Grandma puts on her frying goggles. She makes sure that the rubber band is tied around her head to keep the goggles in place. The stove is on medium low, and the wobbly aluminum pot is sat readily on it. The liquid caramel making process begins. This is one of the most basic yet challenging feats of Vietnamese cuisine. I watch her pour in the brown sugar and let it melt until dark brown. Then into the pot the water goes, making the whole pot sizzle and the smokes ascend. Everything is simmered until fully incorporated. To spoil me, the grandchild who lives half the globe away from her and visits home once in a couple of years, Grandma is going to make her signature dishes: canh rau muống (water spinach soup) and thịt băm rim (caramelized minced pork). 

I turn the radio to VOV3 where Grandma usually listens to chèo, a form of Vietnamese folk musical theatre that dates back to the 12th century. I grew up listening to VOV (Voice of Vietnam) on the radio with my grandparents. The sounds of folk music and melodic human voices brought me so much tranquility and curiosity. I felt soothed among all teenage worries, and less oblivious by tuning into what was happening outside of my bubble. My grandparents are arduous workers who have dedicated their whole lives to building a solid nuclear family amid the transitions of post-war Vietnam. Grandma always lets the radio broadcast while being busy dominating the kitchen. 

Grandma puts aside the caramel and whips out her collection of tiny, impeccably sharp knives. She uses them to peel, split and carve fresh ingredients. The knives are her treasure—old, brown, handmade, ugly, yet incredibly versatile. She cleans and sharpens them herself like a ritual and will never throw them away no matter how rough-looking they are. Grandma once told me: “Your Grandpa already said, y phục xứng kỳ đức (one’s clothing matches one’s social standing). A ramshackle house cannot have fancy new things like a mansion. It just doesn’t make sense.” Apparently, she believes that everything produced nowadays do not last as long as the old things. 

Traditionally people do not use pork with cartilage to mince and braise because of the hard crunch, but Grandma prefers it that way. She marinades the minced pork with liquid caramel, fish sauce, and black pepper. With one of her sharp knives, she peels the shallots and chops them up finely. Then she throws them in hot oil so they can sizzle and crisp up before she pours in the marinated pork. The whole pot starts rumbling dramatically like the start of a downpour. Grandma pulls out her chopsticks and stirs the pot skillfully so the meat can break into small pieces and absorb all the hot seasoning. I love the crunch of the minced pork and the smell of an absurd amount of sauteed shallots in the dish. The richness and sweetness of this delicacy used to anchor my teenage summers. It is so fulfilling and flavorful that I still dream about it sometimes when I am far away from Grandma. 

Before my second little sister was born, every summer, my other sister and I came to stay with my grandparents so they could keep an eye on us while mom and dad went to work. I loved staying with my grandparents because all we did was eat and sleep. Grandma has always been the best chef in the world. She is not afraid of putting anything in her food, just like she is not afraid of snapping at anyone who crosses her. She is known for the creative combinations of different ingredients and flavor profiles. There is no recipe, every time is different, every day is a new day. Grandma moves around the kitchen like a swan, and she is very adept at cooking feasts for gazillions of people. The way she prepares chicken from catching to serving is always beyond my imagination. 

As the chèo play turns to act two on the radio, Grandma starts prepping for her renowned canh rau muống (water spinach soup). Water spinach is native to our land and the star in every Vietnamese family meal. Grandma picks the ugliest yet sharpest, tiniest knife in her collection to peel garlic while waiting for the water to fizz. The key secret to the water spinach soup is the flavor of crushed garlic. Grandma loves garlic and always encourages us grandchildren to eat it because it beats the flu and cancer. After washing the greens, Grandma chops them up into finger-long parts so the flavor can permeate through the fiber easily. Then, she cleans her precious knife and puts it back on the shelf with the rest of the collection that surely has lived longer than me on this Earth. All of the iron knife blades are browned with time, yet Grandma refuses to replace them because they are unique and mighty.

My grandparents are hoarders. Everything in their house dates back to before I was born. They refuse to get rid of anything, no matter how much my mom and her sisters try to convince them. The children even offered to renovate the house, but my grandparents immediately said no. We used to joke that the house only accepts and never gives; once things go into it, they never come out again. I wonder if my grandparents’ thriftiness takes root in the survival mode they carry from their necessitous past. When you come from scarcity and live through war, you always have to be creative and careful with limited resources. Maybe keeping their belongings intact is my grandparents’ method to anchor themselves when their children grew up and moved away. Maybe, each item in their house carries memories of the resilient past, of how they built their lives from very little, from the wooden clothing drawer to the dining table. It’s hard to let them go. 

“Hey little frog, lay the table for me, will you?” Grandma waves at me as she finishes making the water spinach soup. The incredible mixture of odors from a freshly cooked meal plunges through my nervous system. I place every dish nicely on the aluminum tray from left to right: the water spinach soup, caramelized minced pork, a bowl of tomato dipping sauce in the middle, and fresh lettuce and herbs from the morning market with some fresh cucumbers. “Okay, come get your grandpa upstairs froggie. He’s probably watering plants on the roof.” —Grandma asks me as she wipes the eating bowls and chopsticks with her kitchen towel.

I used to hate being called “frog” by Grandma. Of all cute animals, why a slimy creature living in the swamp? When I was fifteen, I had a bike accident on my way home from school. My bike got hooked onto a truck and was crushed. No one stopped to help me on the busy streets of Hanoi. I was so hurt and offended that I started crying and running to my grandparents’ house. When Grandma saw me, she said: “You are a frog, aren’t you?” She was referring to the folk tale Ếch Ngồi Đáy Giếng, in which a frog who sits at the bottom of a well and looks at the sky thinks he knows everything about the outside world. Grandma did not console or indulge me as I was expecting. Instead, she fixed my bike herself and told me to go home. “Next time this happens, do not come to me. When no one picks you up from the street, you pick yourself up and fix the mess.”

If there is anything I learn from Grandma and the women in my family, it is resilience. 

Grandma always tells me that she can do everything, and indeed she can. Even though she had to give up school very young to take care of nine younger brothers, she is the smartest and sharpest woman I know. Grandma has an opinion for everything and never stops learning. She got married at nineteen to a man with whom she thought she could build a good family. Together they have four children, all girls. Grandma worked hard to take care of her family, and to this day she never stops working, from taking care of her grandchildren to running errands around the neighborhood. She always stands up for her loved ones. I once saw her chase one of her brothers around with a huge pestle in defense of her husband when the two men fought over some ridiculous matter. She always calls me and my cousins “frogs,” and some “plastic frogs,” which is the next level of not knowing enough about the world. Yet I know that she just wants to make sure we know how to handle ourselves. Truth be told, I find it endearing to be called “little frog” or “froggie” as a twenty-something-year-old. Grandma might not be wrong though, because I still have so much to learn about the world.

***

I turn the radio to channel seven. Grandma loves listening to paranormal stories, usually after a meal when she prepares ingredients for the next meals. The radio host chronicles the journey to find the lost body of a soldier who fought and died in the Vietnam War. The soldier’s family followed a medium who could communicate with his spirit to find out where he died, whether in the mountains or in the deep woods. This kind of reunion story always makes Grandma emotional. Sometimes I wonder if she ever has closure with the things that happened in her past, with the open wounds of forced separation.  

I ask Grandma if she has ever seen any ghosts. She says: “Yes, many actually.” Most of the paranormal encounters happened during thời bao cấp (pre-Renovation* period between 1975 and 1986), when life was very hard for the working class because of economic stagnation and production difficulties. Housing was organized in clusters, which consisted of many apartment buildings. In each cluster, residents shared a common yard and a public bathroom on the first floor. Vietnam recognized the liberation of the South and national reunification in 1975, after which all working people had to focus on rebuilding the country through economic production. The vestiges of war and restless ghosts wandered around, from the clothesline to the factories. 

“One time, I was going home after my night shift at Sao Vàng Rubber Factory and wanted to stop by the public bathroom of our Trung Tự cluster. As I walked towards the bathroom, I remember vividly that there was a woman walking in front of me. Her hair was long and as black as longan seeds. I could only see her from behind and nothing else. When I took a turn and entered the place where all the squatting toilets were, the woman was nowhere to be found. She disappeared into thin air. I was all alone in there. It was not possible that she went elsewhere because there was no other exit.”—Grandma narrates while her adept fingers manipulate the tiny sharp knife to peel shallots and garlic. 

My Grandma is not afraid of the dead. At family funerals, she always volunteers to guard the dead bodies. She also participates in gọi hồn, a ritual that calls for the spirit of the dead to take the body of the medium or someone in the family so that the spirit can talk to their loved ones and give advice. In her house, I find so many books and collections of anecdotes about the spirit world. Grandma once told me that what happens in our world will resolve gradually in the kingdom of spirits, and we humans always have to face the consequences of our actions. 

***

Before I left home for the U.S. at eighteen, Grandma sat all of us oldest grandchildren together. “You are all grown-ups and about to fly into the world. I want you to know that the most important thing you need to protect is your trinh tuyết (trinh: virginity; tuyết: snow; here she’s referring to virginity being as pure as snow). Don’t let anyone take that from you, and don’t give it away before you’re absolutely ready.” Now, every few times we talk on the phone, Grandma tells me about the happenings of the family, and who her new plastic frogs are. Then she asks me about my “friend.” “Where is thằng Tây (the Western man)?”—since apparently, she heard from the wind that I have a partner. I act surprised: “What are you talking about? I’m still too young, trinh tuyết and all. It’s very important to me.” She laughs and huffs at me for being a smart ass. 

It is bittersweet though, because Grandma does not know that my thằng Tây is a woman. Sometimes I wonder that if she knew, would she be the wildcard who does not judge me and try to change me? I have spent a big chunk of this summer grieving. There have been many things to grieve, and one of them is realizing the departure of myself from my family in terms of values, beliefs, and dreams. My parents do not accept my queerness because they think that it only brings me misery, which according to them I do not deserve. They also cannot fathom why I choose a path that will force me to constantly explain myself to our family and, in turn, makes everyone uncomfortable. They asked me not to share who I am with Grandma because it would upset her. Having grown up in the Vietnamese culture of family first and lineage being the most sacred thing, I was taught that hurting your family was the greatest sin. It has instilled in me and many generations of Vietnamese that we cannot put ourselves first, that our happiness is not the most important thing. Our blood family loves us most unconditionally and at the end of the day they are all we have. When we go against family traditions and forge our own paths without the consent of our family members, we are guilty of overturning the sacred principle of kinship.

Here is what I find unsatisfying though: my family is hurting but I am hurting too. Why do we have to ask each other to make ourselves disappear into the people we love? Why do we ask for sacrifice over acceptance and co-existence? Is it possible that as a family, when we show love to each other, we somehow project our desire to possess them and what we think is best for them instead of really listening to their needs, aspirations, and pain?

This summer, amid the ongoing pandemic and my grappling with grief, I start having vivid dreams of my past. People I have met in primary school and throughout my life start popping up in my dreams, in scenarios so weird that I never want to experience again. My childhood home and the house of my grandparents in Hanoi are the backdrops of most of my dreamscapes. One time, unexpectedly, the long-haired woman visited me in my dream. She walked into my childhood house from the garden; her hair was very long and as black as longan seeds. She never turned around to look at me, but I had a feeling that she saw right through me. In other dreamscapes, I would see Grandma in the kitchen cooking away with the giant glasses on her face. Once, I dreamt that my cousins and I were running away from the ghosts that lived in my grandparents’ four-story house. Each floor dwelled different ghosts, some of them hid in the creaky old closets, some underneath the dusty beds. When I reached the bottom of the stairs on the first floor, Grandma suddenly came out of the kitchen and started setting the table for a humongous feast. “Come on, hurry, it’s almost dinner time,” she called out. I was absolutely terrified: “No! Grandma, we have to run! The ghosts are right behind us. We have to get out of here NOW!” Yet she seemed to not hear me at all and continued moving back and forth from the kitchen to the living room with all the utensils and dishes she cooked up. Even in my dreams, she always manages to stay true to herself: very stubborn, and always cooks more than what everyone can eat.

This summer, I finally accept that the world I want to live in and the life I want to lead do not coincide so much with what my family expects in Vietnam. The communities that I am a part of are not their ideas of respected and thriving communities. Accepting this departure with kindness is hard, very hard. I feel like I am one more time in between two versions of me: one of a stronger, older and wiser me, the other of a little girl holding onto the nest I was born into. As a people we Vietnamese come from generations of forced separation, so blood family is all we have been holding onto through thick and thin. Perhaps, when I close my eyes, I am dropped into the dreamscapes of my Grandma’s house and my childhood home because I have to face the beauty and terror of growing up and letting go.

I know that I need to choose myself over fear, but when I see my parents on the other side, I still choke. My parents are afraid of what they do not know and not yet understand. They cannot accept that I love women, men, and everyone in between. They cannot see that I am happy and learning to manifest the dreams I want in my life and with my community. They believe that I am suffering because they are suffering. I have opened my door, but they are still afraid to walk through it. I guess, fear does win over love sometimes. At this moment in time, my parents are still reminiscing the ghost of my childhood self that is more familiar to them. They do not tell Grandma anything, and maybe that is better. She does not know much about the person I am today, the things I believe in and the life I have because if she did, there is a chance I would lose her too. 

I love my family with all my heart, even if eventually they do not accept me for who I am. Grief can be merciless, but I believe it is also a blessing in disguise. Through grief, I grow my roots deeper into the ground. I see my values, beliefs and dreams a little more clearly. I learn to love myself and let myself breathe and live, while still loving my family without disappearing into them. I do not want to let the cycle of fear and the haunting of the past take over my life. I choose the opportunity to be my own person, and to build my own community who embrace me as I am. I have come this far, and I will not let myself doubt for a second that I do not deserve to be happy the way I wish. 

I read somewhere that when we are little we grow inextricably with our family; as we become older there will be one day we diverge and grow in parallel with them, and then eventually in different directions. I think there is some truth to that, even though family is not such a linear concept. Every family is different and means different things to people. Family is, frankly, one of the strangest things I have encountered and have not fully fathomed. In my twenty something years of roaming the Earth, family is more a spiral than a bundle of straight lines. I will keep coming back to them, physically, mentally and spiritually. Perhaps that is why they keep coming to me in my sleep, through different strange scenarios, often during the most turbulent times in my life. I do not know when we will heal from the pain of mishearing one another, but there is one thing I know I will do. I will ask them for not only acceptance but love—love for the person I am today, with space for who I might become, not a ghost of me from their memories and imagination. 

Nam Phuong T. Doan (Nam) is a design strategist and organizer working at the intersection of design, tech and community. She’s passionate about connecting communities through creativity and social justice. In her free time, you can find Nam cooking up a storm, or celebrating anything Viet, queer, and artistic.