still have tear tracks on my cheeks, my eyes are all red and swollen, my nose is running, and even my forehead is splotchy. I just know.

I take a deep breath and look up at him. The look on his face almost makes me laugh; he was just about to say a cheery hello, but has been arrested by my tear sodden face. I manage to hiccup out, "I'm okay. I just rang my family for New Year. I'll be fine in 10. Can I come see you then?" "Of course, of course," he says backing out, "Everything's really okay?" "Everything's really okay, Boss. I just miss them because it's the New Year." He looks at me oddly, and does not leave my office.

This means I have to compose myself in front of him. How aggravating. I take a deep breath, take my glasses off and rub furiously at my eyes. I put my glasses back on. I normalise the conversation for him: "Any new claims, today?" "No," he says, "The mail's pretty boring, actually." I can tell he is relieved and ready to pretend he did not glimpse non-Lawyer Oanh.

Then he says,"The New Year?" I smile at him. "Yes. It's the Lunar New Year." He still looks uncertain. Inwardly, I sigh. "Chinese New Year. But the Vietnamese have it too, and we call it Tet, or the Lunar New Year. I'd rather not call it Chinese New Year. Because I'm not Chinese."

Y'all have a good one.

More Randomness (Eight more, to be exact)

Hedgehog has tagged me to do an 8 Random Things meme.

The 8 Random Things meme has a rules list. I don't like rules, especially the kind that suggest chain lettering. I guess that's what memes are: chain blogging. Anyway, I'll post the rules (cribbed from Hedgehog) but I'm not abiding by the rules. So there.

"Rules:
Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, you must tag and link to 8 other people, visit their sites, and leave a comment letting them know they’ve been tagged."

Seeing that eight is the number of children in my family, I am going to tell you a random thing about each of them in order of seniority.

1. My eldest brother is the shining child of the family: a first born, a boy and born in the year of the Dragon. All things must go well for this brother, or else he betrays his lucky birth. Thus far, all things have been going pretty well for him. My eldest bro and I bookend our family well: he can do, and has never done, any wrong. I have been rebellious and troublesome since before I could even speak. My father's affectionate term for my mother is: Mother of [my eldest brother's name]. In contrast, my mother's term of annoyance for my father is: Father of Oanh.

2. Next in line is the Black Belt. The Black Belt is born in the same creature year as me (I baulk from typing Chinese Zodiac but I cannot think what else to call it. In Vietnamese, I would say he was born in the same year as me, but that suggests he is my twin.) This means that he is exactly twelve years older than I am. What else that might mean, I do not know.

3. Finally, a girl! I have great admiration for my eldest sis. She brought me up, is a wonderful mother and amazing cook, and she sure knows her own mind. Much like all the women in my family, actually. But eldest sis has been the one who has forged all the paths for the rest of us. By the time my parents got to me, they were too worn to fight my stubbornness.

4. Another girl! Next sister along is the most independent. She lived for a long time with my grandmother and grandfather, rather than our parents. She always held an aura of mystery for me, when I was young.

5. Another girl? This sister was the tomboy of the family. She and sister above pushed my uncle into the river. And held him there. When I was in primary school, it was her task to walk me from home to school and safely back again. She was impatient with my drifting, meandering ways, and my much shorter legs. She often arrived home without me and would toss her head disdainfully when my parents asked after me.

6. What? Another girl? Although this sister was closest to me in age, she felt the furthest away. She always seemed so much more mature than me. I put it down to her being girly; she, to me being pigheaded. I'm right, of course. After adolescence, however, we became, and have remained, quite close.

7. My brother breaks the chain: one more girl and a row and we would have all been princesses. Instead, he is spoiled rotten. This is very lucky for me. I would have made a crap princess.

8. And along comes me. You already know all about me.

I ain't tagging nobody. And no rules are gonna make me, either.

Also, I am going to be absent awhile (I know I've been pretty absent for ages now. Sorry.) I will be home, and filling my guts with my family's cooking: goi cuon, pho, banh xeo, bun nuouc leo, banh canh, crabs, and fabulous Brisbane food of all cuisines!

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Autumn Leaves

English summers are much like Brisbane winters: the sun is bright, the skies are crisp blue and the temperature is mild (in the mid teens Celsius; I haven't a clue Fahrenheit). And both are short-lived. I do love Brisbane winters.

In a few days, it will be autumn here. I am looking forward to autumn, having never experienced it before. My sisters’ favourite poem/song when we were younger was ‘mu thu la bay’ (In Autumn, the Leaves Blow). It is an epic poem about a young, beautiful girl who falls in love with her tutor. He has to leave her in the autumn. Like all good Viet poems, he goes off to war and dies. He never comes back for her, and in autumn, with the leaves falling off trees and blowing around her, she remembers him. Autumn is a poignant and nostalgic season.

Intellectually, I understand this and I recognise the symbolism. Viscerally, emotionally, the images of autumn do not evoke much response in me.

In my formative years, I read the autobiography of Jill Ker Conway (The Road to Coorain and True North). I mentioned it in a book meme. I loved how the landscape and environment grounded and influenced Jill Ker Conway's life and writing. I also interrelate with my environment; I have always personalised my living and working space, and find my moods affected by weather.

My lack of understanding of the English landscape, flowers and plants somewhat disorientates me, and at the same time reminds me that I have to learn, rather than refer to innate knowledge. I am eternally curious about berries and fruits and plants. When we walk in the countryside, I pick and squish and smell and peer. My partner continues on ahead and I chase him every few metres: I linger as something catches my eye, then I run to catch up. I was so happy to find acorns, in their cups, at the height of summer. I had never before seen an actual acorn - the symbol of old England is the gnarled and majestic oak - and the acorn speaks of mysterious connections. I am finding my place in this landscape of soft grass, nettle and acorns.

From early childhood, I wondered how my father related to the Australian environment and the ways in which it was different to Viet Nam. Of all my father's children, I have the vaguest memory of him as a vibrant man. For more than half my life, my father has been ill. But I can call to mind images of my father striding along a beach, or casting out a net and hauling it in with regular, assured movements, or the graceful swing of his arm as he cuts up fish, or the way his huge hands cup fluffy baby chicks, the same hands that will wring their necks in a few months' time. It was wonderful to see my father in Viet Nam, in land that he knew innately. He rested, elbow on the prow of our long tail speed boat, and he looked out at the Mekong. He looked like that land owned him, and he knew its ways. He squinted at the sky and said: It won't rain tomorrow and everyone - local Viet and Viet Kieu alike - believed him. And he was right. I can't describe how much Ba belonged to the Delta area, how he seemed to stand more erect and the pride of the land swelled around him. He shrunk again in Sai Gon, and then back home in Brisbane. But I got a meagre glimpse of who my father was before he came to Australia and I knew that the landscape infects my father, too.

*****

The leaves outside my office window are turning yellow and dropping off. I watch them curiously, and a little nervously because I want them to turn yellow, and then red, and then brown, and then (and only then) may they drop off. They don't mean much to me, these autumn leaves. But I am in a phase of transition now and I wonder if I will attach to autumn the fluttering emotions that currently affects how my identity is swilling into formation here.

Made in Viet Nam

Today I am wearing all clothes made in Viet Nam (with the exception of underwear, socks and shoes). My t-shirt, which I've decided is fancy enough for work, is a turquoise North Face t-shirt and it has a label "Made in Viet Nam." My suit was tailor made for me in Hoi An.

I and my sisters had a ball getting clothes tailor made for us. The lovely tailor was surprised to discover we were sisters; the three of us are a sample of the different-ness of the girls in my family. Though I am youngest and brought up on nutritious Aussie food (har har), I am also shortest, and darkest, with a mop of unstyled long black hair usually pulled back and away from my face in a pony tail, although wisps escape to pester me and dismay my otherwise tidy appearance. My eldest sister is willowy slender with lustrous black hair cut in a becomingly jagged way. My other traveling sister has quite pale skin and light brown hair, also layer-cut as is the fashion.

I am a bit casual about my appearance, and even more so when traveling. My two sisters are much more coiffed and presented. It took us a couple of hours to get ready in the morning: I showered first and was ready in about 15 minutes: I put on one of the three quick-dry trousers I had packed and whichever t-shirt came to hand. Each of my sisters spent what felt like a lifetime getting ready, while I itched to go exploring. I found myself doing stretches and exercises to kill the time while I listened to the shower, then the hair-dryer, then each of my sisters crossing the other's path back and forth from bed to bathroom.

It was quite a revelation for me. I am separated from my sisters in the family by a brother. Until we were teenagers, I shared a bedroom with my brother. Until my brother got embarrassed by his younger sister hanging around, I spent most of my play-time with him. I briefly shared a bedroom with my sister but she could not stand my untidiness and sleep-talking. One of my elder siblings (I can't remember which) saved her by marrying and moving out: then she and I got our own bedrooms. I was about 12, my sister about 15.

Our travel photos are perfectly illustrative of our differing styles. Like good Viet-Kieu tourists, we took a photo of all of us outside every monument we visited. In most of the photos, I am in exactly the same outfit (especially in Ha Noi, where it was cold, so I am in jeans and the one jumper that I brought with me; and in Hue, where it was raining, so I am in jeans and my red raincoat). Each of my sisters, however, were in different outfits, in different pictures. I trawled the thousands of pictures we three had taken: only rarely are my sisters wearing the same clothes twice. Although, one of my sisters took greatly to an outfit made for her in Hoi An and wore it quite a few times.

When we got to Hoi An, we went hunting for a good tailor. The decision of which tailor was made randomly, I think, and based upon who was nicest to us. The tailor we chose was so nice that her brother drove us to a restaurant for dinner, where I forgot that I was not supposed to give money away and promptly gave some to a young girl who asked and we were then accosted by a whole bunch of kids, one of whom became tearful when I said I had run out of coins (it was true, I had no more coins). The restaurant proprietor shooed the kids away, and my sisters and the proprietor looked at me very disapprovingly. I looked ashamed, and felt a bit silly, and then secretly pleased because I'd fallen for a trick that was written in the Lonely Planet Guide! I'm a sucker like so many other people, which makes me kinda in a book!

We spent about three hours at the tailors, getting measured up and choosing fabrics. I was a great disappointment to the tailor. I wanted three trouser suits in conservative fabrics (black pinstripe, navy-ish and beige-ish) with conservative cuts. I wanted one matching conservative dress and one matching conservative, slightly above-the-knee skirt.

The tailor kept trying to persuade me towards a more fashionable cut, a more revealing skirt, or another item that was funky and young. In the end, she chose to cut my clothes rather tightly, and slit the dress either side so that it was halfway up my thighs. I asked her to let out one of the trousers, and had every intention of asking her to let out the others as well, but her brother rushed my trousers to their factory out of town, and rushed it back again in minutes. I felt bad so I just took the other trousers as they were. I'm yet to wear the dress, although the suits are worn in random rotation every day of the working week.

Conversations with my parents

Conversations with my parents are not especially long.

Prior to leaving Brisbane, my father fell sick again. I ditched appointments and farewell lunches with friends to sit in hospital with him, listening to him regaling me with stories of his childhood.

Many years ago when Ba fell very sick the first time, and we had not been talking for ages because of what he perceived to be my wayward behaviour (I moved out of home before I was married - gasp!), I sat in hospital with him until the wee hours, when the nurses would regretfully kick me out. Some of his hospital time coincided with my exams, so I took my books into his hospital room and sat beside him, studying my exciting law texts while he slept. Once, he shook me awake - I had slumped over my text books, resting on his tea tray - and told me to go home. His first illness was the turning of our relationship. I liked being in the hospital with him because it was one of the few ways I could express that I was a dutiful daughter, even though my values were not his. We did not talk much, initially. Then I began to ask questions about his life in Viet Nam, questions I'd never really asked before. He would talk and talk at me, but only when we were in the hospital room together. I would go home and scribble frantic notes.

The most recent bout of hospital time, I sat listening to him tell me about how much he liked school when he was younger. He paused and said: When you are in England, you must telephone your Um & me every three weeks. Promise? I was bemused by the precision of the instruction, and said: Yes, okay. Every three weeks.

I have not quite kept the every three week rule: I am a bit absent-minded and time slips away from me.

My first conversation with my parents was very brief.

Me: Hello Um. It's me Oanh. (Actually what I say is: it's your child. I don't always say my name, which seems silly given how many children my parents have, but they always know it's me. I wonder what my siblings say to identify themselves?)
Um: Is that you, child? [aside] Old Man! Your daughter is on the phone!
Me: Yes.
Ba: Oanh?
Me: Yes. Are you well? (not knowing who I am speaking to, anymore.)
Ba: What time is it there?
Me: (I tell them the time). What about you? What time is it there?
Ba: (He tells me the time. I don't tell them that I have worked it out). Are you cold? Is it cold there?
Me: Yes. It's cold. Are you well?
Ba: Where are you calling from? A phone box?
Me: Yes. We are still staying in a hotel.
Ba: Well, this phone call must be costing you a lot of money. Are you well?
Me: Yes. Don't worry about it. It is not costing very much at all. And you? Are you well?
Ba: Yes. I am well. Your Um is also well. Is there anything else? Are you okay? Your partner, is he okay?
Me: Yes.
Um: I am well. Are you cold?
Me: No. Not really. It is cold here.
Ba: Well, goodbye then. Call again.

The phone dies before I even say goodbye. I stand shocked in the phone box, staring at the receiver in my hand.

My next three conversations with my parents follow exactly this pattern. I find it somewhat funny. I never get the opportunity to tell my parents I miss them (in Vietnamese, the word for miss is the same as the word for remember) or that I love them. I am not even sure exactly what words I should use to tell my parents I love them in Vietnamese. I have never told them. This worries me, because I am so far away now. I feel I should tell them, but I don't know how.

I had the following conversation with one of my nieces, who has previously appeared as Grump on this blog. She is starting to talk in complete sentences.

Me: Hi Grump! How are you.
Grump: Good. I ate pasta today, so I get to have some special (dessert).
Me: Hey, lucky you! Do you miss/remember me?
Grump: No. Oh. Mummy is telling me to say yes. Should I say yes?
Me: [laughing] No. You don't have to miss/remember me. What did you do today?
Grump: Well, I was playing with my cousin until Mummy told me to come talk to you.
Me: Oh. Well, why don't you go play with your cousin again?
Grump: Okay. Bye!

My family do not waste time on sentiment.

My mother is currently grilling me on how I obtain Vietnamese groceries. She lists what the family have been eating, and how she remembers me at every meal, particularly when she cooks my favourite dishes. We had crab the other day, she says. We all missed you. Then she says, This weekend, I am cooking banh xeo. You like to eat banh xeo so much. We will remember you.

I had the longest telephone conversation with my parents, ever, this morning: about ten minutes. The ritual is completed first: time, weather, health. I half expect my father to harangue my mother to hang up but I get in first and tell them that we have a telephone deal where it only costs me about six Australian cents per minute of chatter with them. I then plough on and tell them that I hope my sister is showing them my photos, which I have posted to a website. My mother says no. Then she remembers something: Your sister says you have been walking a lot. I have to agree to this. I do walk a lot. My mother tells me not to. I try to tell her that I am walking for fun, but then I just let her lecture me and I make listening noises. She then tells me about her weekend, how great Bunnings [a hardware / homewares store] is. I listen.

Then she says: Is that all? Do you want to say anything else? Here's my chance! I think about which words to use, how to tell her I love her without sounding too formal, or ponderous. No? Okay, call again. Bye. And she has hung up, and I have missed my opportunity.

In another three weeks, I shall try again.

Home Sick

I miss many things about Brisbane, my family being number one on that list. Inextricably linked with missing my family, I miss the food: my family's cooking, the proliferation of fabulous food places near my home, and the Green Market every Saturday.

I have been ill last few days. Given that we arrived in UK in the middle of winter and this is my first major flu-like illness, I've done quite well. But I woke one morning with the most horrific sore throat: each time I swallowed, it felt as if I was choking on razor blades. Behind my right ear, some cruel pixie was hammering away; all my muscles had liquified but, inexplicably, my joints had become rock-hard.

Everything I ate that day was like cardboard; chewing was a chore and swallowing was distinctly unpleasant. When the food hit my belly, I felt queasy. For lunch I had a salad baguette, but the cursed sandwich-maker drowned my salad in mayonnaise. It was horrid. I passed the rest of my day in a moochy fuzz, which took my workmates aback as I am usually cheerful. I got two bad phonecalls in the late afternoon: one of which effectively destroyed my client's case; the other intimated that the next day would be a flurry of frantic activity in which I would need all my wits about me. I put the receiver down and put my head in my hands, tears pooling just behind my eyes (I suck at being sick).

The best way to deal with feeling so bad is to mock oneself; I wailed: I want my mum! My workmate looked over at me. Oh! she said. What brough that on?

When I am sick, I want to eat chao. Only one person makes it better than my mum does, and that's my eldest sister. When I was a wee thing, I often came home from school all scraped up - I got into a lot of fights. Occassionally, the whole household (me included) had to pull an all nighter to meet a clothes deadline (we were a home sweat shop). My eldest sister would cook up a pot of chao thit (meat congee) which we ate to keep us going, and so that Um did not have to cook a proper dinner.

I can recall quite clearly a particular occassion when I arrived after a rather unpleasant walk home and being told that I would have to neatly fold the mountain of cotton t-shirts in the living room. I was very good at looking pouty when younger (I still do a good line in pouts these days), so when my bottom lip stuck out and my eyes got all mournful, my eldest sis said: There's chao thit in the kitchen. Get some and then come help.

I sat myself down at our octagonal dining table with a large bowl of chao and a porcelain spoon. The rice had been cooking all day and was a soft gelatinous mess intermingled with pinky grey gems of pork mince and dark green rectangles of thorny cilantro, slices of spring onions and sprigs of leafy coriander were liberally sprinkled on top. I added pepper, chilli and soy sauce as I went. Each spoonful revived me. I said to my sister, who was working nearby: I don't know what you put in this. It's like medicine. Um lovingly turned my words into a family anecdote: it is about her appreciative youngest daughter, and her skilled eldest one.

That is still my iconic chao memory. Every chao I eat now is an echo of that perfect bowl: little me at a table, legs swinging and my petty woes peeling away from me as each spoonful of hot, nourishing mushy rice slides down my throat, filling my belly with comfort and love. If anyone got sick, chao started simmering alongisde our usual dinner. We also had chao as late night suppers. There were many video nights that my siblings and I had when we were in our teens, which comprised chao in between b-grade horror movies and Hong Kong martial arts flicks. We got fancy with our late night chao: it became chicken chao, fish chao, crab chao - anything we could think of to add to the pot got thrown in. Some worked and became family standards; some were salutary lessons in mixing flavours.

None of the chao that I cook ever tastes as good as Um's or my eldest sister's, but it's what I make for myself when I'm feeling poorly. The best chao is made with leftover rice. Because I do not eat rice everyday, I have to make chao from scratch*; I'm too impatient for it to turn out the mushy consistency I like, and that is so wonderful on sore throats. Often, I make a clear soup instead - but it's chao that I really want, and chao that will heal me.

* There's a Viet word for uncooked rice, that distinguishes it from cooked rice. I am not sure there is an English equivalent.

Tet - been & gone.

Tet has been and gone this year, and I spent it without my family. The very first time I have done this in all my years on earth.

There was one Tet that I spent with only my eldest brother, when I moved to Melbourne. I was miserable. I rang my mother and father to say "chuc mung nam moi" and started crying. Given that I had fought so hard for the scrap of independence that moving to Melbourne meant to me, I lied when my mother asked if I was okay: "Yes, I just have a cold because the weather here has been changing all over the place." (cue Crowded House’s Four Seasons in One Day).

My brother took me to his wife’s family for Tet lunch and festivities. Although I had previously enjoyed their company, I did not on that day. And I really did not want to play cards with them, or roll the dice on bo cua ca cop game. It was all reminder of what I should have been doing with my real loved ones – not this fake family.

This year, far away from home, I telephoned my parents at midnight my time and 10am their time, to say "chuc mung nam moi" and Ba responded with a hesitant "happy new year". It was very sweet of him to make a nod towards my distance from my family and culture by saying those words in English. Um was in high spirits because the family were coming over, banh chung had been steamed all day and a feast was to be had. Our Tet conversations, like most of our conversations, lasted no more than 5 minutes – me shivering in a telephone booth with my partner beside me and Um & Ba sweating together with the phone to their ears (I can picture it because that’s what they do when they ring someone in Viet Nam and because they were talking over the top of each other at me).

Then I went home and went to sleep.

We had no Tet festivities because it was only the two of us, and we were still in transition at that stage. But I was not sad, and I am not entirely sure why. Possibly because I did not speak to any of my nieces or nephews, who have a remarkable ability to make me cry by saying such charming things as: "Are you coming to mum’s house next weekend?" and then asking "Why?" when I say no, or demanding to know why they have not seen me for a while, or worse still, being quiet because they are shy of me.

Does this mean I will be in transition all year, but stoic about it?

Tseen over at Banana Lounge put on a fabulous feast for her loved ones for her new year. I wish I could say our family feasts look like this, but they are never this organised or beautifully laid out. The food is half eaten before it even hits the table. But I like the chaos, and I miss it too.

I also enjoyed reading how Tet celebrations are held by diverse folk, over at Nha.* I am looking forward to initiating new traditions, and possibly having a belated Tet feast (I can hear your gasps of shocked horror and I defy you all) when I feel more settled (ie. when I have friends - cue violin music). Oh, and I need more crockery, too.

* thanks to Sume for directing me there!

White Wash

I am slowly turning white.

Yesterday, I looked down at my belly while sitting on the toilet and there was a patch of white, roughly 1 cm squared, to the left of my navel. I scrubbed at it. It peeled away like old paint.

"Must have been toothpaste," I thought. "Will be more careful in future."

Throughout yesterday, I found patches of white all over me. Some of it was on my clothes, but most of it was on my orange-toned skin. I was perplexed. When I do my teeth of a morning, I can be vigorous. I am often running late for walking to work. But I certainly was not wantonly flicking toothpaste all over the bathroom and myself. Especially as I was dressed and ready for work (sort of).

Today, I was more careful in the bathroom. As I sat at work - reading, typing and surfing the net (I mean researching) - I notice a streak of white on my left forearm. As I turn my arm around, I see little spots of white. Whatever I have done now, I can't scrape these off so easily.

There are the tiniest spots on my right arm, too. I wonder if it's permanent, if it will spread.

People have described my skin tone as 'olive' and I cannot see how this is correct. No olive I have ever seen has been a kinda browny orange, with streaks of blue and some blotches of red. Olives are either green or a purple-tinted black.

Some have described me as yellow, but I am sure that my skin colour looks nothing like a banana, or the sun as drawn and coloured by children. And I don't think they were referring to my courage (or its lack).

I think that I am definitely orange(ish). Or brown. Or brown with an orange base. Or orangey brown. Anyway, my skin is definitely dark(ish) South East Asian coloured. I am not fair like most of my sisters. I am of fishing stock, and my colour pigment is there to protect me so that I can spend most days sorting through the fish that my father, brothers and cousins have hauled in. I was obviously meant to remain in Viet Nam, and live the fishing life. Or failing that, perhaps the farming life. My fairer sisters were destined for distant shores, less physical labour type lives. Oddly enough, my parents took all of us over with nary a thought for what our skin colour indicated we were fated to become.

These days, of course, I sit inside an office for much of the sunlight hours. The sun slants in through my office window (yes, I've got the window seat) but it is barely enough to warm me, let alone to justify my skin colour. Its greatest effect is in the afternoon, when it glares so horridly from the reflection of the other huge glass covered buildings that I am forced to close my blinds.

My mother wastes precious breaths telling me to stay out of the sun. I do not waste any breath telling her that I don't actually spend much time in the sun anymore. As a child I was often out in the yard, climbing trees and chasing after frogs (in winter) and lizards (in summer). I was a dark brown back then, and I would get darker as the days got warmer. Um often stuck her head out the back door and hollered for me to come inside. I always pretended not to hear her.

When I was in school and playing sport, Um always berated me for the colour my skin would become, darker and darker as the netball season drew to its exciting conclusion (we were never in the finals, but always made it to at least the quarter finals).

I tried to tell my mother that my skin tone was not my fault! I had no conscious control over what colour my skin was. If I was feeling especially rebellious I would tell her that it was HER fault, or perhaps my father's, if I was not beautiful rich-person white but dirty peasant brown. She would retort with the example of my sisters, very few of whom played sport or chased lizards and frogs. I would scowl.

Years inside an office and I might, after all, be turning white. My skin tone is still orangey-brown, brownish, orange-based etc. But I keep discovering these patches of flaky white.

My mother would be so pleased.

ooh - Pho!

Pho is iconic Viet food. There are other dishes that speak strongly to me of home & family (I will write of these eventually) but pho is ubiquitous, and accessible. And delicious.

I have fond memories of pho on weekend mornings. A pho weekend was time off for Um. Um did not cook pho very often - it was not one of our family specialties. Pho weekends always felt festive. Every one of the kids had to help out more than usual because Um made pho so she did not have to spend all day at the stove. Sometimes she would disappear for the rest of the day. We were a little giddy with the freedom to eat whenever and how much we liked, and to clean up as we went rather than watch the dishes pile up to be a mountain of washing after the meal. Pho is best prepared the day before. The broth would bubble away in our largest saucepan for hours and hours, filling our home with the delicious smell of burnt onion, star anise and beef. Um always made sure to have enough for every one of her greedy kids to have at least two bowls per meal, plus enough for any guest who might drop in - welcome but unexpected.

Pho weekends were wonderful. Overnight, the gastric juices would be busily working away and I would wake delightedly anticipating pho for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. And every meal in between too.

Ba would have collected all the necessary herbs (basil, perennial coriander, mint) from our garden and I, and some of my sisters, would wash and pluck the herbs, placing them into large tubs to be collected and added to our bowls of pho. Someone would slice onions and chives. We would collect fresh bird eye chillies from the garden, slicing some and leaving others whole. These would be arranged into little bowls: one for whole chillies, one for chopped ones. The pre-prepared chilli sauce (a devilish blend of garlic, salt and chillies of which I have never been able to eat more than a teaspoonful in any of my meals) would be taken out of the fridge and placed on the kitchen table. Someone would slice lemons and we would all argue about how best to slice them: along their length, across their middle or into random cubed shapes.

The task I liked least was washing the bean sprouts, and yet, I like eating them so much! Um was very particular with bean sprouts. She used to grow her own in the laundry sink with rags of fabric, but after a while this became too troublesome, she too tired to do so. Home made bean sprouts went the way of home made tofu: a distant childhood memory. Um bought bean sprouts from the local grocer: large bags of these thin white stalks with a yellow nodding head. Bean sprouts from the grocer were never fresh enough for my mother. She would turn them over and over, and then give them to me to "sort out". I hated sitting there with two tubs full of water: one for the unsorted sprouts and one for the sorted sprouts. I would dip a hand into the unsorted sprouts and extract a handful of limp stalks. I had to remove the overly limp stalks, any blackened heads and all trailing strings. I then dumped the sprouts into the sorted tub. Invariably I would do a bad job and Um would lean over my tub of sorted sprouts and bring me another tub of water: the sorted sprouts need to be sorted again. Um knows I do such a bad job that these days, she never asks me to sort the bean sprouts.

In the meantime (as I am bent, huddled and grumpy over the beansprouts), one of my sisters would have cooked up the pho noodles: flat, thick rice noodles. Pho refers to the meal, the broth and the noodles themselves. Sometimes we could get fresh noodles from the grocer (you are more likely to be able to, these days) and sometimes they were dried packet noodles. If fresh noodles, they needed a good sniffing to make sure that they were truly fresh (a sour smell indicated that they were not) and then the noodles were dunked into freshly boiled water to be 're-freshed'. If dried noodles, they needed cooking in vigorously boiling water until they change from murkily diaphonous into pristinely white.

Ba would be somewhere else slicing different bits of beef into thin pieces, halving beef-balls (processed frozen beef that must be terribly bad for you and yet are unaccountably scrumptious) and separating stomach lining from fat (I never ate these). Ba would also be peeling prawns: an unusual addition to pho but one of my sisters did not eat any beef (although she had no qualms eating the beef broth!).

Thus a pho-assembly line would be formed: mountains of noodles in colanders; plucked sprouts in large bowls; delightful sprigs of fresh herbs, sliced onions and chives on plates; and platters of red slices of beef, round grey beef-balls, yellow stomach lining and lucent fat. The prawns had their own separate plate for my beef-averse sister. Grabbing a large bowl, you would place first a decent handful of noodles, covered in onions, sprouts and herbs and then a selection of beef. You then spoon boiling broth all over the noodles; I like to spoon a bowl-full of broth, and then spoon some out and spoon more in to really cook the beef. I then add more herbs and sprouts (I like some cooked and some crunchy). You then go to the table to add chilli (whole, sliced or sauce), squeeze some lemon juice and add some hoi sin sauce to your broth. You start eating - and you don't have to wait for the eldest to sit down and pick up their chopsticks before you start.

When I was just becoming a teenager, I and my brother (who is two years older than me) ate a lot for our apparently slender bodies. We were both active kids and both participated in a lot of sports at school. I was a long distance runner and a netball player. He was a soccer star and volleyball king. (He still is. I am not.) We would come home from school ravenous. When we arrived home, we barely called out "Um, Ba, we're home!" before compiling meals out of breakfast and lunch leftovers, cooking up some instant noodles as the base and then scoffing everything down before our dinner meal no more than two hours later. Whenever I think on how much I used to eat as a teenager, I am amazed. I am sure that, each day, I must have eaten at least half my body weight in food. Okay, that's an exaggeration. Perhaps only a quarter of my body weight.

There was one particular pho weekend where we had guests regularly dropping by. To be polite (and possibly also because I was/am such a glutton), I would fill up a bowl of pho and sit myself down with the guests to eat too. I found myself eating seven bowls of pho before 11am. Ah, the heady days of sporty, fast metabolism youth.

Um does not cook pho anymore. We have all left home now, so she does not need those days off. Rather, one of my brothers-in-law is the pho cook. I have never cooked pho for myself. If I want pho, I either go out to a Viet restaurant in West End, Darra or Sunnybank, or phone my sister to ask when her husband is next cooking pho. Next year, when I will no longer be in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, I might have to learn how to cook pho for myself!

I am intrigued by people who quest for "the perfect bowl of pho" or "authentic pho". There are a few on this site: PHO-KING

Poor misguided souls - there ain't no such thing. You can have very good pho, less good pho and may be even bad pho (although I find that difficult to imagine).

But if you're looking for "authentic", well - that's a whole other blog posting. In summary, authenticity is a misnomer. It is non-existent. Sure things can be not quite right but "authentic" structures distinct criteria for exclusion and inclusion: to say that one bowl of pho is authentic suggests that other bowls of pho are not. If you have a bowl of pho in Viet Nam, it's bound to be authentic, no matter what it tastes or looks like, nor whether it contains herbs and sprouts, hoi sin sauce (or that other more mam like sauce that the north seems to use), has lemon and chilli on the side, or anything else that might be structured as pho. If you have a bowl of pho out of Viet Nam, it is probably based on someone's recipe, and they probably have some connection to Viet Nam - whether they or one of their parents' was born there, or they worked/studied there, or have some other interest or connection to either the country itself, or its people, or even only its cuisine, and that bowl of pho is probably "authentic" too.

You are going to think me a terrible luddite but, when in Viet Nam, I desperately craved a hamburger, with chips. I wanted meat, tomato, lettuce and thick bread. And chips. So I ordered the same from the hotel we were staying in. I got a delicious burger on lovely dense bread and great chips - I would call that an authentic burger.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Pho King site is great. And I will use it as a guide should I ever find myself in North America, looking for a good bowl of pho. And I can and will happily tell you where to go in Brisbane to get a good (according to me) bowl of pho. My brother-in-law's place is first - but you might have some difficulty wrangling an invitation to his house. Otherwise, Quan Thanh on Hardgrave Road is the best place I know to buy a bowl of pho. In the city, AJ's Vietnamese House does a mean bowl. If 'authenticity' means to you that the food is prepared by a person of Vietnamese origin, as far as I can tell, the people at AJ's are not Vietnamese. I know only from listening in on shouted kitchen conversations and my attempt to order "pho dac biet" in Vietnamese. I got a blank stare - so I ordered "special beef noodle soup" in English instead, and that got the desired result. (A delicious and steaming bowl of noodles, beef, herbs and bean sprouts). In Darra, I would go to Cam Ranh (run by a Viet-Australian man) and in Sunnybank I would go to Little Taipei. Yes, Little Taipei does the best pho in Sunnybank (according to me).

But I can't and won't tell you that it's the authentic thing.
Unless of course, I am being ironic.

Banh Canh

I am a little later than I should be. She said to arrive at 11am, which means to come at 10.30am. I come at 11.30, not entirely my fault. Maybe I slept in.

She hasn’t started yet, she says. Flustering around me, she pulls out two bags of rice flour (I’ve just been to the shops, it was so busy). Where did you go?, I say conversationally. With exasperation, she says ‘Inala’, as if there were any other shops nearby that she could go to to buy these bags of rice flour. They are each about 400g of fine bright white powder, in a clear bag with red writing all over. The writing is in a variety of languages: Viet, Thai, Chinese, English. I remember being little and being shown these bags, with careful instructions to come back with the right one (red writing for rice flour, blue writing for tapioca starch). I hesitate to tell her you can buy these at the local Coles; I don’t want to start an argument – today, I am being good. Minus the turning up late – she’ll forgive me for that.

I wander over to my father who is resting on his recliner chair, eyes closed. Shopping has clearly worn him out. Sitting down on the arm of the chair, I place light fingers on his knee. I used to sit on that knee but now I am too large, he too frail. He opens his eyes and I greet him - “Ba”. He acknowledges me with a grunt and closes his eyes again.

My mother (Um) has boiled some water and she pours some into a large bowl, into which both bags of flour had been emptied. With a large serving spoon, she mixes it in and tells me to ‘ne’ it – she will bring me the tapioca starch which she left downstairs. 'ne' is a word I had not heard before. She bustles off and I look down at a large tub filled with white dough. I have never done this part before. This has always been done before I arrive and my job is to turn the mountain of dough into large rice noodles. It is just like playing. I think about it and figure she must mean to knead it.

Um does not teach me to cook. She does not show me. I often ask her to cook things with every intention of coming by early to watch how she does it, to learn before it is forgotten how. She always starts too early for me. I have resorted to downloading recipes for Vietnamese dishes from the web. Tradition expects that my mother in law will show me how to cook, teach me how to look after her son. The notion is obsolete.

I am also the youngest. My mother had shown some of my elder sisters her cooking – they helped her in the kitchen. I did too but I did the odd jobs, the jobs you could trust the youngest kid – easily distracted and petulant – to do. You should never give the youngest kid a time consuming task, unless the reward was great. Something like “fetch me the butcher’s cleaver” was about what I could handle. Maybe rinse the vegies and herbs and sometimes, put the rice on. Nothing too involved. Beetles, praying mantis’ and lizards always needed to be found and homes built for them (they often also needed supervision so they would stay in the insect mansions). I could rarely be expected to stay in the kitchen long but I could always be called in for those urgent fetching errands.

There were exceptions. Fresh tofu was one: I could stand and curdle that tofu for happy, anticipatory hours; my taste-buds eager for the silken flavour of home made tofu, my greed overcoming my need to rescue unwilling insects or climb frangipani trees in the neighbour’s yard. Banh canh – today’s lunch – was another. The store bought noodles were nothing on the flavour and texture of home made ones.

Um comes back: “Where would you like to make them, on the floor?” No, I say. I’d prefer the table. Better for my back, used to sitting at computers all day. She looks at me strangely and says – it is easier on the floor. “Oh, I just prefer the table”, I say diplomatically. “That’s why your back aches, Um”, I don’t say.

I spread out the bowl, a chopping board, a plate and another serving spoon. I wish for music, but not aloud in case Ba hears me and turns the Vietnamese radio on. Um has gone again and it’s just me and a large bowl of dough. I put my whole hand into the dough, only to withdraw it and run to the tap. The dough is hot. After running my hand under cold water for a while, I come up with a plan. I go to my bag to get my book. Using the serving spoons, I turn the dough over, break it into bits and generally mush it. Then, as the steam rises, I bring the book to my nose and read. When the steam subsides, I repeat.

“Is it ready to ‘se’?” Um says. I guiltily put the book down and say – no, the dough was too hot and I could not knead it. She looks at me again, to inspect whether I really am her daughter or some hopeless Australian who just looks like her daughter. I’m both, honest. She looks at the book. I show her my splotchy red hand – a hand that reads books more often than it plunges itself into hot dough. “You put hot water on it” I accuse. “Of course I did”, she says impatiently. Pity we came to Australia for a better life, education, opportunities. Look how I’ve turned out – unable to knead dough.

‘se’ is a verb. It is in the present tense. All Viet words are in the present tense. Yesterday, I se the noodles. Today I se the noodles. Tomorrow I se the noodles. It feels as if I have always se the noodles. You use the same word and it does not matter what the time structure is (although if you are my parents, early is best). Context is important to ascertain meaning. Context is all you’ve got to go on. Unfortunately for the dough, my context is higher education and a professional job. My hands weren’t toughened in the context of bonded labour (traditional Viet marriage). Context is also my family.

After about an hour of lonely ‘se’, my sister turns up, both kids and husband in tow. She sits down beside me, youngest kid on her lap and starts chatting. I invite her to join in the fun, but she declines. Her husband helps instead. They are a liberated family. In another hour, another sister turns up. This time, the kids are in the lead (they’re older). They too sit down. I invite them to join the fray – to speed up lunch. Luckily, they do with enthusiasm.

To ‘se’ is to roll small parts of the mound of dough into smaller, long, noodle-like parts. Picture yourself playing with playdough as a kid. Remember making worms? Just like that, only not colourful and hopefully hygienic. Repeat. Repeat some more. It is better, if you can manage it, to have family turn up and arrange themselves around you. They should start chatting, the louder the better. Some should join the ‘se’ and others can outright refuse to. For added interest, the kids could cry. Maybe one of them should be super cute, and say something precocious, preferably bi-lingually. Another is probably on the cusp of being an adult and she’ll want to talk about hair, boys and clothes. You will try not to be disdainful, but you won’t succeed especially when she tells you she is reading magazines instead of books. You will despair (even though you were that way yourself).

Um is downstairs, making the soup to accompany the noodles. I always miss out on this part because I am the person who ‘se’. As if telepathically connected to the mountain of dough, Um turns up with the soup when there is one tiny hill left. We divide it and ‘se’ in excited conclusion – the last few are thinner and less consistent, but made with more laughter.

The noodles are cooked in soup (it has crabs and prawns – we were fishing folk ‘back home’). Bowls are placed in front of flour dusted people, and we sit down elbow to elbow to eat. Fresh eschallots, coriander and pepper is added to your taste. Ba likes large pieces of pepper so he takes the lid off the grinder and places whole peppercorns into his soup. I mimic him and discreetly choke on one behind a cough. We have banh canh for lunch. Its flavour is enhanced by our work and the warm chatter.

Banshee Welcome Party

It seems that every time I visit my parents – and perhaps it is because those times are becoming rarer – I am inspired to write about it.

The noise of visiting my family and the change in my posture, tone of voice and laughter never fails to provoke bemusement as I drive away again. As music blares out from my scratchy speakers, I edge further away from that strange creature who is mostly me, but louder in tone and quieter in opinion, more easily irritated, blander but more generous with my loving.

Today I am greeted by one of my nieces, Grump. She is standing behind the fly-screen door as I pull my little red car onto my parents' front lawn. I call out to her joyously as I get out of the car, slamming the door shut while waving. Grump shrieks, turns and pelts down the corridor screaming my name and wailing like a two year old banshee. In turn, Bouncer runs in the opposite direction (towards me), also screaming my name but more happily. He bursts through the screen door saying – I opened it for you! And I thank him and bend down for a kiss. Another nephew and a niece also come running out and I feel as if I have a welcoming party, all at knee height. The older niece – Princess – proudly displays some new pink thing and I murmur something that I hope she will assume is approval. Spiderboy is prattling on about his swimming classes. Although there are only three of them I feel as if I have walked into a bewildering crowd of yapping, nipping insects.

As I walk into the lounge room, the Teenager is lying back on my father's recliner chair with a blanket over his head. I kiss him on the forehead, which he hates and I know it but it is my attempt to keep him grounded. The Teenager never knows whether I am going to treat him as an adult or a kid, an equal or a nephew. Honestly, I never know either. I delude myself into thinking that he appreciates the uncertainty. At least someone occasionally treats him as an adult. The Drama Queen is asleep in one of the now empty bedrooms; empty since all my siblings and I have deserted the family home, which nevertheless seems fuller now than ever.

One of my brothers-in-law is sitting on the couch watching some Saturday afternoon sport. I greet him in passing as I move into the kitchen and dining room. Ba is in the middle quietly and determinedly eating while all around are my brother, sisters, brother-in-law and sister-in-law – a chaos of conversation back and forth across the table, in English and Vietnamese. I look around for my mother as I say hello to everyone. Before I see her, I sense Um ushering me towards the dining table. “Yes, okay. I'm eating, of course I'm hungry.” I say impatiently instead of greeting her like I intended to.

There's nowhere for me to sit. The table is covered in food – raw beef, prawns, fish and calamari, a steaming hotpot, bowls of vermicelli and platters of fresh vegetables. I go outside to find the foldaway chairs and come back with nothing. I stand around uselessly for a bit until my grandmother comes. Grandma exclaims about how wonderful it is that we are all here and how festive it is. She also tells me to sit and eat, in a similar tone to my mother's. When she says it, it just amuses me. I obediently go to search more intrepidly for extra chairs.

When I return with two stools, my siblings have rearranged themselves so that additional space opens up between Ba and my brother, the Black Belt, and between two of my sisters. I pass the stools over and take my seat beside my father. I am hemmed in now and I have forgotten to get myself or Grandma dipping bowls, plates and chopsticks. The Black Belt is deep in rolling a transparent vermicelli roll so I ask one of my sisters who is presently refilling the food on the table to get me all the necessary equipment so that I can fulfill the dutiful daughter role of eating ravenously.

Two of my sisters – the Accountant and the Big Boss – are planning their future business together and are discussing when and how to do pamphlet mail-outs. The conversation ebbs and flows, children interrupt with tears or demands and other conversations (like how busy at work I am and how slowly my sister-in-law's (the Banker's) new building is progressing) intersect. Someone is always at the bowl of water, softening the rice-paper wraps and someone else is usually dropping more raw food into the steamboat which is the centrepiece of our family lunches. Ba reaches across me as I am making a roll and I dodge his hand and continue. I also dodge conversations and placate Um about my partner not being present. The Black Belt and I chopstick duel over a prawn in the steamboat sauce to his wife's and Um's affectionately disapproving glances. I win because the duel is rigged – the Black Belt always lets me get the nicest prawns even though he pretends not to.

Grandma keeps murmuring about how festive it is and how tomorrow she is going to an uncle's house for crab. Ba asks if this uncle invited her over and she says calmly no. Ba tries to dissuade her and will later ring this uncle to tell him Grandma will be visiting and expects crabs and Ba will tell this uncle where best to get them at this time of year. Grandma is becoming senile and Um complains about her to us the same way we complain about Um to each other.

The Black Belt and the Banker leave early, to take the Teenager and the Drama Queen to some sporting event. Their youngest, Wide-body Camry, eagerly and cheerily waves goodbye at all of us and departs before the rest of his family. The Black Belt tries to get my brother-in-law's (the Technician's) attention to move the car. It takes a while and the chaos level increases as the logistics are negotiated but eventually, they are gone. Other noise flows into the gap, the youngest Grump and her older sister Princess now hungry. Spiderboy and his younger brother Bouncer are still full of hyperactivity and would not eat even if you had the energy to force-feed them.

Throughout all this Ba and I eat, participating in the conversation but blissfully unaffected by all the waves of childhood drama; Ba because it has never been his role to muddy himself in the child-rearing arena and me because none of them are mine. I stir them up (especially Grump) but their demands are met by another.

After the Accountant, the Big Boss and I clean up, we all sit in the lounge room, chatting. I listen to Um tell me the story (for the fifth time) about how she and three of my aunts mistook some other Asian girl with long hair and glasses for me. It was only when one of my aunts said, “Now OTT is a lawyer, she drives a really nice car.” Um said (knowing me too well), “She must have borrowed it or something – that's not her kind of car.” Um looks over and, thankfully as my mother, she realises that the girl in the nice car is not her daughter. It's a hilarious story she says. I try not to tell her that she has told me already but I blurt it out in annoyance as she begins to repeat bits to make me laugh. I didn't really find it particularly funny in the first place.

Ba has fallen asleep even with the kids screaming and three conversations going on around him. I gently wake him when I leave, squeezing his arm. I also give Um a kiss – to show her that I love her even though I speak to her so disrespectfully almost all the time. As I am pulling away in my little red car not very suited to up-and-coming-very-rich-lawyer, Um rushes up with fruit from the garden – guava and dragonfruit – and a bag of Vietnamese veggies like spinach called 'morning glory'. I take it and drive off waving, promising to be there again sooner than last time. The tunes of Augie March draw me back into the outside world, which seems somehow drab and less real then my truest home – my family.

A return

Double meanings amuse me.

Um, Ba, The Accountant & I will be travelling to Viet Nam in December of this year. A few weeks ago, when I had leave approved from work, I was very excited. Now, as the routine of daily life wears me in, I have almost forgotten that we are going.

I have long wanted to return to Viet Nam - and it is very important that I return with my parents, but especially with my father. Ba is well enough and happy enough to go and to take us.

We will be staying with the remnants of Ba's family, one group of whom lives at Hang Bay 13 - the place of our first home.

The Accountant will use the opportunity to research more deeply our family history, to note down the links and the stories. And I? I will accompany her, and I hope the landscape will allow me to meditate on what and how I want this to be written, what it means to me and what I can do for it.

Memory is in the present tense.

***

A man struggles with his daughters in the grey light of evening. A bedraggled group of people wade through water, waves beating against chests and faces, arms desperately grasping at items soon to be lost in the water. This is where we lose most of our family photos; Um does not forget. We live beside and from the river; we must fight it to find another home.

Ba is leading and he carries me, asleep on his shoulder. Um walks somewhere behind, carrying Brother 8 who is not asleep but quietly hugging his much loved blanket. Between them stumble my sisters: No 4, No 6 and No 7, heads down, tired and alone. The cold water and Ba's jerky movements wake me - Ba calls back to Um asking about the sleeping pills she should have fed me. Um exasperatedly calls out - I fed her two. I wriggle and demand to be put down, to walk on my own through the water. I am two years old, going on three. Unimpressed, Ba shushes me, continues his struggle towards the distant green light of a small waiting fishing boat.

Sister 7 is youngest of those struggling on their own. She is five, soon to be six. The waves knock her down time and again. At last, it is too much. She turns around - it is so much easier to walk with the tide, rather than against it - and returns to the land: it is so much closer than the distant light, there is warmth and food back there; ahead there is only uncertainty and months on the water with only rice and salt to eat. But Sister 7 is responsible - she calls out to Um & Ba, calls out that she is returning home. Um yells at Ba and at Sister 7: at Ba to stop Sister 7, at Sister 7 to not be stupid, to continue with the family, who will look after her? "I will look after myself", Sister 7 announces and continues towards land. "Walk by yourself then" Ba says to me, letting me fall as he races back to collect Sister 7, whom he scoops up and carries. He picks me up, too and carries us both, struggling for different reasons.

We arrive at the boat, though it is hard to recall how. The walk was interminable and yet, may have lasted no more than half an hour.

***
People often ask me whether I was a boat person. My only response is - sort of; or maybe, no, not really. We came by boat to Malaysia and stayed in the refugee camp in Kuala Lumpur for many months before coming to Australia by the family reunion program under the auspices of the UN refugee program. From KL to Australia, we flew. We are boat and plane people. It was harder than for some, easier than for others.

A Beginning

There is a photo; it is old and curled at the edges. We have thumbed it many times - it is the first photo of our arrival in Australia. It is a photo crowded with people, newcomers and the people waiting impatiently for them.

I am in the centre of the photo, grasping my mother's hand; half pulling her forward, half seeking her comfort. I am looking straight out, but not smiling. It is apt that I lead my family into this land: many years from the taking of this picture, I will consider this country my only and fight many fights to have others recognise it as such.

My mother (Um*) is wearing a light coloured dress, her hair bunned up: she has vowed to shave off her hair when we arrive safely - it will be the first thing she does when we come to rest at the government home. Um smiles a tired, nervous smile; her dark eyes are looking at one of her sisters, her shoulders laden with bags of many descriptions; one is full of food we did not eat on the plane. Um cried when they gave us food; she did not expect strangers to be so kind. We kids happily ate the food, my father (Ba) did not.

Behind Um and I (#9), are Ba; my brother, #8; my sisters, #s 4, 7 & 6; and some strangers. We crowd the edges of the picture, seeking a way in. #8 looks wild - his eyes are round, his hair spiking at slept-upon angles. #4 is but a step behind Um, ready to support and comfort her. # 6 & 7 are together, ushered into the photo by Ba. #7 is also staring, unsmilingly out of the photo, towards the land we must now call our own. Behind them are other people, who are pushing forwards, smiling at unknown others, looking at their feet in weariness.

In the foreground are the backs of many heads - my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. In a stroller is a young girl - the first Australian born. Off to the side, but somehow separate from the rest stand a young boy and a young girl. They stand self-consciously, the young boy looking out eagerly, the young girl is looking sideways at an uncle. They wait more awkwardly than the rest, more unsure. They are my second eldest brother, #3 and second eldest sister,#5 - they have pulled away from the fake parents and fake siblings who got them here; Um and Ba will soon claim them warmly.

This is how we arrive in Australia - a mass of people; separate, together, confident, fearful, anxious and hopeful. We are seeking a new home, in an unfamiliar place.