To My Sisters

How good are you at remembering birthdays?  I am crap.  This is well known in my family and generally forgiven.  At least, I think it’s forgiven.  If not, all my siblings have years of forgotten birthdays accumulating grief and despair at my continual failure to do anything to acknowledge their birthdays.

Once, in high school, I even forgot my own birthday.  I remember the occasion well because a sister came running after me, shouting something as I strode off down our street, towards the park and creek, towards the train station, off to school.  I was in a white polyester blouse with a stupid maroon and blue tie and an even stupider polyester navy skirt with four sets of pleats and stupidest of all black stockings.  Most ridiculous, Brisbane inappropriate school uniform, ever.

“Oanh! Haven’t you forgotten something?” Big sis yelled from our home’s verandah.

I paused.  I took stock.  School bag weighing down shoulders? Check.  Stupid tie? Check.  Stupid badge on tie? Check.  Lunch in bag? Check.

I looked down at my feet. For some unfathomable reason, I wasn’t wearing shoes.  Just black stockings.

I turned around and trudged back home, calculating how quickly I could put on shoes and get to the train station.  My sister watched me walking back, wondering why my shoulders were slumped so morosely.

“What’s up with you?” Big Sis demanded.

I looked at her funny: scrunched up eyes, one eyebrow raised, chin tucked into my chest.  After all, she was the one who called me back because I wasn’t wearing shoes.  Words being too much, I pointed at my be-stockinged feet.

“What? You want new shoes for your birthday? Too bad. We only have money to give you, as always.”

“Huh?” (This was the most eloquent, poetic thing I could think to say.)

“Happy birthday, you idiot!”

***

Email makes things much, much easier.  Many of my siblings have contiguous or near-contiguous birthdays. (You would think that would make it easier for me to remember their birthdays, but, nope, still forget.)  Below is a recent email exchange between me and three of my sisters.

Email 1: Oanh to Dragon Sis

Happy Birthday, sis!
Hope it was a beautiful one and sorry I’m not there to celebrate with you!
How old are you now anyway?!
much love
Oanh x

Email 2: Oanh to Sensible Sis (sent shortly after the above)

Hi!
Happy Birthday!!
Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply: work has been really busy! (and then I don’t bother turning on the computer at home because my computer is SO SLOW, so I am saving up to maybe buy an iPad… maybe

… [long email about how to do something Sensible Sis has asked for my help on] …

Let me know what you decide to do, if you need any more help etc.
much love and hope you had a lovely birthday!!

Email 3: Dragon Sis to Oanh

Hey Oanh,
Thank you for the Birthday wishes but you are 1 week early..mine & Sensible Sis birthday is next week. Today is Oldest Sis’ Birthday…:)  I will be REALLY OLD next week…

Email 4: Oanh to Dragon Sis

oh man, I have so many sisters, I get confused!  And I’ve been worrying about it all day today, too …
Better send my big sis an email then!

Email 5: Dragon Sis to Oanh

you are funny..yes you do have a lot of sisters..

Email 6: Oanh to Sensible Sis

Subject: Negative Birthday Wishes

I take back the happy birthday.  You can’t have it for another 7 days.

Email 7: Sensible Sis to Oanh

!!!

Thank-you for the birthday wishes, I keep it now (just in case you forget).

Email 8: Oanh to Oldest Sis

Happy Birthday big sis! I hear you’re getting even older.  You must be so old now.

I am yet to receive an email from Oldest Sis.  She’s probably just working on a witty response.  Oldest Sis likes purple and likes flowers, hence the otherwise gratuitous inclusion of the below photograph.

Gleaned Daisies.

Here I am, Back Home Again

My parents are opposites in the affection department. When far away, my father could barely stand to talk to me. I would phone and identify myself accurately but rather imprecisely (it’s your child) and my father would reply, “Talk to your mother.”

It was with no small trepidation that I greeted my parents. Was Ba mad at me? Would he be silent and severe? No. Not at all. Rather, he was quite affectionate, grasping me warmly by the shoulders, patting my Partner on the back, asking pertinent questions about our trip and being amused by our answers.

My mother, on the other hand, though also physically affectionate, started in immediately with a catalogue of my faults, which contrary to my own misguided hopes, have been getting longer as I age instead of shorter. First up, I wasn’t married. It seems a seriously, obviously committed long-term relationship is not good enough. She did try to answer some of my concerns about the whole marriage shebang (you can have a small wedding, you know, a non Vietnamese wedding, we won’t mind) but we’d had this conversation last time I was physically in her presence. Also, I was too dark, too skinny and much too childless. I had come to believe that, all those times on the telephone when she said she didn’t mind what I was up to as long as I was happy, she’d meant it. More fool me.

I know that the best I can expect is that I change; my attitude can change. Instead of that angry, headstrong, confrontational teenager, I could be a more mature 30-something. I could be, but I’m not. I remain a teenager (actually younger, perhaps five) in my interactions with my parents, and they, too, remain as they always have been: my father severe but deeply loving; my mother loving in her irrational contradictory unfathomable irritating way.

*****

So, I’m no longer cycle-touring.

I have been in Australia for a few weeks and am re-settling in Melbourne. I’m still on borrowed internets, rather than my own. I have some stories to tell you and they will flow, as they always have, in my sporadic way.

This post’s title mimics lyrics by Will Sheff of Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy. The song kept playing inside my head in Brisbane.

The apposite lyrics are as follows:-
Here I am back home again
I’m here to rest.
All they ask is where I’ve been
knowing I’ve been west.

Banh Tet / Banh Chung

This is not a recipe post.  I am such a disappointment to the poor souls who search for recipes of Viet food.  I talk about (and think about) Viet food a lot, but I never really learned to cook it.  I certainly have not learned to cook from my mother, who always starts whatever I want to learn about well before I arrive at her house (and this is now complicated by the fact that I am many, many miles from her).

I am, however,  (if I say so myself) a pretty good cook and good at guessing flavours and ingredients and muddling along.  And I’m reasonably willing to be experimental.  So, I’ve taught myself some recipes merely from eating a lot.  Now that’s a fantastic way to learn.

My go-to for Viet food recipes is teh internets, but especially Wandering Chopsticks.  Often, I read information on her blog that shines a light on things that were part of my history but that I never really thought about or could explain to anyone if they asked.  I rarely knew why.  Tet has just been and gone and I’m catching up around the blogosphere, and in doing so, I re-read Wandering Chopstick’s post, 3 years past, of her family’s banh tet traditions.

Now, I’m quite sure I call these banh chung and that my family’s have always been cylindrical.  But nikkipolani’s post about her own marvellous mother’s marathon cooking session, despite being unwell, made me pause and wonder what I called them.  And I did not know for sure, only that I was quite sure we did not call them banh tet.

I’ve never been privy to my family’s banh tet/banh chung making sessions.  I remember one pre-tet when I was in high school: I came home from school, doing as I always do – slipped off my shoes at the door and let them fall where they will, tossed my school bag in a heavy heap inside my bedroom and call out to my parents – whereever the were in the house or garden – “Um, Ba! I’ve just got home from school!”  The usual reply is, “Child! Is that you?” to which no reply is necessary.  The next phase of my after school ritual was to go into the bathroom and wash my feet, then wander into the kitchen scavenging for pre-dinner snacks.  I exercised a lot during high school and I ate ridiculous amounts of food all the time.  This day, however, when I walked from my bedroom out to the patio area where my parents usually were, I found my grandmother, mother, an aunt and my second-eldest sister perched on little short-legged stools.  My mother was mixing rice in a bowl; my grandmother was cleaning banana leaves, my aunt and sister were assembling little green packages.  Like the well-behaved child that I rarely was, I greeted my grandmother and aunt properly and dodged around everyone to go up the stairs and into the bathroom.  As I ascended the stairs, I saw Ba out in the backyard making up an enormous fire in our rarely used outdoor barbecue.  “Ba!” I called out to him, “What are you doing?” He waved at me but did not answer.  My sister, however, said, “For banh chung, you idiot.”  This, of course, I did not dignify with a response and continued on my merry way to clean feet and satiate tummy.

That is my only memory of when my family made banh tet/chung.  It perplexed me then, and it perplexes me still.  My mind’s eye has a clear picture of my second-eldest sister adeptly assembling banh tet/chung.  I came back after satiating my teenage hunger and sat on the steps watching (and not offering to help).  I later wandered over to my father to see if I was allowed to poke and prod at the fire (answer: no).

Of all my sisters, she was the one least likely to do any chores, whether cooking or cleaning .  Not that she was lazy, just that the chores never fell to her.  The eldest was, with my mother, the family cook.  The third-eldest was the one who did major cleans (and who could also be trusted to burn soup).  My fourth eldest sister was the everyday cleaner (and unlikely to cook) and I was in charge of the random-(and-if-you-can-be-bothered-to-pin-her-down-and-persuade- her-to-do-them)-chores.  But my second-eldest sister was a mystery.  I rarely saw her cook; though she (as did we all) chipped in to clean most of the time.   And yet, she was incredibly skilled at making banh tet/chung and I learned, regularly called upon by my many aunts to help them make theirs.  No wonder I did not see her very often.

Shortly after this tet, my father fell very ill for the first time, so major cooking events rarely happened at our house.  They were always held somewhere else, at an aunt’s or an uncle’s place, and I was only called in if soup (chicken & sweet corn and crab & asparagus being my specialties) or cha gio (spring rolls – I was / maybe still am a very fast spring-roller) were on the menu.

Banh tet/chung was not a favourite food of mine.  I ate them because I was supposed to and because it was obvious someone (lots of someones) in the family had slaved over the making of them.  My mother liked to eat hers sliced and fried, and then dipped in sugar.  I don’t think Ba was a fan.  By the end of tet, I was heartily sick of them.  My family – despite our large numbers – rarely got through more than a couple.  My parents now don’t even get through one cylinder.  And I have never had a cylinder of banh tet/chung to call my own.