Hàng Ngày

Yet I want to write…don’t really know why?

Talked to my brother tonight. Almost cried.

Maybe I will be back to NYC this weekend after all.

Jessie sits alone in her room knitting a hat for her newest great-grandchild Matthew. Or was it Michael? It’s hard to keep the names straight anymore, there are just too many of them. This hat will be light blue with two thin navy stripes: one around the fold and one around the top. The top will have corresponding tassles that will flop around on the baby’s head as he crawls around on all fours. The lamp next to Jessie’s pale green loveseat throws barely enough light for her to see the points of the needles crossing over and back, looping the yarn, turning the soon-to-be hat.

Her room is full of photographs. They surround her, drawing your eye’s attention away from the only living face in the room and toward those who merely appear to come alive with laughter. She hears them laughing every once in a while in the old Forest Avenue kitchen in Glenridge, in her small screened-in-porch in Emerald Isle, in the dining rooms and living rooms of countless children, grandchildren, friends, and friends of friends. She stops every once in a while to listen to their laughter.

***

Now she doesn’t knit hats anymore. The great grandchildren are still coming in a steady stream, but her motor skills with the needles are complicated by the swelling in her wrists and her eyesight is not what it used to be. No doubt thanks to her previous habit of knitting in the dark. She still sits in her pale green chair and looks around the room at the still faces of the photographs and the moving faces of her son and two grandchildren. They are talking about traveling somewhere…and school…and…

Jessie’s eyes can barely stay open for more than a few minutes. She’s so tired. All she wants is to sleep. Her eyes close and her head nods to the side, resting on the corner of the tall armchair. It rests there for a moment, and she lets herself dream. She dreams of her husband. They are standing by the side of a large lake in Pennsylvania. He has just bought a small house out here in the woods, and he’s bringing his family to see it for the first time. Their five oldest children are playing with the pebbles on the lake shore, throwing, skipping, and juggling. Her youngest daughter is perched on her father’s right hip, looking around at the beautiful scene. Jessie smiles at her husband and whispers, “I love you.”

Her granddaughter sees her mouthing words with no sound, her head lolling against the side of the chair. Her granddaughter can’t really make out much of what Jessie is saying, but wonders where she is. Jessie’s eyes open and her head picks up and she cranks her neck around the room like an owl. She whispers to her grandson, “Now you be careful!” in an assertive tone and looks to her son who smiles in approval. Jessie smiles back and looks to her granddaughter who also smiles. Everyone is smiling. Everyone is solemn. They are not sad, just solemn, sober, contemplative.

Jessie’s head begins to drift again as she falls back into her fitful dream world. This time she is with her husband again, but not at the lake. She is in a hospital room and he is on the white bed with rollers and metal railings. He is sleeping. She is simply watching him. It is late, but her oldest daughter has promised to put the three youngest kids to bed early. Jessie sits quietly for several hours, waiting for her husband to wake up. He does not wake up.

Her eyes open again and this time there is a nurse in the room with her son and two grandchildren. It’s time for her noontime medication. She swallows the cup full of pills with ease, then points to the oxygen machine and tube on the floor, indicating to her son that he needs to hand it to her. He obliges and she places the inhaler-like mouthpiece over the tube and inserts the applicator into her mouth. “Breathe naturally,” the nurse’s words echo in Jessie’s head. “How can you breathe naturally if you have a piece of hard cold plastic stuck inside your mouth?” she thinks. But she obeys the nurse and continues breathing the high quality tube-air into her lungs. Her eyes are open, but she’s still tired. Her son and grandchildren get up to leave. They each come to her chair and put their arms around her shoulders in an awkward embrace. Awkward because of the inhaler and tube contraption blocking her face. After each hugs her in turn, they move toward the door, but are reluctant to leave. They linger in the entryway a few seconds, her granddaughter looking around, fixing the image in her mind: the photographs, the knick-knacks, the old familiar frayed furniture, the light, her grandmother puffing away at the dense, pure oxygen.

Jessie takes the machine out of her mouth. “Have a good night,” she says in a hearty whisper and throws her head in the direction of the door with a slight nod.

“Bye grandma,” they say, and pull the door behind them. Jessie lays her head against the chair and closes her eyes.

Yesterday I embarked upon my new resolution to write every day (not necessarily on this blog). This of course had to be a day when I went to a volunteer training until 8:30 pm and arrived home at nine exhausted and ravenous. When I finally sat down to the writing table ( a small folding table with a little wooden stool shoved up against one of the low windowsills in my room) it was 9:50. OK, here it goes, I thought. I figured I might not make it, my brain was swimming with sleepy delirium, and so I set my alarm for 10:20, just to see if I could do it.

It was a rough start, I couldn’t think what to write about, but after a few minutes, got into a good subject and started writing furiously until my hand cramped with the excitement and energy of the words spilling out of my head. I was writing about one of my students, a character sketch basically, nothing complicated, but it felt so good to be putting images to paper with my 3 cent Vietnamese click-pen. I got so into it that when my alarm went off at 10:20 I jumped about 3.5 inches off of my seat and my pen skidded halfway up the page I was writing on. I no longer felt tired, my brain was buzzing with creative juice, and I kept going for quite a while until I realized that it was probably bed-time for this grandmother, capped my pen, and put away the notebook. But damn, that felt good.

It’s not the new year. And it’s not Tet. But I’ve had several conversations with friends and family members over the past few days that have had a deep impact on me. I have also been reading The Fountainhead for the second time, which is re-inspiring me to pursue the art of “selfishness” for the sake of personal fulfillment and happiness. I love my work, but one of the things I regret about starting this job so soon after leaving Vietnam was that I didn’t really have time to process that experience, especially the experience of visiting my students and close friends in their homes, living their lives with them and seeing a real part of Vietnam that I feel few foreigners get to see. I really wanted to have time to write about the experience, to document my travels and my relationships, and mostly to share the lives and work of these amazing people with my “fans” at home and with the world. Since coming back to the US I’ve been writing so little that I’ve gotten nagging text messages and emails from *certain* friends to update my blog more often. OK. I will update my blog more often. But it goes beyond that. I am realizing that when I don’t have time to write for myself, I don’t feel as happy. And I’m also starting to think that writing about the work I’ve done, the places I’ve seen, the experiences I’ve had, and mostly about the people I’ve met is an important and in fact central part of my life and my happiness. I love writing, and I would love the chance to pursue it in a more “professional” sense, or at least in a more substantial way. So my resolution: I am going to write for at least 30 minutes a day every day from now on, until I feel like I don’t want to be trying this anymore. I say 30 minutes because I would really like to do it for an hour, but an hour feels daunting to me right now. I will work up to an hour a day. I don’t know if that necessarily means I will update the blog more often (sorry Minh ). But it does mean that at some point I might try to give this writing thing a shot in a real way…but for now I need to practice, get my thoughts flowing, figure out my style, and experiment with my voice a little bit more.

I need to work on the final sentences. I feel like I want a really concrete, definitive closing sentence right now, and I’ve got nuthin’

Minh said to update my blog again (you’re so demanding!)

The past week has been one of the longest weeks of my life. It began on Friday with Spring Orientation for new long-term VIA volunteers (formerly known as “Hostel” for you old VIA-ers, like me). On Friday afternoon at 2 pm, Scott (my boss) and I departed from the office on bicycle for our nearly 1.5 hour trip around the Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge, across the bridge, and into the Marin Headlands. When we arrived we were greeted by a pack of new long-term VIA volunteers, and the fun began.

I remember Hostel weekend when I was a volunteer. I remember going out to the Santa Cruz mountains for the weekend, meeting my new support network, and feeling like I was strangely at home among strangers. One of the Vietnam volunteers really hit it on the head in the weekend’s evaluation sheet: “What a great group of like-minded individuals, but from such diverse backgrounds.” My group of ten new Vietnam volunteers is great. They get along with each other, they have an amazing level of prior knowledge about Vietnam, they’re flexible, they’re energetic, they’re ready for adventure. I’m so excited to begin working with them, and it reaffirmed for me the “right-ness” of this job choice for me right now. I still do miss teaching, but the training sessions were somewhat like teaching in a lot of ways.

Back to the office on Monday I threw myself straight into a large grant proposal which we sent out on Tuesday (yeah!) and allowed me to work closely with Scott to determine what we want the program to look like over the next few years in terms of goals and expectations, and how to measure them. I never thought that asking foundations for money could be so interesting. Tuesday’s happy-hour with the staff, although well-earned, was somewhat tame because we were all so tired. It ended with Nathan, Abby and I sitting at a Thai restaurant drinking two pitchers of beer over two hours, and me going home to fall into bed at 9:30 pm. The conversation was great though, somewhat work-related (nooo!) but also very personal about our experiences living in Asia and reasons for working with these programs.

Friday’s excitement was two “conference calls” with my new summer volunteers. The first one, using Skype, sounded like we were standing in the middle of a rice paddy in Phu Yen with the wind gusting around us. But we got almost everything accomplished, and the four Viet-Am volunteers are really excited about the work they’ll be doing. The second one was a “chat-room” conference and was pretty much a disaster as I had technical difficulties for the first 30 minutes which basically prevented me from participating in the chatting. The volunteers contented themselves with talking about what kinds of foods they would try this summer. They seem really easygoing, which is reassuring, as their training will probably be less than adequate this year, at least before they reach Vietnam.

After finishing with them at 6:00 pm Friday, I was free, but spent another two hours at work just screwing around. I don’t know why, but I simply didn’t want to go home. I even went out with my roommates on Thursday, and it was kind of fun. But there’s still somehow this distance between me and them that I can’t seem to bridge in my mind. They’re friendly, but not friends. After finally leaving work after 8, I decided to walk home…a long way, and cold, but I really just wanted to delay getting home that much, and when I arrived home was so exhausted I just collapsed into bed, although sleep did not come easily.

This morning I awoke to a message from Eric that ‘the guys’ in Vietnam had just drunk-dialed him. A few minutes later I got my own drunk-dial, and so I was awake at 7:30 am on a Saturday, doing laundry and baking bread, which was a big disaster (read: brick) and finally finding my way down to Alemany farm, the biggest urban farm in San Francisco. I was invited by my friend Heather from college to come for the Earth Day celebration. It was a lot of fun, many workers, I wasn’t all that helpful (staked down a few irrigation tubes, cleaned out a few bat boxes) but I thoroughly enjoyed myself, especially the band that played and reminded me of Eric, Minh, Jenna and I and how we will also start a band someday soon.

And now, I am at home again, on a Saturday night. Exhausted. I want to go to sleep. I try to go to sleep, but I can’t get my work off of my mind, all I think about is where to post volunteers, how do revise and improve the community fellowship program, that I need to book airline tickets to Asia ASAP, that I need to send visa forms to the university, ASAP, that I need to……

And I still miss.

First of all, Minh, let me just say “mày cùi qúa!” OK, now that that’s of my chest…

I guess Minh is right, in my readjusting to the good ole US of A, and acclimating to a new city, new job, new weather, new culture, and new life (gee, I haven’t been busy, have I Minh…) I’ve neglected my blog. It’s not that nothing new or interesting has happened since my procuring of the couch adventure…I just haven’t known exactly how to encapsulate all of the experiences, thoughts, and feelings I have had into a neat little blog-friendly package. You asked for it, Minh.

My work. In the past two weeks I have:

• Sent acceptance packets to 10 new long-term volunteers and 11 new summer volunteers.
• Had email exchanges and conference calls with three partners institutions in Vietnam regarding the logistical concerns of our summer programs there.
• Updated and/or created materials for the summer program coordinators for each of the two summer programs.
• Created training materials for summer volunteers, sent to summer volunteers, collected important forms like visas, resumes, and MOUs from summer volunteers, set up two conference calls to “train” summer volunteers and prepared materials for these calls.
• Prepared training materials for our upcoming spring orientation for new long-term volunteers, including background information on Vietnam, information on each of our posts there, health and insurance information, cross-cultural activities, and organized an alumni panel for the weekend.
• Kept in touch with various volunteers, host institutions in Vietnam, and other random people.
• Revised the FY 2008-9 program budget at least three times.
• Created budgets for summer program coordinators.
• Revised a large grant proposal at least three times, and been in at least five hour-long meetings about said proposal.
• Had two staff meetings and two Asia Programs meetings.
• Eaten several different kinds of home-made baked goods, including cookies from Diane’s boyfriend, and whole-wheat bread from Kirsten’s breadmaker.
• Begun to learn (slowly) how the heck to use a Mac OS, and had several fights with the copy machine.
• Looked at pictures, laughed with coworkers, played a ridiculous “cross-cultural” card game, drunk wine on Fridays, pondered the “big picture” of what VIA should stand for and what is the value of cross-cultural exchange and community service.

Wow. I’m tired. Outside of work, I haven’t done all that much, but I have been thinking a lot. In the evenings, I return home to my new room (which still doesn’t have a bed) and roommates (who I’m still getting accustomed to). I can now go running in the evenings, because it’s light outside and it’s cool, which has been fabulous for me. I’ve also walked up to this big sand-dune-like hill by my house a few times to watch the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the Pacific Ocean. I spend a lot of time in Golden Gate Park, hours at a time on the weekends, reading, napping, watching people, or just plain thinking.

I saw five members of my high school class last weekend, some of whom I hadn’t seen since high school, and it was really interesting to see their interactions with each other and their other friends. I felt like a total outsider, but it was strangely comforting to be surrounded by people who I absolutely don’t have to impress, I mean, they already know a lot of my “secrets from the past” that I try to keep from people, so pretty much anything else is easy. They don’t really understand what it’s like being back from VN, but then, I wouldn’t expect them to.

I’ve been out to Maryland to visit my Grandmother in the nursing home where she lives. My brother and dad and I sat in her room for an hour while she hazed in and out of consciousness, mumbled in her dream-like fits to people invisible to our eyes, and advised us to “be careful!” shaking her finger at us like the same old G’ma that I remember from lazy summer days spent at her little stilted house in North Carolina. It was the same tone and motion she used to use when warning us about the poison ivy and the busy street we would encounter on our walk to the beach. I missed her laugh. She smiled at us, but it seemed that laughter just took too much energy or oxygen.

I still miss my life and work in Vietnam. I find myself writing emails to and chatting with friends and students in Vietnam daily. It’s my usual evening activity. I tell myself that I should “get out” instead of staying at home and talking to people halfway around the world, but really, that’s all I want to do in the evenings, is continue some sense of my new “normalcy” by talking to Minh or Tyler online, writing emails to the fellows, and cooking Vietnamese-style rice or noodles for dinner. I have ventured out (alone, my roommate refuses to join me, and the other roommate is almost never home) on a few occasions to a local bar, where I drank a beer or two and sat watching people’s interactions. I find I am more fascinated with people’s interactions than I was before, which I didn’t think was possible. I watch people on the subway and I just smile. I watch people in bars and I smile. I watch people in the park, I watch people on the streets, and I smile. People are so cool!

I’m reading The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, for the second  time. I love that book. Not only is it well written, in my opinion, but it opens all kinds of questions in my mind about what really makes me happy, what and who I’m doing my work for, and what the nature of my interactions and relationships with others is.

I know that people like pictures, but I haven’t uploaded any from San Francisco yet. Sorry! You will have to make do with the picture I look at first thing when I get to work in the mornings: the view from one of my favorite bike rides in Long Xuyen. I have a feeling I may have shown this picture to a few friends and family members before…