My mother passed away when COVID was starting to spread quickly thru NJ. The night before the nurse was kind enough to leave the phone on speaker so we could tell her not to be afraid.
Not sure if she could hear us. She had been in her own world since my
father's death 5 years ago. The nurse said she did smile at some point.
Her children, her grandchildren and great grandchildren did their best to
speak in Vietnamese and English to tell her how much we loved her and that
we were there to make her feel safe. We told stories of past and present.
We knew she could hear us from somewhere at a distance beyond the reach of
the virus. Her journey had been long. In the picture she was this young
mother in the middle walking with my father and my sister. Our nanny U Chi
was walking in the back with my brother. It must have been a happy time
somewhere in Hanoi after the French was allowed to return to VietNam after
World War II. They were walking toward the unknown as a few years later
they left North VietNam as refugees to move to Saigon not wanting to live
under Communist rule. Ten years later they had me in Saigon while VietNam
was fighting for its future with America. My mother would take me to the
Budhist temple to hear Dharma teaching and it was there that I first heard
the sound of the monk chanting for a peaceful place beyond war and
suffering. When Saigon failed we were separated but later reunited in
America to start a life in the land of new dream. From North VietNam to
South and to America, my mother had always face many unknown and
uncertainties of having to take care of my father and her family. The sound
of the Budhist chant had always made her feel safe. But it was not enough
to ensure a life in the new land. She could take care of my father but not
her youngest son. I know that it broke her heart when she let me go to live
with another woman. My American mother could love me in practical ways that
my mother could not. My mother was that practical. Sharing me with another
woman was her way of ensuring a safer future for me in America. I did feel
more safe having 2 mothers. One mother gave me the sound of peace and
salvation and one gave me the sound to navigate the new world. I embodied
the vibrations of these 2 women in my heart as I learn to open my eyes,
walk, slide and then swim. One maternal bond was natural and the other was
thru learning and experiencing. In time I was able to find my own safety in
the Artistic ideals and expressions of the new land. But this was strange
to my VietNamese mother. The sound of safety given to me by my American
mother was unrecognizable to her. She could not recognize her own in this
new sound. She rejected the possiblity that this sound could make me safe.
The winter of my Junior year from Amherst College, I told her I could no
longer stand at the thought of another boring and dry science class for
pre-med and what I really wanted to do was to be a Figurative Sculptor. She
spoke to me while washing the dishes with her back toward me that if I were
to do that don't expect to see her again. Everything that she had feared
from the unknown time of her walking w my father and brother and sister,
everything that she had gone thru as a war refugee from the Communist, the
French, the American now embodied in the sound of her son asking her
permission to be relieved of the pressure being on the perceived safer path
in the new land. This new sound was foreign to her. She could not
recognize her own anymore. She did not know how to give safety to her child
and now another woman could. If I did not meet my American mother I
probably won't go to a Liberal Arts College to be exposed to how Arts can be
a way of life. Since Buddha time the buddhist chant has always been a way
to create the sound of liberation from cycles of existential pain and
suffering. Artistic expressions from Titian to Cezane to Rodin to De
Kooning have been to liberate the self from the confined expectation of
formal society. The contraints of the flat pictorial plane and 360 degree
of the human figurative form were problems that these Masters had learned to
liberate so the aliveness of the human experience could be experienced. It
was not just about a liberation from war and famine but the liberation of
the constraint of the self. My mother only experienced the former and the
latter did not have real practical meaning. The new sound that I discovered
to navigate through my new world was not recognizable from my mother's
experiences of her old world.
The parent Penguins travelled hundred of miles to fill their belly with
fishes so they could bring back to their waiting hungry chicks. Only thru
sounds could the parent Penguin found the chicks that they had left
behind. It must be disheartning arriving back at the colony belly full and
having to differentiate the hundred thousand of sounds to find their young
chicks. But nature found ways for them to always find each other. The
picture of mother and father Penguins failing to find their chicks and
their chicks failing to find their parents is one of sadness just like my
mother not really understanding why her son would chose Arts over a
guaranteed professional life that would bring safety and respect to a new
imigrant life.
In Buddhist culture, we chant for 49 days after the passing of a life so
the self could enter the cycle of rebirth. It is a longing sound for
safety to liberate the old self beyond its physical existence. We offer
food and comforts so my mother could have a safe passage to a new cycle.
My painting accompanies her because its intention is the same. She didn't
lose me in this new land but I have found the sound that I could find my
way back to her.
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