My Aunt and Her Return

My Aunt Chon and her husband Lam returned to Viet Nam for the first time in well over 10 years. This time they bring back a 21 month old boy and another one in the womb waiting to be delivered. Of course their past images of Sai Gon and Viet Nam have become strikingly obsolete. Viet Nam was quietly changing when they last left.

Now it was strange for me to watch my Aunt and Uncle be overwhelmed by the progress and the chaos of the city. Sai Gon blinded their senses – loud streets, unsettling heat, blasting dusts, blinking lights, and suffocating exhaust fumes. These senses coincided with long lost emotions of the past which inevitably leads to sensory overload. Consequently, their visceral reactions resembled my initial reactions in Viet Nam.

They have been so Americanized (or Canadianized since they live in Toronto) that their own Vietnamese roots have also been uprooted like mine. They even speak Viet-lish, throwing in English words that most Vietnamese would not understand in daily conversation. The buzzing motorbikes frighten them when they need to cross their street and they would not dare to drive a motorbike. They don’t know how to snap open plastic bags of towels in that slick poppy way at a restaurant. Thus, life in Viet Nam has become completely foreign to them.

Furthermore, with my 3 months of Viet experience, I look like less of a foreigner than they do. However they live on remnants of their past, holding onto their hazy youth in Viet Nam. Instead I start anew, creating images that will crystallize into my old age. They are trying to let go of the old and welcome the new. I am simply welcoming the new. But within 3 weeks, I expect them to be Viet pros, settling into the carefree Viet life. And then once again, I will look more like a foreigner and amateur than they do.