“No one is ever satisfied where he is. … Only the children know what they’re looking for.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”
***
Tea grows cold when you leave it on the counter and forget all about making it in the first place, but also if you sip from it too slowly. The perfect cup is therefore a matter of action and circumstance, a forked path with two endings. That sensation of drinking tea at your preferred temperature, whether it is a scalding heat or a soft warmth, is both comforting and a landmark of getting the “good” ending. That reliable sense of comfort is akin to feeling at home, nestled in a physical and metaphorical warmth. In my young adult years, I find that this valuable warmth that is supposed to overflow from a home is unstable and scarce. It is no longer a loyal companion and more of a recluse that is resistant to even the most desperate coaxing. My uncertainties revolving around what a true home is to me are spurred by the nature of growing up: The inevitable changes that take root and bring me further away from the dependability of the house as a home.
As a child, the truism that “home does not need to be a place” would’ve been completely foreign to me. How could home be anything besides the place you live in with your family? As time accumulated between my childhood and my present, the precariousness of home became increasingly clear to me. Recently, when I sat in my room back home, I could envision my childhood self in undeniable comfort, the kind that falls easily into your lap when you feel safely at home, while I now feel more like an actor placed into a meticulously crafted movie set. I know the motions, the right things to do and say, but it feels like a pretense that leaves me melancholic. I know now that home feels less familiar, a yearning akin to a dream.
***
I am not sure if I believe in ghosts — at least, in the traditional sense of invisible, deceased beings. Ghosts have people, objects and tragedies to hang onto — to haunt, to terrorize, to mourn — that keep them tethered to a realm that rejects them. Invisible baggage that chains itself to a person, dragging with every step, is also haunting. Maybe that is considered a personal ghost. If so, maybe misery truly is company. In “The Little Prince,” there is a quote that goes, “You know — one loves the sunsets, when one is so sad.” Is it true that accompanied by misery, one is better able to appreciate beautiful things, or that it is perhaps a thread to hold onto for the sake of sanity? I do enjoy a sunset myself, and I, too, would watch them 44 times. I waver at declaring that I hang onto such things all the time, savoring them and rationing them as sustenance for stretches of time when I need to be convinced of life’s beauty.
***
I love the date of my birthday. 123: Jan. 2, 2003. I always like to joke that although it is quite a cool date, my birthday would fail as a secure passcode — 0123 and 0102 are just too easy. My mom has told me the story of how I could have been born on January 1st instead, but being born early in the morning was just too inauspicious, and my mom wanted to start my life off on a good note. She got the okay from her medical examination to wait a little bit for her C-section, and I ended up being brought into the world in the evening the following day. Being born at night means all the animals of the zodiac are more likely to be resting or asleep, and that supposedly lowers the chances of strife in one’s life. I will have to make note of whether this is true once I am a little (or a lot) older.
I also like to joke that New Year’s Day is just the precursor to the real celebration the very next day. I will admit, the dawning of the new year followed back-to-back by my birthday wears me down a little. I tried New Year’s resolutions for maybe a year or two, then ditched the practice pretty quickly. The prospect of a new year is associated with a new start, a fresh beginning to really stick to building habits, the infamous “new year, new me.” Somehow, I always end up making myself feel a weird sense of guilt after reflecting on what I was not able to achieve or replaying less-than-favorable moments that I hated myself for. The year is then merely a stack of torn calendar sheets that I crush into a ball and toss into the trash with an uncomfortable shame that leaves me wounded. The culmination of all this rumination is my conclusion that although I grew, I did it badly.
It is true that there is no correct way to grow well. Yet my mind is unforgiving and retracts the acceptance of a warm hug for a cold shoulder. There was always the possibility of bettering myself further and I failed to execute self-discipline, making the new year feel like a cruel reminder of the time I wasted in the previous year. I just can’t seem to accept that my ideations were not the only way things had to go. These ideations are the formula for happiness in my mind, and therefore, happiness is quite elusive and hard-won to me. At the core of it all, I am fearful of whether it is simply the nature of happiness to remain fleeting. Perhaps it is wishful thinking that happiness will accept my ownership over it simply because I desire its loyalty.
It makes me question myself about what would actually be enough, sufficient to placate the frustration, regret, depression. The physical achievements are easy to pinpoint, eager to be added to my resume but they are never enough, just a temporary boost before another unfulfilled expectation overshadows them. There is an unceasing pull, accepting nothing and demanding everything. Nothing is ever enough, and I desperately want something to be. A tangible thing that I can cradle in my hands and say, “Finally, I am happy because I have tamed you.”
***
The bottoms of my Skechers were stained berry red after stomping on the fallen fruit littering my grandparents’ front yard. The tall trees behind the peeling fence always bore fruit during the saccharine sweetness of summer. Stepping foot outside my mom’s car felt like being dipped into the blistering heat of the sun, but it doubled as a quite literal warm greeting, its hold still managing to be a welcomed, familiar embrace.
My grandparents often left their screen door open in anticipation of my visit and the scent of their cooking greeted me before they did. If my grandma cooked that day, it would be a toss-up of smells, a bit more unpredictable depending on what she was in the mood to make. If it was my grandpa, then it would always be the same dishes: thịt kho trứng, or eggs and Chinese sausage with rice with a side of canh bí đao. They were the only dishes he knew how to cook, and they were my favorite, which I never admitted to my grandma.
My grandpa and I had a very silent kinship, a timid connection I felt in the fullness of my belly after eating his home-cooked meals. I knew he made a living from running a spare parts shop back in Vietnam to raise his kids and that his American occupation of babysitting for family friends was a big change, but more quiet and peaceful. When I was younger, I used to wonder if that job made him happy, if it was a revised version of a dream, as that couldn’t have been it, could it? Needless to say, I still don’t know and I guess I never will, but I only wish that he truly was happy. He always seemed content to me. A smile would be on his face as he sneakily watched my childhood shows with me while I chomped on crunchy slices of watermelon, my sweat cooling from the hours I spent frolicking outdoors. He anticipated every unspoken need and did not rule with an iron fist; he didn’t need to. He was like the sun in the corner of childhood drawings of the sky, a constant presence that felt safe and warm, albeit of very few words. I liked that about us. He was always there, but never looming nor infringing. I treated him with respect, and he did the same for me.
He used to trick me into getting rid of my loose baby teeth because I always refused his help for yanking them out immediately. I was horribly scared of the dentist and had an inflated mental image of the horrors of dental pain.
“Hmmm, wiggle it a little bit for ông ngoại, let me see how much progress you’ve made with getting it out,” he would say, then proceeded to flick my wiggling finger in a way that made my tooth come flying out. I would sit there stunned, and he would somehow have my tooth in the palm of his hand.
“It is best to face what is scary with your fear hidden. It didn’t even hurt, did it? A part of growing up is being brave, Phuong Nghi. You have to try, and you will get somewhere every time.”
I like to think that I have grown up trying my best to be brave. The younger Phuong Nghi was given a much-needed lesson.
It is easy to say that I was so much happier then, and maybe I was. Home felt ever-present then, a respite from the outside world and my mind’s fears and doubts. As I grew older, the people within my home changed — new arrivals, a couple departures, familiars became strangers. I can’t dismiss that I changed as well, perhaps for both better and worse, here and there. The hardest challenge is accepting that life goes on, and although I may leave parts of myself behind, life will never pause for me to pick up the pieces. Growing up is quite scary, and I wonder if that fear will ever cease.
***
My nostalgia has slowly morphed from fond memories tinged with bittersweetness to something akin to grief. The passage of my childhood years feels like a loss. I think about how it is a loss to not be a kid anymore and even more of a loss when I felt like I never got to truly be a child, growing up too quickly. The eldest immigrant daughter curse, I suppose, with a few extra twists and turns added in that make my story my own.
There is a certain exhaustion that crept in, settling as a subtle ache in my bones. Would this fall under the phrase “growing pains?” This weariness is quite silly to me — I am so young, and yet I have allowed myself to feel so worn down. I should be vivacious and lively, and although I can be at times, I tend to be defined by ceaseless, all-encompassing fatigue. It makes me feel guilty to have such a negative relationship with my mind and body. Life is mine to live, but I struggle to have the energy to do so. I don’t accept that perhaps that is just how life is supposed to go, how the abnormalities that I perceive as plaguing me are all part of being my “normal” self. Maybe I don’t have to eradicate them as much as I need to understand myself a little more and have some tolerance for not reaching that understanding immediately.
I fear self-pity. Never do I wallow in it. Although a blind, all-consuming prioritization of productivity is not healthy, I allow myself to view self-pity harshly and as a mode of thinking that is far from productive. I associate it with weakness, something I have effortfully disciplined myself to accept as a part of being human. It still doesn’t sink in sometimes, and I have my moments fearing that weakness becomes me. I do allow reveling in nostalgia, as reminiscing is something I could never stop doing, really. It’s rather sweet to reminisce, especially on memories that I want to remember forever, ones that imbued me with slices of happiness that I still feed off of.
Now, it is a matter of the present and how I tackle all the less-than-pleasant feelings that seem to recur at the beginning of every year. I always try to pin the source of my sorrows down, a webbed map of what went wrong and how it all connects, drawn up inside my brain but never finished.
What home is to me still eludes me — how it is supposed to feel, whether I am already where I am supposed to be — as I often feel that I am never truly there. When I’m with my loved ones, when they construct my memories, I feel like that is home. So, I question whether I think of home too deeply. Maybe home is supposed to be complicated, full of the best times and the worst times. Perhaps it is that I wish home is always there, revived with a comfort reminiscent of my childhood, more than just a place I settle in because I have to, a place that yields more than just survival.
***
Humankind loves to philosophize about fate and reason, whether things really are supposed to go the way they are or if it means something to act. Imagine the fig tree: Sylvia Plath uses it as a metaphor to depict the inevitability of making choices without knowing what is best, how multiple versions of oneself exist in hypothetical futures that will “wrinkle and go black,” never becoming reality. Decision paralysis causes one to starve to death after not being able to pick just one single fig at the pain of losing all the others. The berry tree continues to fruit, despite my grandparents no longer living in that house. They continue to dwell amongst the branches before plopping down onto the ground. That is just the way things go, simple as that.
Although I never did it, I used to entertain the idea of collecting each and every berry before it fell so that I could consume them all and save them the trouble of being squashed. Instead of a fig tree, I imagine that my possible futures rest within the berries. Maybe my grandpa also had a fruiting tree, one he had to leave behind in Vietnam, met with this one and its unfamiliar fruit. The berries fall and fall, becoming part of the earth once again as the bitterness of the rind of summer ordains them. I never grieved their plummet, instead letting the elements take control and awaiting the next summer, when the branches shed soft snow and yielded new summer-ripened berries.
***
I was born on a Thursday, and supposedly, “Thursday’s child has far to go.” I don’t know how long my journey is, but I know that existentialism will always be a supporting character. Maybe it just needs some attention, or thinks it knows how to protect me. Making peace with the tumult is one way for me to live. I might have some personal ghosts of my own, and maybe their company isn’t miserable. They could be beautiful things if I let them, or maybe they just want to feel seen before they finally lay down to rest.
I must continue to be brave, and by doing so, I will get somewhere every time.
MiC Senior Editor Nghi Nguyen can be reached at nghi@umich.edu.
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