Author: emphan

Tom apologized and I told him I didn’t need an apology; that I was just frustrated, didn’t know how to stop being frustrated, and was unable to take out my frustration on anyone else. I explained my feelings and he explained his feelings and we reached a better understanding of each other. We’re actually really good at resolving disputes—usually. We communicate openly and calmly and maturely; listen without judgment or criticism; try to see the other person’s point of view. Usually. Once in a while, though, I’ll just go batshit crazy and then we deal with the fallout. I don’t know how to explain it other than it was a perfect storm of random events coinciding with emotional vulnerability. In retrospect I don’t know why I got so mad. The pieces of firewood that combusted into flame are so thoroughly burned that they’re nothing more than insubstantial ash now; they don’t seem to matter anymore. Maybe that’s what needed to happen. I needed to get all my petty gripes and insecurities and paranoia off my chest and set them on fire, so to speak. As much as I complain, I’m not insensible of my tremendous good fortune. I still have several months of relative freedom, freedom to do what I choose, if I can get over myself and my insecurities and doubts surrounding those choices. I have a good life. Since my mom’s been out of town on vacation I’ve been taking care of the kids by myself, and we’ve gotten into a nice routine where I’ll find scraps of time to read or blog while they play or nap. I really do love being with them. I never tire of kissing their round babyish faces. I have a good life.

Tom and I haven’t spoken in over two days and if you asked me why, I’m not sure I could give a coherent explanation. It’s probably more accurate to say that I’ve been ignoring Tom’s attempts to talk to me for over two days. At this point I know I should just cut it out but I still can’t bring myself to talk to him. I’m not even mad at him anymore. I’m just frustrated and can’t figure out a way to stop being frustrated. To fully explain what happened, I’d have to explain a bunch of seemingly irrelevant contributing factors, and in the process of doing so, I’m afraid of revealing how neurotic I am. Which, of course, I am. So at the risk of sounding like a completely mental nutjob, I’ve boiled my gripes down to two fundamental gripes: #1: Tom is getting more out of my sabbatical than I am; and #2: Tom is adapting a little too well to the role of the prototypical VN man.

An apt metaphor might be that a collection of kindling and tinder, bits of firewood and fuel, have been accumulating for some time, awaiting any spark, small or large, to ignite the heap into a blazing inferno. The catalytic spark happened the day I returned from my spa day in Saigon. I don’t think any bit of kindling or firewood on its own would have been enough to inflame my rage. The aggravations that were weighing on my mind that day, in isolation, would not have aggravated me ordinarily.

First piece of firewood: everyone in VN likes Tom more than me. That’s a plain fact, one that I readily acknowledge and accept. Not just strangers and random people we meet, but my own blood relatives. As I was riding the bus back to Long Khanh, I was contemplating how much more lovable Tom is than me, which was something I had known for a long time but which had never bothered me until now. The reason I was thinking about it on this particular morning was because of a comment my aunt’s husband made while he was driving me to the bus stop at 3:45 A.M. When I had first arrived to Saigon, a couple of people teased me for traveling so far just to redeem a spa voucher. My aunt’s husband asked why I went through so much trouble to spend less than a day in Saigon. That made me a little self-conscious and anxious. Did he think I was a pain in the ass? After all, he had to wake up at 3:30 in the morning because I needed a ride to the bus stop. I hadn’t been concerned about inconveniencing him because, I thought to myself, he’s retired, normally wakes up at 5 every morning, and doesn’t do much other than take naps throughout the day. Suddenly I felt terribly guilty about inconveniencing him, especially considering his reputation for having a difficult personality. He never made us feel unwelcome during the many weeks that we stayed with him and my aunt at their apartment, but we were always nervous and worried about how our rowdy kids were imposing on his otherwise tranquil lifestyle. On our way to the bus stop, he told me that he and my aunt had gotten used to having our kids around and missed them now that they were gone. He also remarked that Tom had a sweet disposition. It was gratifying to hear him confirm what I had always known: that my husband and kids are irresistibly lovable. It’s no small feat to win the affection of my aunt’s husband; he’s a bit of a crotchety old man who doesn’t always enjoy being around his own kids or grandkids. Despite his reticence, he and Tom bonded during our stay in Saigon. That’s something that would never happen between my aunt’s husband and me. Our relationship will never progress beyond polite detachment. I don’t think my aunt’s husband actively dislikes me; I’m guessing his feelings toward me are somewhere between tolerance and indifference. He’s certainly not impressed by me. I wake up hours after him, don’t seem particularly productive throughout the day, can’t figure out my way around if my life depended on it, am terrible at making conversation or being remotely interesting. Tom, on the other hand, charms everyone he meets. People think he’s so clever, capable, funny, helpful, genial, the perfect husband and father. What they don’t realize is that he’s corny, fobby, ingratiating, and tells really boring stories. He’s a huge dork. And that’s what makes him so lovable. VN people eat that stuff up. Who would you like more: someone who makes an effort to put you at ease, who will always try to make conversation or get a laugh, even if it’s at his own expense, who cares deeply about the opinion of others and wants to be entertaining and well-liked, or someone who silently sits by, surly and sarcastic? It’s no wonder that all of my aunts, uncles, cousins, and even my mother, prefer Tom’s company over mine. I don’t resent it; I take pride in it. I’ve always been happy to sit back and let Tom win people over, and grateful to be able to ride on the coattails of his likeability. I just don’t have it in me to win people over (it looks exhausting). My kids are lovable without even trying. So my uncle’s comment on the way to the bus stop, intimating how much he liked Tom and my kids, my awareness of how he (and everyone else in VN) feels about me, and my anxiety about being an inconvenience, really hit home my status in my family: I’m the dispensable one. No one minds my presence, but Tom and the kids are the ones they’ll remember fondly and tell stories about after we leave. This was further confirmed at lunchtime on the day I got back to Long Khanh.

As family members were sitting down to lunch that day, my cousin’s wife told her daughter to sit next to me, referring to me as her daughter’s aunt. There are a bunch of different ways to refer to an aunt in Vietnamese, to indicate whether the relationship is on the mother’s or father’s side and whether it’s through blood or by marriage. The word she chose indicated that Tom was the blood relation and I was the in-law, when it’s actually the reverse. I hardly would have noticed such a trivial detail if I hadn’t been contemplating, that very morning, Tom’s popularity relative to my own. I was feeling insecure and being addressed that way rankled. For the first time I started to resent Tom’s popularity and how easily he ingratiated himself with my relatives. Just a few stupid jokes and a few stupid stories and he had them fawning all over him. Which brings me to my next point.

Second piece of firewood: Tom’s Vietnamese is noticeably improving while mine is mired in stagnant hopelessness. I always thought our fluency was roughly equal, even though Tom told people mine was better because he’s always overestimating and over-praising me. I knew some words he didn’t and he knew some words I didn’t but on the whole I think his vocabulary was slightly better and my pronunciation was slightly better. At least a few people now consider Tom more fluent, which kills me because he sounds like an idiot when he talks. And that’s the difference between Tom and me. He’s willing to talk even if he sounds like an idiot. He’s always trying to engage someone in conversation or participate in the larger conversation. He tells jokes and doesn’t mind being the butt of them. He makes observations and narrates anecdotes that I would never attempt. If I don’t know enough words to describe something, I give up or won’t try. Tom will find a way to describe what he’s trying to say; he’ll simplify and get his point across. As often as not he ends up saying something that sounds really simplistic and dumb, like “When we were driving around town, I saw many banks. A lot and a lot of banks” or “My son gets mad when he can’t put on his shirt. He tries very hard and he gets so mad. Then I help him put on his shirt.” Someone meeting Tom for the first time might think, What’s wrong with this guy? But after a while I think people appreciate that he’s making an effort to communicate in their native language and eventually find him and his stories endearing. Tom’s stories are boring in any language but that doesn’t stop him from telling them. I used to roll my eyes when he did, but now I see that his approach is far more successful than mine. He gets a lot of practice speaking and if he makes a mistake, he gets corrected or learns a new vocabulary word. And he sounds funny and cute, like a little kid, which enhances his lovability. In case you haven’t noticed, I way overthink things, which only serves to make me self-conscious and nervous. When I’m nervous I tend to rush (I do this when speaking English too) and inevitably stop short when I hit on a concept I don’t know the word for. Sometimes in my nervousness I’ll mispronounce an accent and the word comes out wrong, even though it’s a word I know well and use all the time. Because Vietnamese is a tonal language with six different accents for each sound and a ton of synonyms, it’s easy to mess up if you’re nervous and rushing. I hear myself sounding like an idiot and it only makes me more flustered. My speech is very halting; rushing and stopping, stumbling over words. And unlike Tom, I’m not comfortable using a new word until I see how it’s spelled and practice its pronunciation over and over. In the beginning I told myself that my self-consciousness was making me sound worse than I was, and that Tom wasn’t any more fluent than me, but now I have to concede that he’s made a lot more progress than I have. He speaks slowly but with an easy confidence that I envy. And that’s an entirely new sensation for me: feeling jealous of my husband. Which brings me to my next point.

Third piece of firewood: men are treated like gods in VN. It’s just not fair. I get no brownie points for washing dishes or sweeping the floor. Doing those things are as natural and expected of me as brushing my teeth. If I didn’t, no one would force me to, but it would be unbecoming and people would look down on me. When Tom washes dishes or sweeps the floor he practically gets a standing ovation. People find it shocking, like the sky is falling or something. He inspires so much awe and admiration that I bet people wonder how I landed such a gem. I bet people think I’m the lucky one. Which does not please me in the least. It’s okay for me to feel lucky to have Tom, but I generally expect other people to think he’s the lucky one. Maybe in the U.S. he is, but analyzed under VN’s double standards, Tom is the perfect husband of a rather mediocre wife.

If you had a long-term guest staying in your home, it would be pretty rude if the guest didn’t at least try to help out with household chores, right? In VN that’s only true for women. It’s perfectly acceptable, even expected, for male guests to do absolutely nothing but eat and drink and sit around bullshitting with each other. Tom could live in my uncle’s mansion for a year and never lift a finger and no one would think any less of him. I do enough to be polite, but I could certainly do more. If I did any less, people would definitely think less of me. I think they already do. I cringe when I think about how much Uyen, the wife of the baby boy, is criticized for not doing more, because I think she does plenty and I do even less than her. I’m probably doing the bare minimum of what’s considered socially acceptable. It’s not like I’m the laziest person of all time, I’m just fairly lazy most of the time. Cleaning isn’t my favorite activity but I’ll do it when it needs to be done. The problem is, women are expected to toil like slaves, so even if I busted my ass, I wouldn’t get any credit for it because I’d simply be fulfilling my womanly duties. In order to get brownie points for domestic chores a woman would have to go way above and beyond the call of duty, like by cleaning the mansion from top to bottom. Anything short of that wouldn’t be considered “above and beyond”; it’d be merely “normal.” I could try to emulate Chi Ca and start polishing furniture, dusting towers of shelves, mopping each of the four floors, scrubbing bathrooms, etc. But this mansion is fucking huge which means I’d be working from dawn to dusk the way Chi Ca does, and I did not take a year off from work to fucking reenact Cinderella. I feel like the only way a woman gets any respect around here is by martyring herself. Everyone admires and respects Chi Ca because she works and suffers more than most people. I want to be respected for being a smart, independent-minded woman. I don’t want to be respected because I’m willing to wring a filthy mop with my bare hands as I’m scrubbing the floors everyday (apparently mops that come with wringers are really shoddy and can’t withstand mopping a 20,000 square foot mansion more than a few times, so the mops used at my uncle’s mansion have to be manually hand-wrung, which is disgusting).

I’m not willing to do that; I don’t need that kind of respect. Accruing brownie points is not the purpose of my sabbatical. Tom, on the other hand, scores brownie points each time he washes a dish or feeds his child, because he’s doing more than what’s expected of him, which is nothing. I know I have an awesome husband, I’ll be the first person to say it, but here his godliness is approaching legendary status. He’s put on such an impossibly high pedestal that I can’t compete, especially handicapped as I am by these double standards. I guess what I’m trying to say is that he’s making me look bad. It’s a problem without a solution. I want him to do chores because I don’t want to do that shit. But when he does chores, I look bad for not doing them. It’s also a problem to which I contribute, because I praise Tom all the time, sometimes to my own detriment. I’ll say things like, “Tom takes care of everything at home. I don’t do anything.” I’m his biggest fan, so of course I want him to look good. He deserves to look good. Except now he looks too good. And talking him up has backfired because I look really bad.

A revealing illustration would be to contrast Uyen with Anh Nghiep, my uncle’s second oldest son who’s a bit of a ne’er-do-well. Anh Nghiep lives with his parents in the mansion and is the only cousin who’s never been married and probably will never get married or have kids, the reason being he’s worried that having a wife would get in the way of hanging out with his friends all the time, which is what he currently does. Anh Nghiep has no occupation to speak of other than eating and drinking with his buddies on a daily basis (he also invests a substantial part of each day figuring out what to eat and drink). That’s all he does. His parents bankroll his leisurely lifestyle and expect nothing in return. And yet Uyen is the black sheep of the family because she isn’t doing enough of the communal cooking and cleaning, in addition to being responsible for all chores for her nuclear family, working in the pharmacy, and caring for her two young children. If those aren’t double standards I don’t know what are. It’s starting to get to me how much these double standards work in Tom’s favor and against me, and how he’s so highly regarded and I’m not.

I’ve honestly never felt jealous of Tom before. Our interests and occupations and pursuits are so different that there’s no opportunity to be competitive with each other. We inhabit very distinct spheres of competency. He has strengths that make him impressive, as do I. Except in VN I’m not impressive at all. I wake up late (getting up at 7 or 8 might as well be the same as getting up at noon) and hang out with my kids all day (I might as well be an indolent trophy wife). Taking care of children is so time-consuming and yet there’s absolutely zero respect for stay-at-home moms. If anything, I’m probably viewed as a moocher. Tom works full-time to support our family and does housework. He doesn’t have to do very much, only what he chooses to do. If he doesn’t feel like sticking around after meals to help feed the kids, no problem. I’ve got it covered. If he’s not in the mood to sweep or wash dishes, he can just run back up to his office. If he doesn’t want to vacuum or mop, someone else will take care of it. Domestic duties, including childcare, are completely optional for him. It’s not unusual for him to stay away all day, only showing up at bedtime after the kids have been freshly bathed, their teeth brushed, to kiss them goodnight. Fortunately for me he’s a neat freak and a helpful husband, but he’s in a win-win situation. If and when he chooses to do chores, he’s a saint. For me, there’s no real upside, only downside if I don’t do what I’m supposed to. When I compare our current lives to our former lives, I feel like Tom is the real winner. He works as much as he wants to and does fewer chores. My current life is also a net improvement over my former life, but I’m a lot more conflicted about it. I’m more rested and spend all day with my kids. That’s what I wanted, right? Yet somehow I feel like I exchanged one time-consuming job for another. I enjoy my kids but caring for them involves a lot of drudgery, and I’m doing more chores. I don’t have as much free time as I thought I would. Maybe that’s a pipe dream at this stage in my life. Maybe I have unrealistic expectations. In any event, Tom has an enviable knack for finding happiness and fulfillment wherever he goes, while I always find something to complain about. Is this what it all boils down to? That I’m jealous of Tom?

The spark: Tom comes home drunk.

To backtrack, that fateful day unravels as follows: I wake up at 3 A.M. to catch a 4 A.M. bus from Saigon to Long Khanh. I ponder Tom’s popularity during the bus ride. I get back to my uncle’s mansion by 6:30 A.M., and am surprised to find Tom and the kids already up. The boy has a fever and Tom says he gave him some Children’s Tylenol last night after taking his temperature. He also tells me how his day went, since he had to take care of the kids by himself while my mom and I were in Saigon. (By his own account, it was a breeze because he got so much help from the female cousins. He drank beer with the male cousins during lunch while the women prepared food and fed his children. After lunch he passed out for over three hours in a drunken stupor and woke to find that the girl had already been fed her dinner. The boy developed a fever later that night so Tom gave him medicine. After both kids were fed and bathed, he put them to bed and started working, from about 9 P.M. to 2 A.M. The kids woke up unusually early at 5:30 A.M., maybe due to the boy’s fever. I came home an hour after that.)

I decide to feed the kids breakfast on the fourth floor because there are fewer mosquitoes up there. Unfortunately, it’s rained and my uncle’s doors and windows aren’t secure, so rainwater has partially flooded the fourth floor, leaving a residue of dirt and dead bugs. While the kids are eating I decide to sweep and mop so they can have a clean play space. Because VN’s short straw brooms require you to hunch over as you sweep, and sweeping a floor of my uncle’s mansion is like sweeping a museum, I break into a sweat almost immediately. I’m tired and hot and crave iced coffee in an air-conditioned café. No sooner than I get the idea to tell Tom that we should go to a café after breakfast, Tom yells from the lower floor that he’s running out to grab coffee with Anh Nghiep. I give a growl of displeasure and yell back, “But I want to go too!” Tom responds, ok, but we have leave now. I look over at the kids, who are still eating their breakfast, have second thoughts about the boy’s fever, and realize I’m not even halfway done sweeping. “Forget it!” I yell down, “Just go by yourself.” Tom offers to bring back a cup of coffee for me but I refuse. It takes me over an hour to sweep and do a cursory mop and the entire time I’m thinking to myself, This is bullshit. I don’t even do this in my own home. I also remember thinking it was a pointless waste of time because it looks like it might rain again so the fourth floor is just going to get flooded again and no one would even know I had cleaned up.

After breakfast the boy’s acting especially clingy because he’s not feeling well. He sits placidly on my lap so I don’t mind cuddling with him all morning. I get a little nervous by lunchtime because I find him asleep on our bed with the girl playing quietly next to him. Definitely not normal behavior. I decide to feed the kids in our bedroom after I have lunch with the family downstairs. As I’m setting the table and sitting down, my cousin’s wife refers to me as the wrong kind of aunt. I take offense at being considered an in-law, an outcast. Family members inquire after Tom when he doesn’t show up, and I tell them that he went out to get coffee with Anh Nghiep before eight this morning and hasn’t returned yet. Predictably, Anh Nghiep has taken him out somewhere and I don’t expect him back for awhile. I wash the lunch dishes and then bring bowls of food up to our bedroom but I’m unable to feed the boy more than a couple of bites because he’s crying that his mouth hurts and he wants to go to sleep. I give him more Children’s Tylenol and let him sleep. I rummage through our cabinets and drawers for the thermometer but can’t find it anywhere. After their naps the boy’s fever has gone down but the girl is now feverish and sluggish, so I give her Children’s Tylenol too. The medicine works to reduce their temperatures, and they act normal for a short time, but then their fevers keep returning a few hours after each dose. Family members start to worry and advise me to take the kids to the doctor if their temperatures exceed 38 degrees Celsius (which I later figure out is 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit). There’s some concern about mosquito-related diseases and I become slightly panicked at the thought of malaria. I’m also wondering when Tom is going to come home and tell myself he’s entitled to a day of fun since he had to watch the kids while I had a spa day. But then I think, wait, I actually had only 4.5 hours of fun and he’s been gone much longer than that. Then I feel petty for making these calculations and comparisons and for begrudging him a good time. He’s in the midst of his busiest season and he sacrificed a day of work so I could go to the spa. But then I think, am I supposed to be grateful? Did he do me a favor that I need to repay? Aren’t I just as entitled to have fun as he is? Was it really so much of a sacrifice on his part when he’s sacrificing a second consecutive workday to go drinking with Anh Nghiep? And how much credit should he get for taking care of the kids when he got so much help and spent a substantial portion of the day getting drunk and then sleeping off his drunkenness? I don’t get the same kind of help when I take care of my kids because I do it everyday, and I’m expected to. These are the thoughts that keep swirling in my head, and by dinnertime I’m not sure how I’ll react to Tom when I see him. I don’t have any luck feeding the boy his dinner and realize he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He complains of a pain from his mouth down to his right leg. Part of me is trying to remain calm and part of me is slightly frantic because I still can’t find the thermometer after looking for it again. Where the hell did Tom hide it after he took the boy’s temperature last night? I give the kids their medicine and send them to bed while I eat dinner. Tom doesn’t make an appearance but as I finish eating I think I see from the corner of my eye someone entering our bedroom upstairs. It’s hard to describe exactly how I feel — a mixture of relief and resentment, but something else too. I carry up the kids’ bowls of food and enter the bedroom to find the three of them asleep on the bed. At that moment something comes over me and I slam the door shut, startling the kids awake. Tom doesn’t stir. The feeling that overcomes me gets stronger and I slam the bowls down on the nightstand. Tom remains lifeless. I walk over and grab a pillow and smash it as hard as I can over his head. “Are you drunk?” I hiss at him. One eye cracks open a slit and he mumbles, “A little.” He falls unconscious again and the kids are sitting up looking at me curiously, thinking I’m playing a game with daddy and a pillow. “Where is the thermometer?” I demand. No answer. “Where is the thermometer?” I want to curse at him but I can’t because my kids are watching me. “WHERE IS THE THERMOMETER?!?!?!?!!!” Finally he makes a slight wiggling motion with his index finger and without opening his eyes he mumbles, “Over there.”

“Where? Where?? WHERE?!?!?!?!” I’m screaming at him but all he does is continue to point feebly in the direction of the wardrobe. I pull a chair to the wardrobe, climb up and start searching through all of the shelves I had already searched earlier in the day. I finally understand what I’m feeling: blind, furious rage. It’s burning hotter and hotter with each passing second.

The top two shelves of the wardrobe house our toiletries and supplies that we brought from the U.S.: soap, medicine, vitamins, packages of floss, lotion, creams, etc. It’s hard to see through clutter and rage so I grab some supplies and toss them on the floor. They land with a satisfying thud. So I grab some more stuff and throw it down. At this point a ferocious madness consumes me and I start grabbing anything I can get my hands on and viciously hurl it to the ground. Assorted containers and bottles and packages explode across the floor.

I’m not a thrower. My dad was; he would destroy dishes, furniture, anything in his vicinity when he was fighting with my mom. As I kid I hated his uncontrollable, violent temper, and my siblings and I would plug our ears as we cried and waited for our parents to stop fighting. I think throwing things is a pretty immature and melodramatic way to express anger. But as I’m doing it, I feel such a thrilling sense of gratification, it’s almost cathartic. Almost but not quite. I feel myself becoming more infuriated, not less. In the back of my mind I’m also thinking, with spiteful satisfaction, that Tom is going to clean up this mess. I’m causing so much commotion that my kids pipe up in their childish voices, “Momma! Why are you making a mess? Momma! Why are you throwing things? Momma! You’re making a mess, you’re being bad! Momma! Why are you doing that?”

Why am I doing this? Why am I acting like a crazy person? It’s not like it’s the first time Tom’s come home drunk. But the sight of him laying there completely shit-faced enrages me to the point that sanity and reason are obliterated from my mind. I want to kill him. I want to bludgeon him to death. I want to scream, “Because your father is a FUCKING ASSHOLE!!! He thinks he’s God’s gift to women but he is a USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!!!!! He thinks I should worship the ground he walks on because he’s SUCH a WONDERFUL husband compared to other men and it was SO GENEROUS of him to let me have a day to myself. He thinks he’s entitled to get drunk whenever he wants and I should be GRATEFUL because he has a job AND takes care of his children once in awhile AND cleans up after himself. He thinks I need him! Well I DON’T! I DON’T NEED A FUCKING USELESS VIETNAMESE ASSHOLE WHO CAN’T EVEN ROUSE HIMSELF TO GET A FUCKING THERMOMETER!!!!!!!!!!!” Of course, I don’t say these things because I don’t swear in front of my kids. Instead I say, “I’m mad at your father because he’s being selfish.” Which elicits from them, “Dadda, stop being selfish!”

Tom might as well be a corpse, and I have half a mind to make him one. I turn on all the lights and the television and blast the volume. I let the kids run around and play as I try to feed them. They’re acting more like themselves after their last dose of medicine and soon they’re yelling and laughing boisterously. I’m not about to let Tom sleep in peace and comfort. It makes no difference, he’s out cold for the next 12 hours.

The next day I won’t look at him and don’t respond when he talks to me. He thinks it’s because he came home drunk but that was just the spark, the catalyst. I’m focused on the kids, who have been steadily deteriorating. Their fevers are hotter than ever and the boy freaks out when he has his first nosebleed. My rage has subsided and morphed into frustration and resentment; a little bit of shame, too, when I see the mass of products and supplies scattered on the floor. I tell myself I’ll pick it up by the end of the day if Tom refuses to, but thankfully he puts everything away before lunchtime. I keep thinking about the events of the prior day and wonder if I’m justified for feeling the way I do. It’s so many things, so many bits of firewood, and none of them are Tom’s fault. The spark, coming home piss drunk, that was his fault, yes. But on another day it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal. If he had come home earlier it might not have been as big of a deal. I’m not one of those wives who can’t stand the idea of her husband having a good time without her. At least I like to think so. All the other stuff that was making me feel bitter and insecure that day — the fact that everyone likes Tom more than me, his improving fluency, how he benefits from VN double standards, how I feel pressured to do more housework, how Tom seems to be getting more out of this sabbatical than I am — those are not his issues, those are mine. And each individually really does not bother me. It was all of it together, and the circumstances surrounding his drinking spree, including his absence, which gave my negative feelings plenty of time to stew and incubate, that unhinged me. I was doing chores that I didn’t want to be doing. I was jealous that he got invited out to coffee and I didn’t. I was keenly aware of my outsider status. I was paranoid that all of the adulation was getting to his head, that maybe he was starting to believe in his own hype and think that he was too cool for school. In essence, I was worried that he was starting to think like a typical VN man. Maybe I was more on edge than usual because I had gotten up so early. A small part of me resented that even during his busiest season, Tom wasn’t working as hard as I did when my job was busy, which is a petty resentment. I shouldn’t want him to suffer more just because I did; I hate it when people tout their suffering like it’s a badge of honor. Smart people try to avoid suffering if they can help it. And even though it wasn’t Tom’s fault that the kids got sick, another small part of me thought, I left you with two healthy children who you barely took care of, and when I returned, you left me to care for two sick children by myself while you went off drinking.

My spa day was the first time in the entire three months that we’ve been here that I’ve been away from both Tom and my kids, and the only time I’ve done anything recreational without Tom. In contrast, at least a couple of times a month Tom gets to go out without me and the kids. Part of the reason is that he’s a man and the other part is that he’s better liked. It’s perfectly natural for him to leave us at home but it would be really weird for me to leave the kids with him to go have fun on my own. Which is why the spa day was a big deal. I don’t like the idea of me going out being considered a special treat for which I should be grateful and appreciative. Tom doesn’t feel the need to be grateful and appreciative each time he goes out. No doubt he feels entitled. I’m entitled too, goddammit!

Tom has hung out with Anh Nghiep before and has come home drunk before, and it was never a big deal. I just happened to be an emotional landmine this time. I don’t have anything against Anh Nghiep; he was my favorite cousin in Long Khanh the first time I visited VN over 13 years ago. But he’s not exactly the model of VN maleness that I want Tom to emulate. Drinking for 10 hours and then sleeping for 12 hours immediately afterwards is not my idea of a productive day. Thinking highly of yourself for doing things that you should be doing anyway is not my idea of the perfect man.

My silent treatment towards Tom continues not out of anger, but out of confusion. I don’t know what to say to him. What can I say that doesn’t sound completely ridiculous? Stop being so lovable? Stop upstaging me at every turn? Stop enjoying yourself so much? Stop co-opting my sabbatical and hijacking it for your own? One lingering notion continues to plague my thoughts, one that I’m not sure I want to give voice to: do I want to go home? For some reason I feel like admitting it would be admitting defeat, would be tantamount to failure. Failure at what, I’m not sure. Maybe failure at fulfilling the purpose of my sabbatical. Or finding a purpose for my sabbatical.

Until I figure out what I want and how to articulate it, it’s hard to figure out what to say to Tom. I don’t think I’m prepared to tell him I want to go home, partially because I know he doesn’t want to. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the limited advantages of not being on speaking terms with my husband. He’s scared of me when I won’t talk to him, which motivates him to be on his best behavior. He’s been vacuuming and mopping and feeding the kids like his life depends on it. Funny how that’s an unintended side effect of the silent treatment. Makes me think I should do it more often.

As oxymoronic as it sounds, I figure if you’re willing to suffer for work, you should be willing to suffer for fun. I also believe a cost-benefit analysis can be applied to almost any situation. My belief systems sometimes end up contradicting one another. For example, because I was usually sleep-deprived due to work, I was usually willing to forego sleep for the sake of a good time. Tom and I always used to book the latest returning flight to prolong our vacation as much as possible, even if it meant getting home at 2 A.M. and having to go to work the next day. If we had done a cost-benefit analysis we might have realized we were being dumb.

I jumped at the opportunity to have a spa day even though the hoops I jumped through were rather ridiculous. My cousin SW had vouchers for 120 minutes of spa treatments that were going to expire in mid-July. Only problem was, SW was in Saigon and we were already stationed back in Long Khanh. My mom had to travel back to Saigon on July 4th to embark on another trip, and Tom encouraged me to go with her so I could take advantage of the spa vouchers and make a day of it. The distance between Long Khanh and Saigon would probably be an hour-long car ride on a U.S. highway, but VN roads, traffic, and transportation being what they are, it takes between two to three hours. We boarded a non-air conditioned bus at 8:30 on the morning of July 4th and, due to traffic, didn’t arrive to Saigon until 11:30. I was sweating profusely by the time we climbed off the bus, and the 15 minute walk from the bus stop to my aunt’s apartment under the glaring midday sun with a backpack on my back didn’t help matters. After lunch, I passed out from the heat until SW called to let me know she was leaving work to pick me up in time to make our 4:00 massage appointments.

We arrived to the beauty salon exactly on time. It was primarily a hair salon that had branched out into the massage business, so it didn’t really have proper spa facilities or amenities. The sauna was steaming hot but tiny and unscented. It might sound spoiled but I really enjoy steam rooms when they’re scented with eucalyptus mint or lavender or some other fancy fragrance that signals you’re being pampered. SW had asked her co-worker to join us and the sauna was barely large enough to accommodate the three of us. The masseuses that were initially assigned to us were two females and one male, but SW demanded all female masseuses and refused to let any male touch us (even if he was blind, as the salon employees assured us he was). It’s funny that SW was so adamant about guarding our virtue, almost to the point of seeming prudish, when she wasn’t shy about her body at all. In the sauna she stripped off her towel and told me to do the same to get the most out of the steam. I was kind of shocked at the sight of her nakedness and tried to avoid looking in her general direction. She kept encouraging me to get rid of my towel but I wasn’t eager to flaunt what my children and an unhealthy lifestyle have done to my body. It’s also funny how you feel pressured to be naked when you’re sitting next to a naked person, or is that just me? I seriously felt obligated to show her my boobs so I let my towel drop a little, to prove that I wasn’t prudish. As soon as her co-worker walked in I instantly covered up again, proving that I’m actually prudish after all. After a stint in the sauna, the salon employees invited us to take a shower together, as there was only one bathroom on that floor. I declined and headed downstairs to shower by myself, leaving SW and her co-worker to bask in each other’s nakedness as much as they wanted. Once again, the distinctly VN bathroom left much to be desired. I showered facing a dirty mop, next to several dirty buckets (amusing side note — nowadays when we take our kids to an unfamiliar bathroom, they’ll ask if it’s going to be clean or dirty, because in VN it’s a total craps shoot — no pun intended).

It’s a good thing SW insisted on having all female masseuses because part of the treatment entailed massaging a large portion of my butt. I must admit the butt massage was pretty enjoyable. It sounds so wrong but feels so right. The entire massage was pretty enjoyable, though it felt too short, like most massages do, and there were some oddities. The masseuse often climbed up on the table with me to perform parts of the massage, and used her feet in addition to her hands. At one point SW giggled; in pain, I realized, when I looked up to see her masseuse walking on her back. Fortunately my masseuse decided not to walk on my back; because I was too skinny, she explained. I was grateful to escape spinal injury and gratified to hear that someone thought I was skinny. There were minor drawbacks as well: the masseuses didn’t use any scented massage oils, just baby oil. The massage tables were ordinary cots that didn’t have headrests so you had to lay with your head craned to one side, which ironically resulted in a sore neck by the end of the massage. And the cots were lined up next to each other, separated by curtains (like what you might find in a hospital emergency room), so we only had to lift our heads to see each other. The only concession to ornamentation was a plastic vine with green leaves that had been wound around the curtain poles. After our massages we received hair treatments which seemed to me to be an over-complicated process of shampooing and conditioning. I gladly would have traded the hair treatment for an extended massage. Overall the experience was fine; definitely not the best but neither was it worst I’ve ever had. We left the salon by 7 P.M. and SW and I met up with my favorite cousin from my dad’s side of the family for a quick dinner of goat curry. I got back to my aunt’s apartment by 8:30 and immediately started getting ready for bed. For a variety of reasons, the most practical means for me to get back to Long Khanh was to take a 4 A.M. bus, which meant I had to wake up at 3 A.M. My aunt’s husband dropped me off at the bus stop at 3:45, it took off promptly at 4, and I arrived in Long Khanh about quarter after 6. After a ten minute walk from the bus stop to my uncle’s house, I was holding my children in my arms again. I was away from them for less than 24 hours, and in that span of time I rode an un-air conditioned bus for over 5 hours, enjoyed a 2 hour spa treatment, and slept for about 7 hours (including naps). All told, my “fun time” amounted to no more than 4.5 hours — SW picked me up for a 4:00 massage appointment and delivered me back home by 8:30. From a “work hard, play hard” perspective, was it worth it? I love spa treatments and lord knows they are few and far between for me. I got my first massage in Hong Kong during our SARS Vacation, after my first year of law school; since then I probably average one to two spa treatments a year (usually at a firm-sponsored retreat). They’re such a rare luxury that I like them more than I should, and apparently will jump through quite a few hoops to redeem a spa voucher. From a cost-benefit perspective, it almost certainly was not worth it to make a 5.5 hour round trip for 4.5 hours of fun. I could have just gotten a massage in Long Khanh, if I weren’t being dumb. I wanted to spend some quality girl time with my cousins, and I was unaware of the state of the spa facilities. Which leads me to my next semi-related but not-really-related point: how much I love the U.S. and how proud I am to be American.

Women cleaving raw meat at the morning market as bus departs at 4 A.M. You don’t see this in the U.S.

Throughout my spa experience I couldn’t help but think how much more enjoyable it would be if I were in the U.S. Back home I wouldn’t wonder if the towels on the massage tables had been changed in between customers or if the masseuse’s feet were clean. I would just assume that all was as it should be. Part of the reason why I wanted to live in a foreign country for a period of time was to force myself out of my comfort zone. Now I’m questioning what’s so bad about being comfortable? More and more I appreciate the things that make the U.S. so awesome and how lucky I am to be its citizen and call it home. I’m not only referring to modern conveniences, though central air, clean bathrooms, and reliable sources of potable water are nice perks. There’s so much I took for granted that I miss so much now. I love the orderliness and logical predictability of the U.S. I love how U.S. regulations deter pollution and littering and promote the health and safety of the general population. I love how Americans are (usually) courteous and polite to one another, and allow people to get out of elevators before getting on, and let passengers in the rows ahead exit into the aisle instead of pushing past them, and don’t steal taxicabs from people who have been waiting in line first. I love how Americans frown upon public smoking, especially around children. I love how the American sense of entitlement produces exacting standards of customer service. I miss being able to put on make-up without it melting off my face or wearing a sleeveless dress in broad daylight without being considered scandalous. I miss recycling and my Prius. I miss charcuterie and good wine. I miss grocery shopping and comfy couches and making pasta and salad at home. I miss book club with girlfriends where we would talk about anything and everything except the book. I miss weekend movie nights or donning a cute dress and heels to enjoy cocktails and people-watching at the Cosmopolitan. I miss Häagen-Dazs and thin-crust pizza. I miss refrigerators that don’t smell like durian. Basically I miss my former life. It’s what I’m used to and I find the familiar comforting. Having a spa day in Vietnam on the Fourth of July got me thinking about all the other little luxuries that I find familiar and comforting, like gender equality and free speech. There are subjects I refrain from blogging about and won’t blog about until I’m safely back in the U.S. because I don’t want to risk getting arrested or detained. I don’t think any U.S. citizen believes the U.S. is perfect or even close, but I do think most Americans, myself included, have faith in our country’s capacity to evolve and change for the better; we’re grateful for the incredible privileges and freedoms we enjoy; and we’re cautiously optimistic about the future. The political pendulum swings to extremes at times but the net effect is that we’re inching toward a more enlightened, compassionate, and civilized society; maybe it’s not happening fast enough for some people, but we’re not doomed. I love my country for being in a constant state of self-improvement (albeit through a painful and painfully slow process of trial and error), and I’m thankful it’s where I get to raise my children. Certainly there are things the U.S. is really, really bad at — disgraceful even. But there are also things the U.S. is extraordinarily good at. Like spas.

God I love you, America. Happy belated birthday from overseas!

When a woman marries into a traditional VN family, she assumes her husband’s status in the family. If she marries the eldest son, then she gets to be addressed as eldest sister by all of her husband’s younger siblings. If she marries somewhere in the middle, then she outranks all of her husband’s younger siblings and their spouses, but all of her husband’s older siblings and their spouses outrank her. The worst thing a woman can do is marry the baby boy of the family. That basically makes her everyone’s bitch. She has to address all of her siblings-in-law as “older brother” or “older sister” and is expected to defer to them, in addition to her husband’s parents, which means that all of her in-laws can tell her what to do and she’s supposed to obey them. It doesn’t always work out like that in reality, especially in these modern times, but I definitely don’t envy VN women who marry the baby of the family. It doesn’t matter as much what rank a woman is born into because once she marries out of her own family and into her husband’s family, she assumes her husband’s rank in his family. Therefore a woman who’s the baby of her family can marry the eldest son of another family and become eldest sister in her husband’s family. It’s probably preferable for a woman to be born the baby of her family because the higher “ranked” a woman is in her own family, the more responsibility she has (at least until she gets married). This hierarchical structure creates a weird inversion: it’s advantageous to be eldest sister in your husband’s family but not in your own family. A man’s rank in his own family or in his wife’s family doesn’t really matter because all men in VN are spoiled. In conclusion, it’s great to be a man and sucks to be a woman in VN.

In my uncle’s family, the baby of the family is a girl whom I call Chi Ut (“Chi” means “older sister” and “Ut” is just a generic term for the baby or youngest in the family). Even though she’s “Ut” and younger than me, I have to address her as “Chi” because she outranks me (because her dad is my mom’s older brother). I swear this stuff totally makes sense in Vietnamese. Everyone teases Chi Ut because she was pampered growing up and will continue to be pampered for the rest of her life because she married an eldest son and gave birth to a son. She’s got it made. The second youngest in my uncle’s family is a boy named Thu who’s also called “Ut” but he’s “ut trai” (baby boy). Not only is there an “Ut” who’s the baby of the family, there’s the baby boy (ut trai) and the baby girl (ut gai). I address Thu as “Anh Thu” (“Anh” means “older brother”) because he also outranks me (all of my uncle’s kids and their spouses — i.e. all of my cousins in Long Khanh — outrank me because my uncle is older than my mom).

Anh Thu’s wife, Uyen, is the unfortunate woman who married the baby boy of the family, and I feel sorry for her. At first I liked Uyen because she seemed so sweet and shy. Then I wasn’t sure how to feel because I overheard some of the older cousins talking shit about her. She’s kind of the black sheep of the family. The older cousins don’t like her because they think she’s lazy and incompetent. As the wife of the baby boy of the family, Uyen traditionally would be expected to do the most and work the hardest. For whatever reasons, the brunt of the household chores fall to my uncle’s eldest daughter, Chi Ca (probably due to personality, competency, and the fact that Chi Ca’s divorced).

Uyen washes dishes on a regular basis but doesn’t cook and rarely does other communal chores. One cousin confided that Anh Thu used to vacuum and mop floors until my uncle and aunt put a stop to it. They thought Uyen should be doing those things, not letting her husband do them. Allegedly, Uyen would just hang out in their bedroom while Anh Thu mopped and cleaned. A man should do housework only if his wife is sick or busy with some important errand. I nodded in agreement as I heard all this and pretended to be horrified by Uyen’s laziness, but in my head I was thinking, “Oh shit, I sit back and watch Tom do chores all the time. What does everyone think of me?”

After further observation, I’ve decided that I like Uyen and pity her. She tries to be as helpful as she can but it’s hard to take initiative when everyone has an established routine. That’s been my experience as well. The two eldest female cousins handle all of the cooking and it’s intimidating to try to disrupt the status quo. Their resentment towards Uyen is understandable but unfair. By all rights, as the wife of the baby boy, Uyen should be cooking for them. The fact that they have to cook for her all the time makes them feel demeaned and leads to all sorts of tension. Their expectations of Uyen are a little unreasonable because, in addition to working in her father-in-law’s (my uncle’s) pharmacy, Uyen has a three-year-old and a one-year-old. And I suspect she might have been pregnant for some period of time before that. Her kids are the youngest of the house and nowhere near as self-sufficient as the older kids of her in-laws. When is she supposed find time to be slaving away in the kitchen and cleaning the mansion?

Another strike against Uyen is the fact that she bore two girls and no boys. If you’re going to have only one child, it had better be a boy. Ideally you would have one of each, but two boys are good too. Birthing two girls means you’ve failed as a wife and daughter-in-law. Not everyone thinks that way anymore but old school VN people still do. It doesn’t help that Uyen’s three-year-old is a monumental brat. Uyen is so meek and Anh Thu is such a passive parent that their kids terrorize them. It’s hard to tell who’s more unpopular, Uyen or her kids.

Witnessing family interactions for several weeks has led me to conclude that Uyen’s perceived shortcomings as the wife of the baby boy are at the root of all her strife with the family. It’s why she doesn’t get any kind of a break for having young kids. It’s why, even if it’s unreasonable and unfair to expect her to do all of the cooking and cleaning, she’s still penalized for not doing it. If other family members are late to a meal, food and rice are set aside so any latecomers have something to eat when they arrive. Tom and I often find food reserved for us and our kids. Sometimes food is prepared especially for our kids. If Uyen is late to a meal, all she can do is hope that the food hasn’t run out yet. Nothing is ever set aside for her or her kids. Sometimes it seems like Uyen’s family isn’t even factored in, and there isn’t enough for them. Everything runs out before Uyen has had a chance to feed her daughters and she has to rummage around to find something for them to eat, or forego eating herself in order to have something to feed them. It’s bittersweet to see how our kids are so much more beloved than Uyen’s kids. If I were Uyen, I’d be pretty hurt and offended to see the kids of some visiting relatives favored by my husband’s family over my own kids who have lived their entire lives with his family. I’d expect Uyen to resent us, but she’s been nothing but kind toward us. If she feels any resentment or indignation or sadness, she hides it well. I would not be able to cope as patiently as she does in her circumstances.

Now that our trip through the northern region of VN is over I can breathe a sigh of relief. Not only was it non-disastrous, we had an amazing time. Our days were jam-packed and bustling with activity so I wasn’t able to blog while traveling and now that we’re back in southern VN it’s hard to retrospectively chronicle each portion of the journey. I’ll just summarize by saying that the people we met were lovely, the scenery was breathtaking, most of the food was excellent, the accommodations were wonderful (by VN standards), and the overall experience was delightful. Even though folks were getting tired toward the end, the trip was a resounding success without major incident.

An unexpected highlight of the trip was the gracious hospitality of my cousin’s husband’s family in northern VN. We were strangers to them and they welcomed and hosted us like family. Everywhere we traveled, from Vinh Phuc to Lao Cai to Sapa to Ha Noi to Ha Long Bay to Tam Dao and back again, we were greeted and chaperoned and chauffeured and well taken care of. My cousin SW met her husband Hung in Saigon but he was born in Ha Noi and many of his relatives still live in the north. Hung’s family arranged much of our transportation and accommodations, often without any cost to us, and kept us well fed. Homemade meals prepared by Hung’s relatives were generally better than what we found at restaurants. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to dine in the traditional northern style — sitting cross-legged on reed matts on the floor — but discomfort was a small price to pay for trays upon trays of delectable (and sometimes unusual) food. Within a span of a week we sampled delicacies such as horse, squirrel, porcupine, and tortoise. I always appreciate the opportunity to try new foods but I have to admit the exotic stuff was not my favorite. The northerners got a kick out of Tom with his southern, Americanized accent and easy humor. Tom has never been one to refuse liquor, even if it looks, smells and tastes like gasoline, and he quickly became a favorite among the beer-guzzling, shot-pounding men. In typical VN fashion, men and women dined in separate groups and afterwards the men would talk and joke and toast each other while the women washed dishes squatting in the corner of some courtyard.

After the first night at a guest house in Vinh Phuc, we took an overnight “sleeping” bus to Lao Cai, which is within driving distance to Sapa. The mountains and valleys of Sapa were gorgeous to behold and it was exhilarating to enjoy refreshing, crisp mountain air. It was probably the first time we’ve been comfortable being outdoors during the day in VN. It was also the first time that I felt like I was on vacation since arriving to VN. We visited silver waterfalls and climbed hilly gardens. The town nestled in the mountains of Sapa was as overrun with western tourists as Hoi An had been, but also quite lovely. After two nights in Sapa we returned to Vinh Phuc for another night and the next morning were driven to Ha Noi to catch our boat tour to Ha Long Bay, my favorite part of the trip. The boat was relatively new, which is a good thing because last year several foreign tourists on a similar boat tour drowned in Ha Long Bay when the boat sank as they were sleeping. We tend to throw caution to the wind when we’re vacationing (the reason why we jumped at the opportunity to travel to Hong Kong at the height of the SARS epidemic, because fares to Asia were so cheap, which trip we fondly remember as our “SARS Vacation”). The boat had about 25 guests and was absolutely charming. I loved the cabins and the meals and the sight of beautiful green islands drifting by and calm waters surrounding us all day. It was heavenly! After a fun-filled day exploring an enormous cave, kayaking, and squid-fishing, we spent a relaxing night on the boat and the next day sailed to a private island with equally charming wooden bungalows overlooking an isolated beach with powdery soft white sand. After our tour of Ha Long Bay, we spent a night in Ha Noi and then returned to Vinh Phuc before heading up to the mountains of Tam Dao to visit temples and enjoy more cool mountainous weather. After a final meal with Hung’s family, we boarded our plane back to Saigon feeling sleepy, weary, and contented.

Not only did Tom and I have a fantastic time, our kids were delirious with joy. I think that was the best part. The sight of them running and laughing so gleefully all over the boat and the beach are memories that will warm my heart for the rest of my life. Even my hypercritical mom, who’s hard to please and quick to find fault, couldn’t help but be thrilled. When she first met Hung’s relatives, she was skeptical about their motives. She had her prejudices about northern VN people, as most southern VN people do. There might be residual tension between northerners and southerners, something about a war. Southerners think northerners are two-faced, mean, arrogant. Northerners think southerners are tactless, uncultured posers. Those are the stereotypes anyway. The first meal hosted by Hung’s family was dominated by beef dishes, which, after my Stir Fried Beef FAIL experience, we knew was no small expenditure. Instead of being honored and grateful that our hosts had splurged on us, my mom whispered to me that northern VN people like to “show off” because they used to be so poor. By the end of the trip, my mom had to concede that Hung’s relatives were genuinely gracious, kind-hearted people.

My cousin SW had been nervous about the trip and especially the boat tour because she didn’t want us to be disappointed. Seeing us so happy made her really happy which in turn made us even happier. Happiness is just as infectious as misery. Everything wasn’t completely perfect all the time, but it was easy to overlook minor imperfections. The company we were in had as much impact on our experience as the activities and the amenities we enjoyed. Being around generous, caring people who are so eager for you to have a good time and who are so invested in your happiness cannot fail to put you in a good mood. And the children behaved beautifully. There were mild skirmishes and breakdowns but all standard stuff and I was pleasantly surprised by my cousin’s sons and so proud of my own kids. They ate well and didn’t torture us. In a nutshell, we were in the ideal setting to thoroughly enjoy ourselves. I don’t think we would have enjoyed ourselves or appreciated our surroundings nearly as much if we had traveled with different people; not because we don’t enjoy the company of other people, but because the people we were with were bending over backwards to make us happy, so we were highly motivated to forget any complaints and focus on the upside. Glass half full sort of thing. Except our glass was much more than half full; it was brimming, with good fortune, good intentions, good company, and good cheer.

Tom presiding over drunk men

Women washing dishes in the courtyard

How dishes get dried

Sticky rice and grilled meat in Sapa

The best bowl of pho bac

Snow White and her Prince Charming Hung

Nighttime squid-fishing

Sleeping under a mosquito net

Open-mouth sleeping on the bus back to Ha Noi

Our gracious hosts, Anh Tu and Chi Van

Hung’s second cousins Trang and Nam loved the kids

This would be totally inappropriate in 10 years

This is what vacation is all about

Tom didn’t want to post any pictures or announcements about this momentous event in his life, probably due to a mixture of shame and embarrassment but mostly because of a sense of delicacy towards our canine-loving American friends, but I’ve decided to expose him because I believe that if you’re going to do something, you should admit to doing it and if you’re too ashamed to admit it, then you shouldn’t have done it. In reality, Tom isn’t all that ashamed of himself, and our philosophy on dogmeat is very similar, at least in theory. Even so, I refuse to try it and probably never will.

We don’t have any pets at home and I’m not a dog person. I don’t have anything against dogs, they just seem to be more trouble than they’re worth. I like animals but I’m not passionate about them. I hate the idea of cruelty towards any living creature. We buy cage-free whenever we can and I aspire to be vegetarian at some later point in my life. Right now I enjoy meat too much to give it up. In my mind, the only distinction that should be made among types of meat is taste (and maybe availability, sustainability, and environmental impact). Dogs shouldn’t necessarily enjoy a privileged status because they’re treasured pets in some parts of the world. Maybe pet owners would never eat their pets or their pets’ species of animal, but that shouldn’t stop someone else who doesn’t have qualms about it. Pigs are more intelligent than dogs and their capacity for suffering is not in any way inferior to dogs, so I feel like the stigma surrounding consumption of dogmeat shouldn’t be any different than the stigma surrounding consumption of pork. Animals are animals and I have as much sympathy for cows and pigs as I do for dogs. Yet I’ll eat beef and pork but I won’t touch dogmeat, ever. It’s because I’m American and I understand the deep-seated affection that many Americans have for their cats and dogs, and there’s a cultural stigma that you can’t ignore.

Based on my appearance, I’ve been pegged a foreigner my entire life, and it’s been an uphill battle to fit in. I’ve always been too shy or too nerdy or too standoffish or too weird or too sarcastic or too obnoxious or too Asian or not Asian enough. When you’re accused of eating cat or dog as a child, in addition to all your other eccentricities, you’re none too anxious to run out and try cat or dog as an adult. I have a hard enough time trying to get society to accept me and perceive me the way I want to be perceived without adding the label of “dog-eater” to my list of quirks. I’m simply not curious enough about dogmeat to accept the stigma attached to eating it. Tom is braver and less hypocritical than me in that respect. He’s been wanting to try dogmeat since the first time we visited VN over 13 years ago and now he can finally cross it off his bucket list.

We’re back in Saigon in anticipation of our next trip to the northern region of Vietnam. My cousin has planned an 11 day vacation for us and we depart in a few days. Tom and I, our kids, my mom, my cousin and her husband and their two boys, ages 6 and 10. The literal English translation of my cousin’s name is Snow White. Even though SW has graciously handled every detail and prepaid many of our expenses, I’m a little nervous about the trip. SW, who’s about my age, is probably my favorite cousin in VN right now. She’s sweet, fun-loving, and likes to tease. I’m still self-conscious about my language skills so I can’t be as comfortable and talkative as I would like to be around SW and her husband, Hung. I’m worried about how the upcoming trip will affect our relationship. An 11 day vacation is probably the ultimate test of compatibility.

I worry that SW will mistake my shyness for dullness, or worse, think that I’m sullen and unappreciative. I worry that I’ll hate her kids. So far I don’t have the best impression of them. I worry that I’ll hate my kids. They’ve proven to be pretty terrible on vacation. I worry that accommodations and food are going to be unappealing or patently offensive. I worry that partway through the trip we’ll realize that no one is having fun and everyone is in fact thoroughly miserable and only destined for more misery because we’ll be trapped with each other until the vacation runs its course. I worry about tension, awkwardness, resentment, boredom, frustration, alienation, or God forbid open hostility and declarations of war. Vacationing with my mom is always a risky proposition and she and I are on the outs right now due to a recent fight so that doesn’t bode well for this venture. Basically I worry that this trip might turn out to be like our last trip.

My expectations are so low that I’m just hoping we don’t end up hating each other. It would be a bonus to actually have fun, but I’m not holding my breath for 11 days.

As nice as it sounds to have all your meals prepared by excellent cooks who specialize in your favorite food — homemade VN food — after awhile you start to feel like a freeloader. I try to help my cousins in the kitchen but they usually shoo me away, insisting they’ve got it covered. All I’ve been able to do on a consistent basis is wash dishes, which I’m neither particularly good at nor fond of. More accurately, I’m too good at washing dishes, as in I’m too careful and thus too slow. I can’t stand the feel of oily dishes so I scrub carefully and sometimes re-wash two or three times. My pace is far too slow for any rinsing partner, and even when I’m on rinse duty my scrubbing partner will still outpace me. I especially dislike dishwashing in VN because I don’t feel like the dishes get really clean. I guess when you have to manually wash every single dish because automatic dishwashers are practically nonexistent, you adapt by speed-washing. It’s yet another fact of grossness for which I have to look the other way.

I’m happiest in the kitchen, and in general, when I’m cooking. One of the happiest moments of recent memory was when I was cooking at home as my husband worked nearby on his laptop and my kids played on the floor. I actually remember thinking to myself, “This is what happiness feels like. This is how I would define it.” I derive such pleasure from food, eating it, preparing it, serving it to people I love, that cooking is hardly ever a chore. Because I enjoy cooking and haven’t had much opportunity to do it since I’ve been in VN, and because my female cousins never get a break from doing it, I volunteered to buy ingredients and make lunch for my uncle’s family. A simple proposition, right? My mother had misgivings from the start. She worried that we wouldn’t know what and how to buy at the local market, which was very different from an American grocery store. She worried that our VN relatives weren’t accustomed to our American portions or style of cooking. I brushed aside her concerns. For crying out loud, I wanted to say, it’s just lunch, not the end of the world. I decided to make what I considered an easy, straightforward meal: cubes of beef marinated in garlic and soy sauce, flash fried in butter and served with a simple green salad tossed with onions, tomatoes, and a lime juice and olive oil vinaigrette. I chose beef fried in butter because it’s a crowd-pleaser and I observed over the course of several weeks that beef was never served. Fish was the primary fare the vast majority of the time, while chicken and pork were served sparingly. At the market I realized why; the price of beef was astronomical compared to other foods. A cousin who was a regular at the market accompanied me so there was no risk of getting ripped off. Even so, our grocery bill for the day was triple of what the family averaged.

I went to work as soon as we got home. I cubed the beef against the grain and mixed it with plenty of minced garlic and shallots. I added soy sauce and oyster sauce, a liberal sprinkle of cracked pepper and a few splashes of sesame oil and combined everything until it smelled familiarly fragrant. I made this meal at home so many times I could do it in my sleep. I soaked thick slices of white onions in lime juice, sugar, salt, pepper, and more sesame oil. When it was almost time to fry the beef, I scooped the slightly pickled onions into a vat of freshly washed lettuce leaves and whisked olive oil and soy sauce into the lime juice concoction to make a dressing. As I lightly tossed the lettuce with the dressing, the leaves started to wilt in my hands. Was it the heat or humidity? Was VN lettuce wimpier than what I was used to? By the time I plated three serving trays with the dressed salad, the lettuce had completely lost all will to live. Even obscured by slices of bright red tomatoes, the salad looked pathetic. I started to get nervous. I heated the wok for a long time because I knew the key to saving the meal was to fry the beef in a screaming hot pan. Unfortunately I realized for the first time that the fire on the burner remained fairly low even on the highest setting. On my stove at home it would have constituted a medium low fire. My heart was pounding as I added oil and waited to add scoops of margarine (butter was nowhere to be found at the market). I whispered a little prayer to the kitchen gods as I spilled the marinated beef into the wok, hoping against all odds to get a good sear. Surrounded by my cousins, I felt their expert eyes watching the American girl fumble clumsily around their kitchen. In my own kitchen I’m completely at ease, know where everything is and exactly what to do, move and work confidently. Being watched by superior cooks in a foreign kitchen was so nerve-racking that it was difficult to suppress the trembling in my fingers. When the beef hit the wok, hot oil and melted margarine splattered my hands. I pretended nothing happened to cover up my rookie mistake. After the initial sizzle, the meat started to purr and sweat, which was the opposite of what I wanted it to do. I knew I was doomed, even before I tested a slice. It smelled good and was properly seasoned but the consistency was rubbery and tough. I couldn’t afford to over-fry the beef, which would make it even tougher, so I scooped the limp, gray slices onto platters of soggy salad. After enjoying so many incredible meals at my uncle’s table I was humiliated to serve such an inferior dish. Was it my imagination or did more family members appear at lunch than usual? I wanted to run away and hide, rather than sitting through the meal, picking at a half bowl of rice and eating as little as possible of the ruined meat, my face burning in shame as family members offered words of comfort and consolation, as if I had needlessly sacrificed a cow, which is essentially what I did. To my mother’s credit, even though she ended up being justified in her apprehensions, she didn’t rub it in with innuendos of “I told you so” but instead tried to defend my failure. She explained how meat in the U.S. was so much more tender than in VN and how we were used to cooking at higher levels of heat. She scolded the cousin who shopped with me for not selecting the right cut of meat and criticized the inadequacy of the stove burner. I usually hate it when my mother is right but in this instance she handled it as graciously as I could have hoped for.

Even the side dish I prepared, a foolproof omelet of duck eggs stirred with fermented bean curd, soy sauce, scallions and pepper, was a flop. It was another simple dish I liked to make at home (with chicken rather than duck eggs) to eat with rice. One cousin cautioned me not to make too much because she wasn’t sure if the family would like it since no one had cooked bean curd with eggs before. Out of nervousness and insecurity, I reduced the amount of bean curd. The same cousin who cautioned me about preparing too much whispered to another cousin that my omelet was bland. It was so disheartening to hear how I had mismanaged eggs, the lowest form of cooking. I’m not sure if I have the courage to attempt another meal in my uncle’s kitchen, but if I don’t I’ll never redeem myself and be forever remembered as an incompetent cook. Until I decide what to do, I’ll be nursing my wounds – three burned fingers, a sliced thumb, and a bruised ego.

Tom, my mom, my uncle and I got into discussion about gender roles and disparities. My mom mostly facilitated the conversation by acting as translator. My uncle is in his sixties and is about as old-school VN as you can get, without being a jerk about it. Respectability and social formalities are important to him. Before you partake in any meal at his table you have to invite all of your elders and superiors to partake.

Tom and I were explaining to my uncle that parenting our Vietnamese American children is a complicated balancing act. There are qualities and characteristics from both cultures that we want them to embrace, though they are sometimes at odds with one another. We want our kids to be obedient and respectful, but not too deferential and timid. We want them to be confident and aggressive when pursuing their goals, without being obnoxious or arrogant. To illustrate our point, I described how women’s salaries in the U.S. were consistently lower than men’s salaries for comparable work and experience. When the discourse started trending toward feminist themes, my uncle posed a question: why were women treated as unequal to men, in the U.S. and throughout the world? I listed a host of socio-political factors: women were less opportunistic when negotiating on their own behalf, were less vocal about their accomplishments, were often punished rather than rewarded for aggressive behavior. He interrupted by putting up his hand. I had it all wrong. Men are the sun, upon which all things in nature and on earth depend for life and sustenance. By reason of its power and magnitude, the sun compels everything to revolve around it. Women are the moon: smaller, weaker, and fated by its insignificance to follow the trajectory dictated by the sun, utterly incapable of forging its own path. At night the moon reflects a shadowy version of the light that radiates from the daytime sun. As the moon absorbs the sun’s light to cast a weak moonlight under which nothing can thrive, a woman merely shadows her husband’s ability to think, plan, decide, and act. She cannot exist without him and cannot hope to reverse the course of nature. In short, women are treated as unequal to men because they are unequal to men. I wasn’t sure how to counter his circular and conclusory reasoning and decided not to try. Tom was laughing at the look on my face, which I can only guess is the look I wear when confronted with inordinate quantities of bullshit, but I honestly wasn’t offended or even incredulous. My uncle’s generation, especially in light of his upbringing in VN, gets a free pass when it comes to sexism. I find it amusing and quaint. And to be fair, considering his staggering success and ability to amass more wealth than we could possibly hope to, he has grounds for being a little smug in his masculine judgment.

I sometimes find it hard to adapt to the gender roles and expectations that confront me in VN. For example, when my uncle launched into his “men are the sun, women are the moon” rhetoric, he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I was looking directly at his face like I normally do when anyone is speaking to me. After a while it occurred to me that my direct gaze was making him uncomfortable so I averted my eyes and cast them downwards. In my peripheral vision I saw that he at that point looked at me as he spoke, and realized that direct eye contact was too confrontational under the circumstances, not deferentially demure enough for a niece being addressed by her uncle.

Later at dinner, I sat at the table after I finished eating to hang out as others continued eating and talking. Mosquitoes love to feast on ankles under the dinner table and I was already scratching a few bites so I lifted my foot to my chair to keep my ankle off of the floor and to gain better access to the itchy hives. My uncle motioned for me to lower my knee and leg off of the chair. I was mortified, for being perceived as acting inappropriately or unladylike and especially for being corrected in front of everyone. I don’t worry about crossing boundaries or acting unladylike in the U.S. because I at least know that I’m doing it. In VN I’m sure there are things I do that are overlooked because I’m Viet Kieu (like taking swigs from Tom’s beer can) but I’m in constant fear of crossing some unknown social or gender boundary. I’m not one to obsess about manners or decorous behavior so this is new, and uncomfortable, for me.

At home my favorite part of the day were those few precious hours after we put the kids to bed on the weekend. During the week those hours were often spent working but on the weekend they were reserved for luxuries like movie night with Tom or pleasure reading. It’s almost impossible to manage anything like that when you’re sharing a bedroom with your kids. In theory we could go downstairs to the living room after putting them to bed but somehow that doesn’t seem like a real option. The concentration of mosquitoes is worst on the first floor, so we don’t like to hang out there unless we have to. Due to the perennial heat, there aren’t any comfy couches or cushioned seating at all, just hard wooden chairs. The only comfortable seating for us Viet Kieu are beds. Also, by around 9pm the household pretty much shuts down and all lights are turned off. I don’t think anyone would mind or care if we ventured downstairs and turned on some lights or watched TV afterhours but since all the nuclear families withdraw to their respective bedrooms after dinner, we don’t want to be the oddball couple any more than we already are. I don’t even know if there are any English language channels worth watching; I seem to have less time for TV than ever before, which is fine by me. We also theoretically could escape to the spare bedroom on the third floor where Tom works during the day, but we don’t. It’s fairly comfortable to work there in the daytime with the windows open, armed with only our mosquito-electrocuting tennis racket and a fan, but at night any lights would be a beacon to bugs everywhere, and I don’t like the idea of being a floor above our sleeping kids and insulated by closed doors and windows. On occasion I’ll continue working for a short time on the laptop in the dim light of our bedroom’s nightlight, but for the most part when it’s lights out for our kids, it’s lights out for us too. It’s so bizarre for me, the habitual night owl, to be ready for bed by 9pm. It’s also really hard for anyone to sleep in because one person’s stirring usually wakes everyone else. Because we now go to sleep and wake up with our kids (which may be what other parents do, but it’s never been our practice), the only other way to enjoy those blissful periods of our children’s unconsciousness is to skip the afternoon siesta. My mother and I have worked out a highly informal, fluid schedule where, when she feels like it, she looks after the kids while I join Tom in the spare third floor bedroom to read or blog while he works. It’s as close to “alone time” as anyone can get in VN. Fortunately I’m always happy to hang out with Tom and he’s always so engrossed in his work that he hardly notices my presence.

Our daily craving for seclusion is something of an anomoly here. In VN people are accustomed to being around family all day long. All the time, everyday. It’s part of the reason why no one sleeps alone and kids don’t leave their parents’ beds until middle school (and the reason why our bed is the size of two queen beds pushed together, because it’s expected that nuclear families sleep together). Being alone is considered scary. Our VN relatives don’t seem to have any need or desire to escape from one another. Of course there will always be in-fighting and tension when multiple generations and branches are forced by the patriarch to live under one roof (my cousins would prefer to have separate households to prevent bickering among wives and in-laws but what could they do except acquiesce when my uncle built a mansion specifically designed for everyone to live together), but everyone gets along surprisingly well considering how they’re in each other’s faces all the time. I could spend the entire day just hanging out with various relatives, and some days I do exactly that. Family members are always milling about, congregating in the kitchen/dining room area to chat, joke around or sprawl out on the cool marble tiles of the floor to escape the heat.

My mom moved in with us last year to help out with the kids and even though she’s been a godsend, I find it hard to be as nice to her as I should be. Part of it’s cultural, part of it’s emotional baggage, part of it’s typical mother-daughter stuff, but I just need to get away from her sometimes. In America we’re conditioned from the time we’re prepubescent to seek independence from our parents, to keep secrets from them, to sneak out of the house so we can have fun behind their backs. Parental presence means parental supervision which means loss of autonomy and fun. Here, it’s unthinkable to go anywhere without inviting my uncle and my mom, along with everyone else (my aunt is summering in Australia). Outings always include parents and kids unless they have other commitments. So if we’re going out to dinner or having drinks or grabbing coffee or a snack, EVERYONE has to join. Tom and I see our kids as a nuisance in public, but my cousins don’t mind being around their kids at all; I don’t think it’s occurred to them to mind. A few days ago my youngest female cousin, the baby of the family who’s called Ut, invited us to grab an afternoon snack of banh beo (little steamed rice cakes topped with dried shrimp, a miniature pork rind and fish sauce), and because we didn’t want to deal with the hassle of bringing along our kids who weren’t going to eat and who were most likely going to whine or cause some other mischief, we asked my mom to stay at home with them while we went. Even though she initially agreed, she didn’t hesitate to accept Ut’s invitation. My first instinct was to be annoyed. Annoyed that she wanted to tag along, annoyed that it meant our kids were going with us. I don’t know why I was so reluctant to have them join us; the outing took less than 90 minutes and simply involved eating trays of banh beo. We weren’t gossiping or telling secrets and my Vietnamese is so poor that it’s not like I could have a profound conversation with my cousins even if I tried; besides, all of their kids were there too. I’m just so used to the idea of needing to escape from my mom and my kids to have fun. Because it’s not possible to have fun around them, because being around them is a chore or obligation. Which makes me feel like a terrible daughter and parent.

In my defense and as an aside, my cousins don’t spend all day with their kids. In VN those who can afford it send their infants off to daycare as soon as possible (which to me is the reverse of how daycare is viewed in the U.S., not as an amenity but a necessity because neither parent can afford to stay at home or hire a nanny). Daycare and school hours extend much longer in VN than in the U.S. After kindergarten, it’s customary for children to have 12 hour school days!!! On top of the mandatory curriculum, parents pay for additional hours of schooling in the evenings and on weekends. Even if you don’t want to force extra schooling on your kids, teachers and your own kids will pressure you to pay for extra schooling so they don’t fall behind their peers.

In any event, I need to take a lesson from my cousins who not only tolerate their parents’ and children’s company, they prefer it because they don’t want to exclude anyone from the fun. That’s why outings are always so family-friendly. It’s endearing how innocent my cousins are. When they want to go out for drinks, they don’t mean cocktails; they mean blended smoothies that are consumed with strange snack concoctions like this one:

I keep having to remind myself that one of my goals this year is to strengthen relationships that are meaningful to me. My mom is definitely someone I need to reconnect with, and both she and my kids deserve to be cherished. Isn’t that why I stopped working in the first place? I just need to get over my baggage with my mom. It’s easy to see why my cousins love her. Around them she’s perfectly charming; the jovial aunt who’s teased and teases affectionately. Around me, she’s hyper-sensitive and easily offended, I guess because she has her own baggage when it comes to me. She constantly nags and treats me like a twelve year old. Is that compulsory behavior for all mothers? Am I destined to become like her? I shudder to think how much like my mother I already am: impatient, judgmental, a know-it-all. Maybe that’s why we clash, though less so than before. I need to make a point of being kinder toward her, to appreciate my time with her. I’m sure our interactions would be more enjoyable if I wasn’t always trying to distance myself from her.

As for our kids, honestly, who doesn’t need a break from their kids? Young children are inherently annoying. They’re capricious, temperamental, irrational, have short attention spans, interrupt every conversation to badger you with inane questions like “Momma why do flies fly? Why? Why? Why? WHY???” And if I’m ever sitting down, one of them inevitably tries to worm their way onto my lap. Ordinarily this would be a sweet gesture and I must sound like a heartless mother for complaining, but it’s unbearable because it’s a million degrees outside and neither of them is capable of sitting still. I’m already sweating like a pig just sitting there by myself so imagine the discomfort generated by another hot, sweaty body squirming on your lap. It’s times like these that I need to invoke Buddhist mindfulness techniques. As soon as I stop perceiving their presence as a distraction, as soon as my focus shifts entirely to them and I notice their adorable smiling faces and remember how unconditionally they love me, how if I lost them I would be forever filled with despair and longing and wish that they would climb into my lap and badger me with their innocent questions, I’m suddenly aware of how brief and precious my time with them is. Of course, it’s not practical to apply Buddhist mindfulness to my kids all the time. It wouldn’t be healthy for anyone if I catered to them every time they demanded my attention, and I would probably look like a freak if I were fixated on my kids all day along. But I need to practice mindfulness more than I do. I need to resist the urge to escape from the present. Sometimes privacy and isolation can be good, therapeutic, restorative. Given the chance, being around your loved ones can be too.