My eyes crinkle when I smile, too.

In middle school, I stumbled upon one of my mom’s old jade bracelets in a bathroom drawer. It held an amber hue, and its golden novelty tantalized my young, curious mind. Naturally, I had to try it on.

I tugged and tugged with all my might as I tried to squeeze it over my knuckles, but it didn’t budge. After a solid ten minutes of failing, but an unshakeable resolve to don my mother’s beautiful bracelet, I finally called her for help.

“Mom! Help me! Quickly!”

Mẹ,

She came upstairs and chuckled softly when she realized what I had discovered. “Wow, I haven’t worn this since I was a college student in Vietnam.” I had no patience for her reminiscing, instead urging her to help me get the bracelet on. She hurried to my side and used all her force to try to yank the bracelet further down my arm. And, still, it wasn’t enough.

“OWWWWW! You’re hurting me, be more careful!” I yelped, after three minutes’ worth of effort yielded nothing but white knuckles and frustration.

“Maybe if you lost weight, this wouldn’t be so hard,” my mom retorted. “This fit me when I was 20.”

My eyes brimmed with tears as I forced the bracelet off, shoved it back into her hands, and stormed off, the whole altercation finalizing with a slam of my bedroom door.

Con mong sẽ đón nhận những nỗi buồn trong cuộc đời mình với sự thanh thản như mẹ.

This wasn’t uncommon of most of our interactions as I was growing up. We always knew how to hit each other where it hurt, where to strike to make sure the other felt it. A mother-daughter relationship is not a competition, but somehow we were both under the impression that after every conversation, only one of us could be left standing.

Some nights, after hours of screaming back and forth about grades, food, boys, and everything in between, I would will myself not to speak to her again until she apologized. I’d grit my teeth before closing my eyes for the night, and instead of counting sheep, I would count the days that had passed with us not talking, the number of times this routine had taken place, or all the ways in which I wished she was different. We could spend weeks without each other.

Xin lỗi.

~~~

Tam Kieu was born on March 30, 1978, in the small town of Nha Trang, Vietnam. She had two loving parents and 12 siblings—10 sisters, 2 brothers. Of her sisters, she was the youngest, preceding only her younger brother. Growing up was tough—her family lived all together in a humble wooden house, my grandparents with many hungry mouths to feed every night as they continued to age. She went to her local college and proceeded to teach kindergarten-aged students by day and decorate cakes at a bakery by night.

In the year 2000, she came to America with nothing except her husband after they got married in Vietnam. To this day, she is the only member of her family to set foot on American soil. The rest remained in Nha Trang as she built a new life for herself to make them proud. She kept herself busy, taking English classes at the community college and working at a local Vietnamese bakery, but the demands of motherhood forced her to discard these pursuits and focus all her energy on raising my brother and me.

Con tự hào là con gái của mẹ.

It was a hard life she lived, and still lives. Growing up, her struggles as the only immigrant in her family, in a country that could swallow you whole, were entirely lost on me. When I looked her in the eyes, I never noticed the crinkles starting to set in at their corners, chiseled by lonely days taking care of a daughter and special needs son while her husband worked overtime. I never noticed how her gaze had started to harden from squinting at McDonald’s menus, searching for the value combos my brother and I craved instead of the Vietnamese recipes she knew by heart.

Ai cũng nói khi con cười, con cười giống mẹ.

I used to swear we were opposites, but I see her in me everywhere.

I see her in the way she says she’s going to see her sisters when meeting her friends, loving them like her blood sisters—the way women do when they choose each other. I have never felt a closeness the way I feel within female friendships, that same hunger for sisterhood she carried from Vietnam and passed, without realizing it, to me.

I see her in the way I spray perfume on my way out the door. As a girl, I would carelessly spray her Ross Viva La Juicy perfume until I smelled just like her. Now, I can’t go to the mall without pulling her into Sephora, the two of us moving from tester to tester, our wrists raised to each other’s noses. On a visit home, we found a $23 perfume at CVS, and she fell in love, immediately purchasing it. We drove to every CVS in the area, hunting for more bottles, my mom exhibiting a youthful, girlish energy I forget exists in her since moving away.

~~~

This Christmas, my mom picked me up from the airport. I was battling a stomachache caused by an airplane Diet Coke on an empty stomach, my insides screaming for food after an 8-hour travel day. She held my hand as quiet conversation helped us pass the two and a half hours of traffic on the way home.

“How school? How your roommate? I made phở just for you for dinner, drink water, baby.”

It wasn’t until hour two that she confided in me about anything regarding herself, beyond her Zumba classes and weekly boba runs.

“This whole week I call your grandma, she told me our house in Vietnam, it floods. There was a big storm in Nha Trang. She said she, my sisters, everyone climbed onto the roof to wait for the water to go down. All laundry is ruined. I’m so stress.”

Con yêu mẹ.

My emotional literacy has improved in the years following our big blow-ups. I’ve learned to apologize, to comfort, to say “I’m here for you.” And still, in this moment, I choked.

I squeezed my mom’s hand even harder for the remaining half-hour ride home and turned my head out the window, shifting my gaze to the cars at a standstill instead of my beautiful, resilient mother. Our conversation stagnated until we finally pulled into the garage, until my brother opened the door, waiting to grab my suitcase, and my dad stood behind him, hugging my dog, both with smiles on their faces.

I swallowed air back into my lungs and finally turned to look my mom in the eyes. What did I see looking back at me? Her familiar crinkled eyes turned up at the corners, and a smile that did the same.

Bé Hân

~~

Mom,

I hope to bear my life’s sadness with the grace that you bear yours.

I’m sorry.

I am proud to be your daughter.

Everyone says that when I smile, I smile like you.

I love you.

Emily