mẹ's flower garden

“we mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they've come.”

Mẹ is a tomboy through and through. At least that’s what she’s always told me, and she took a lot of pride in it growing up. She would laugh when I’d wear all my pieces of jewelry at once in hopes of “looking like a woman.” She would sigh when I’d beg her for a designer bag just like the ones Má Hai has. She would roll her eyes when I’d tell her that I could be a Disney Princess someday if I “just believed.” She would voluntarily do all the heavy lifting in the family like she had the strength of 10 men. Had I not told anyone that we were related, I don’t think anyone would’ve ever figured out that she was my mother. We didn’t have anything in common, but we had a decent relationship. Even though she was masculine, she wouldn’t hesitate to fuel my femininity. I never understood it. If she hated the things I loved so much, why would she allow me to buy all the clothes, makeup, and jewelry I desired if she was just going to make fun of me for it later? It always irritated me. My smooth, adolescent little brain wasn’t able to figure it out at first, but eventually, I came up with a reason for Mẹ’s actions: Mẹ is masculine and therefore hates all things feminine, therefore she hates me (I was 12, hormonal, and lacked critical thinking skills. This was the only reasonable conclusion I could draw at the time). 

There were inconsistencies to her masculine behavior though. When I find pieces of her history, I find myself grateful that we live in a world of photography. While I was packing up my things with my cousin to move into my new apartment, I looked through the untouched storage closet out of curiosity. Layers of dust lived amongst stacks of photo albums. Photos that dated back to the 80s in Saigon, Vietnam. Mẹ was nothing more than just an innocent child living in a country of chaos.  She had pin-straight hair, so long that it surpassed her little torso. Her arms, thin as the twigs that fall from winter trees. Her bangs, long like a K-pop idol’s but not too long so that you could still see her eyes sparkle. Her smile, with a crater on the right side of her face like God had made sure to pinch that cheek multiple times before putting her in the world. As we’re going through the album, my cousin taps my shoulder to show me a photo she’d found.

“I literally thought this was a picture of you,” she chuckled.

 I take the photo and further examine it, and I can’t help but notice that I have seen those dimples before. Only, the little girl in the photograph was posing with a pet dog, wearing a polo-looking dress. 

Saigon, Vietnam circa. 1980

“Is this Mẹ?” I asked. 

“Yeah. We used to call her Snow White. Animals would come to her naturally and we were all convinced she could speak to them,” she explained to me. 

I sat with this statement for a while. It just hadn’t made much sense that Little Miss “I-don’t-like-Disney-Princesses” was actually Vietnamese Snow White. I pocketed the photo for myself. Not as blackmail to embarrass her. Not as proof that she was a girly girl back then. But more because this was the first time I understood that we were related. That she was the woman who gave birth to me and she created a child just like herself. I still stare at her photo and compare it to my own because of how similar we look. In that photo, she was me, and I was her. We were the same. I kept it as proof that she and I were connected by at least one thing besides blood. 

I once heard somewhere that a daughter is a little girl who grows up to be a friend. For a while, I was just a girl who watched their mother from a distance. Almost like a childhood friend who moved away before middle school and only contacts you through Facebook.  I was never home nor did I ever want to come home. This always worried Mẹ. She had no idea where I was, who I was with, when I’d come home, who I even was at this point. I was nothing more than a stranger who lived under the same roof, down the hallway. Halfway through high school, this huge winter storm hit; it was a rare occurrence considering we live in Texas. All the pipes in our house burst, and suddenly, I didn’t even have a house to come home to even if I wanted to. We were forced to stay at a hotel for 6 months. Mẹ and I had to share a room for half a year, and I watched her work overtime every week to afford everything. It was the first time I had opened my eyes and realized that I had never had to worry about survival before. Because Mẹ was the one who worried about it. Mẹ was the one who did all the heavy lifting. Mẹ was the one who fixed up the house and paid for the damages like she was the man of the house. When it came close to move-back-in day, we had to start worrying about how we’d get all of our furniture and belongings back in the house as easily as possible. In preparation for this big day, Mẹ had decided to call a local gardener. One day, I drove by and saw the bright flowers lined across the front yard where my bedroom window sat. When I got back to the hotel, I confronted Mẹ about this. 

“Why did you hire people to plant flowers in the front yard? We barely have floors installed on the inside of our house.” 

“Because I wanted it.”

“They’re gonna die anyways. You get new flowers all the time and they never survive.”

“Hân, can you just let me have this? I never have time to do the house. This time I start over. Do what I want,” she scolded.

 Those flowers did, in fact, die within months. Mẹ became too busy with fixing the house and getting our life back on track, so no one took care of them. I had my fair share of “told you so” before I started to miss the color in our home and the color it brought into Mẹ’s life. Still, Mẹ’s love for flowers never died. On road trips, she pulls over the side of the road to make sure to smell the bluebonnets. At restaurants, she makes sure to get a feel for the centerpiece carnations to check if they’re real. In every city we visit, she makes sure to Google the nearest garden to visit. She never fails to voice her jealousy when we drive past a house with an explosion of color in their front yard. Her camera roll is probably a 1:1 ratio of photos of her children and photos of random plants she’s spotted. Ironically, she never knew the names of any of the flowers that she liked. 

“I wish those fluffy blue ball flowers in Boston could grow in Houston.” 

“You mean hydrangeas?” I’d remind her.

 “Is that what they’re called?” she asks as if I haven’t told her the names before.

In these moments, Mẹ becomes a girl again. I started to capture these moments for her. I’d take photographs on my phone so she could look back on them and remember which flowers she liked. Taking mental photographs so I can cherish these rare occurrences of her giddiness towards nature. I play these moments in my head like my favorite movie. Because it feels like I get to watch Mẹ experience girlhood once again. 

When the flowers disappeared from home, I found myself missing that feminine side within Mẹ. She lives the most mundane life a woman could have. Every day, she goes to work, comes home, cooks dinner, sleeps, rinses, and repeats. I sometimes dwell in my shame thinking about how I couldn’t realize what that garden meant to her. That garden was her own way of holding on to girlhood. While I sat back and laughed, those bright peonies were in the periphery of her desk where she’d sit and do all the paperwork for my apartment. While she carried in all the groceries in one trip, the azaleas bloomed for a moment just so she could catch its glimpse. Taking out the trash became a fun chore just so she could stop and touch the fuchsias. After a long day of clearing the garage, she’d stand back and stare at the begonias as a reward for her hard work. The conclusions I drew about her when I was 12 were completely inaccurate to who she was. She wasn’t masculine by nature. She was a woman who had to fill the shoes of a man, trying to find beauty even within masculine tasks.

Portland, Oregon- June 21, 2023

In retrospect, I should’ve known that Mẹ was always a girly girl. Mẹ’s always loved the girliest things in life. Those were just the things that she sacrificed for me to be the Disney Princess. The money she’d spent on the newest Twinkle Toes for my first day of 2nd grade was a sacrifice from the new Coach handbag she could’ve had. The time she’d spent curling my hair before school was a sacrifice from the time she could’ve been doing her makeup. The groceries she’d carry in by herself were a sacrifice so I wouldn’t have to. Mẹ isn’t a tomboy. She sacrificed her girlhood for mine. She became the man of the house because she had to. She became the father that I never had. I can’t bring her garden back to life. I can’t give Mẹ every wildflower I pick off the side of the road. But even though the flowers at home don’t stick around for long, there are always others blooming around her. If nature is the only thing that Mẹ can express her inner child through, then we are birds. And we must fly to every garden. We must stop by every roadside just to get a feel for the flowers. Because Mẹ isn’t a tomboy. She is a woman, and this time, I won’t let that wither.