It wasn’t until a couple years ago that I really felt bad about not being able to speak Vietnamese, during a visit to my aunt.  Every summer when I was growing up, my mom would fly us out to visit our massive extended family in Denver, and we would always stay at Bac Ngoc’s place.  Over time, it was with her daughter, her grandkids, in an apartment, then a townhouse, but it was always with Bac Ngoc.  She was the constant in all of our visits.

After graduating from high school, I didn’t go back to Denver again for over 15 years.  By this time, Bac Ngoc was living on her own in a townhouse, something unimaginable to me for a woman in her early nineties.  I sat with her on the couch and she held my massive paw in her delicate hand, speaking softly in Vietnamese and commenting on various things, only some of which I could understand.  I had gotten myself a Paloma Picasso ring from Tiffany’s that I wore constantly at that point, so much so that some of the soft little leaves that comprised the olive branch surrounding my finger eventually snapped off.  I remember her holding my hand and saying how beautiful it was.  But it’s the only part that I could understand without my mother’s help translating.

Sitting there with the glaring testament to disposable income encircling my finger, I felt the guilty sting of privilege, and mourned all the missed opportunities I had to grow.  My aunt lives very simply and sparsely, and this ring I had bought myself was probably the equivalent of an entire month’s groceries for her.  But more than that, it hit me that in all the times I’d ever stayed with her from childhood to adulthood, I have never been able to speak directly to her.  To ask how her day was, if I could help with anything, to tell her how grateful I am that she’s here, and to tell her how much I love her.  To speak her language and understand her, instead of her having to point at things or mime them.

Despite this awkwardness, I also believe that love for another human being is its own language.  I didn’t have to speak Vietnamese to know that my grandmother loved me, or that Bac Ngoc does.  Sometimes the very emotions that lack spoken words are stronger for their absence, and to that end, I am grateful for never fully feeling the effects of a language barrier.

My aunt was back in the hospital yesterday.  My mother and I had visited her last October on what I fully expected to be a goodbye trip.  She’d been in the hospital for far too long due to various complications, and by the time we saw her, it was through the window of a care facility she’d been transferred to.  We couldn’t go in due to COVID-19 restrictions (someone on the staff had tested positive), so we stood in blinding sunlight trying to catch glimpses of my aunt who lay in shadows just beyond the glare of the window, turning her head away from the unrecognizable strangers in masks staring in at her.  It was heartbreaking to have traveled over 1,600 miles to be mere inches away and not get to hug her, or even sit beside her.  But even after all of that, a few months later she went back home.  No more 108 degree fever.  No more infection.  Just home.

Today marks 695 consecutive days of DuoLingo Vietnamese lessons for me.  I’m still nervously edging my way through the second unit after all this time, as I only intermittently babble a few words in Vietnamese, and almost exclusively to my mother alone.  Some words come very slowly, others I realize I’ve heard my whole life without any meaning to previously anchor them.  But they’re slowly beginning to sink in and I can understand them when I hear them now.

I desperately hope that the odds my aunt has defied all of this time will continue to work in her favour, and that I’m afforded at least one more chance to see her again in person.  I hope to be able to hug her and to tell her a few of the most valuable words I’ve learned so far: cam on, va con yeu Bac Ngoc.

Deep Dish: Say Hello