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My Mothers

Updated: Jan 4, 2023

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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