Hair Tie To Hold It Together
In the haze of grief, distance, aches, fragments are created. In the moment, it is unsure if those panging releases and realizations serve anything beyond self-consolation.
Hi all! Really quick before we get into the actual content, I want to apologize for the lack of posts last month—whoops! I’m working on a more long form piece on immigration slated to come out this month (fingers crossed at least, coming out in March at the latest 🤞) In the meantime, here is more of a personal essay I wrote last December. Also lookout for a post on the Superbowl halftime show out this month too ;)
Enjoy!
In the haze of grief, distance, aches, fragments are created. In the moment, it is unsure if those panging releases and realizations serve anything beyond self-consolation. Yet, in the time between drifting and sharing, an indisputable bond forms in which I can finally see you’re the only one to understand.
Late September 2023
I’m more than sure a West Coast breeze is a different kind of cold than any of that from places that have snow days in March. In particular, suburban Pacifica, California, with its direct proximity to the Pacific Ocean, tends to have an almost numbing salt air, especially towards sunset. Sat on a bench outside my parents’ restaurant, my sister, Kristine, and I bond the most we ever have, unsurprising considering the nine years between us and the six since she moved out for college.
In exactly two weeks, I’ll start referring to the restaurant as solely my mother’s, to the notice of my classmates who similarly wonder why I was gone an entire week of October, and in and out of class for the weeks around it.
We recap the day so far, only to be stumped with the question of: Do the shoe covers go on first or the bunny suit? I laugh with my sister at the cute name, despite the fact that these precautions, the act of “suiting up,” were all in preparation of visiting my father. I begin to flick a hair tie on my wrist, which I internally rationalize as simply an act due to my short sleeve shirt and the fact that I had to get blood flowing somehow.
In truth, my father is said to be critically stable, “Whatever that means,” my sister rolls her eyes, reporting what the doctors disclosed.
The day earlier I was hastily pulled from school to visit my father, it was Decades Day and I was proud of my 2000s interpretation until I realized I would have to wear frosty eyeshadow and platform heels into a hospital. I counted and recounted the tiles of the floor waiting for my mother to come pick me up, only for my attention to be drawn to my stout English teacher, who passed me during her prep period and asked what was happening.
“Detention,” I joked, which she believed for all of two seconds before asking what really happened. I would find out later, to my great annoyance, that she told a counselor about what was happening. A burden on my day when I found out I was missing math class for something that I perceived as entirely my own business.
When my family finally arrived at the hospital, outside my father’s entirely enclosed room and across the main desk (for careful observation, of course), one of the nurses showed me a trick where you can cut off the cuff of a rubber glove for a makeshift hair tie. Another one procured two pink hair ties, one a hot pink and the other a blush pink, “To go with your dress,” she smiled. I picked the hot pink one to match the lace trim and put my hair under the surgeon’s cap, finally shrugging on the pillowy white bunny suit to cover my entire body before stepping in to visit my father.
I plastered a smile upon my face that he couldn’t see under the face mask and shield, told him about all that’s happening in my life, like we’ve done for the past year over video call. His condition has been so never ending I forget why he was admitted in the first place.
He’s been bouncing around hospitals for what seems like an eternity, mainly staying at Stanford in Palo Alto. Even now, I hate this one, El Camino Health, in Mountain View the most. It’s the furthest and the most unfamiliar. With Stanford, I was able to placate distress by revising essays, beginning my blog, and drinking mediocre sparkling water. At El Camino, I began harboring resentment for the extra seven minute drive between it and Stanford, wondering how two miles could change a lifetime.
In an attempt to preserve normalcy, I played my favorite Taylor Swift album, the one my father claimed he hated but would always let me blast in the car before and after school. Even on the hospital bed with a tube sticking out of his neck, he managed to wrinkle his nose at me and rasp out my nickname: “Chuột Thúi” a.k.a. stinky mouse, which I’ll be the first to admit is much more endearing in Vietnamese.
Between talking my father’s head off about how we’re learning combustion in Chemistry and Absolutism in AP Euro, I performed the ballet routine I learned in dance class for him. My sister would later ask why I was hopping around, as she was outside with the doctors while I was inside with my mother. A result of the two-visitor policy. I would simply shrug, more preoccupied wiping down my phone with bleach because it was in the same room as the easily transmittable MRSA, or, Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, an antibiotic resistant bacteria often formed under extended hospital stay. This was a textbook case.
Staring at the hair tie on my wrist now, I unnecessarily reason to Kristine, “I’m a Cancer,” still trying to keep the mood light. Despite my best efforts, I felt a welling, pricking on my waterline. Grazing my skin in a fashion that feels less like a kiss and more like razor blades, the breeze carries away my tears.
“Same as Dad,” she comments, furthering what everyone in my family has known since I was born: I was exactly my father’s daughter, down to the zodiac sign.
Late September 2024
According to Vietnamese zodiac signs, my father was a dog, my older sister a cat, and me a mouse. My mother is a pig, born just one year after my father but seemingly out of place in our animal family. Being raised in the Bay Area, I was afforded more opportunities to be around people of similar culture–a distinct, Asian-hyphen-American experience. Unfortunately, my mother did not have the same experience. Immigrating to America well into her 30s, she had previously raised my sister in Vietnam, and was now moving to California to be closer with my father, and, of course, for my birth.
The very same hyphen that I had been brought into this world for served not as a mode of joining two identities, but rather a line I could not cross. Growing up, I spoke Vietnamese with family, enough to be a precocious child, mostly keeping up to regular conversation, but I didn’t grow to speak the language well enough not to blush when my cousins overseas giggled at my stilted speech. My mother would be the inverse. The same way I will never be truly, easily fluent in Vietnamese, she will never be fluent in English.
I consider myself empathetic enough to recognize I couldn’t fault my mother for societal shortcomings, the Western world still being far too unaccommodating to foreigners, and yet, I couldn’t stop myself from being frustrated at our seemingly innate quality of never being able to truly communicate with each other.
For the longest time, despite my mother’s mostly involved role and most definitely due to my sister moving out before I even finished growing out the horrible bob I haphazardly begged for in the third grade, I was always the closest with my father.
We were always able to bond more easily. That is, intellectually. Most likely because we both desperately wanted to be seen as smart and he was more fluent in English, which made my Viet-lish more comprehensible. I’ve always considered a pair of parents to be a joint unit, but with half a unit missing, it was unclear how I was to cross over to my mother if my father was not there as a bridge.
Now, Pacifica is hosting its annual Fog Fest, a weekend-long, bustling festival, filled with parades, a truly innumerable amount of vendors, and of course, a constant rush of customers for the restaurant. As always, Kristine came up to help with business. The day started earlier than I wished. Blearily, I had woken up. For most, Fog Fest was an opportunity for sleepy Pacifica to get more foot traffic besides from the beach. We unceremoniously arrived at the restaurant three hours before normal opening time, people already began to mill around. My mother tutted Kristine for adorning a white shirt, fearing stains from our Thai tea.
As the flow of customers regulated, Kristine paced outside. The bench we once sat at had become so worn that planks of wood began to go missing. Eventually, a mysterious force had pried it out of the ground where it was previously bolted. In its place, a simple table and two chairs. She blew hair away from her face and sat down, observing the people passing before I handed her a white hair tie on my wrist.
Attempts to bridge the gaps where I will always find my father are made fruitless if I couldn’t understand what an adequate substitution would look like. I figured regardless, he would be with me in every step, but that wouldn’t change how often I look back behind, hoping to see him there, even when I know only a ghost occupies the space. Struggling with my identity as Asian-American would be a long-term hassle, but I could only reckon with my life as a daughter being changed if my sister was along.
“Doing the books for the shop would be so much easier if we could actually organize the receipts,” Kristine complains.
I hum, recalling the nights my father would dig out boxes of receipts during tax season and laugh as I navigated through the thin white sheets strewn on the floor, “At least you can legally say you’re a business owner.”
She scoffs, “I guess so,” looking over at me. Our father always wanted to be an entrepreneur, the idea of working solely for yourself was ingrained in both our childhoods. When I mentioned I wanted to be a lawyer, he simply stated that he wanted to see our last name as the first one in a law firm. “You know,” Kristine continued, “You can add this to your resume too, you’re basically assistant manager.”
“You’re funny to think I haven’t already,” I smile.
“Right, I forgot you’re the LinkedIn warrior.”
Separating my father and I was the afterlife, with my mother and I, language. As far as I was aware, the only gap between my sister and I was the table.
Thank you so much for reading! Regular content out probably next week, aka February break lol. I forever appreciate all your love, and be sure to subscribe to directly support me & my work ♡
As always, here is the playlist!
All my love, Alaïa xx