Saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder” is only true half of the time. I yearn for selected moments of my childhood: swaying on a hammock under the midday sun, listening to old-school bolero with my grandpa, pig-showering in my yellow baby tub outdoors with my clothes on, playing blackjack with my aunties. Those were the good times. The other half of the time I want the distance to grow wider.

I barely talk to my dad anymore; he’s in his late sixties now and complains about everything under the sun. Talking to him drains my already-low social battery that I have left after working my customer service job. Yet, after receiving my bachelor’s degree from the first public university in America, I realized that this is everything my ancestors had worked towards. That I am their wildest dream coming true. That drove me into deep curiosity about my family history. I wanted to gather the details, wanted to know more about my family’s dynamic, how they are who they are, and how it shaped me.

The truth is that nostalgia drives my every action. I cherish my Saigonese roots that date back three generations, a sentiment not many can share. Seventy-something years ago, my grandfather took a job with the Americans that led us down South, where he bought a six-hundred square meter plot of land and settled there. Seventy-something years later, we are still here. Just without my grandparents and some of their kids.

My grandmother passed away three years before I was born, so I never knew her personally. My perception of her is through stories my parents left me.

My mom tells me,

“When your dad missed your sister’s birth for whatever reason he came up with that day and I had to hail a bike by myself to go into labor alone, your grandmother said, ‘Why the hell are you making a fuss over this? I went into labor five times without my husband because he was away at work. In fact, he wasn’t there for your husband’s birth either! So, suck it up, this is what a woman is meant to do.’”

“I am not at all upset that I only had to live with her for four years. Your dad never did anything to tell her off, he’s such a mama’s boy.”

My dad, on the other hand, regards my grandmother very highly,

“She was so proud of me when I made enough money to buy her a sofa set. She was bragging about it to everyone.”

“It took until my twenties for me to be her golden boy. She used to pick favorites when I was a child, and it was always my older brothers. When she made chicken, she’d give the drumsticks to two people: my dad and my eldest brother.”

My grandmother’s preferential treatment to my dad didn’t go unnoticed, but he was by no means a perfect child, either. He was a teen parent who then became a single parent, left his high-earning salesman job to go back to college to become a dirt-broke teacher, then a dirt-broke journalist. It took him years to finally earn enough to support his family through his language abilities. But he became, without a shadow of a doubt, the “role model” for the rest of his siblings because he was the only elder brother who chose education. Comparisons began to spark in every conversation, and sibling jealousy began culminating ever since.

I was luckier with my grandfather, with whom I had eleven great years. My earliest memories with him include taking a midday nap in his arms, a retro fan blasting away the blaring Saigon heat; and eating the sweet jackfruit from the tree he’d planted in the middle of the land some years before my birth. He cared for the tree fondly. He’d wake up around four a.m. every day, and after his basic routine, he’d go to the concrete yard and sweep away fallen jackfruit leaves. The sound the crude broom made was like an alarm to me, signaling that it is time for school. When he still had the strength to, I remember him cutting off dead branches so the baby branches can grow.

He was also nice to my mother. She recalled,

“The first day I came to live with this family, he was sitting on his deckchair with your dad’s eldest brother, and he exclaimed ‘Don’t you think Jade is so beautiful? We are so lucky to have her marry into the family.’”

“He never treated me the way your grandmother would. In fact, when your grandmother was being unreasonable, he’d just talk to me gently and told me to do however I see fit. He was a great father-in-law.”

My dad was never particularly close to him, but he owed his education to my grandfather.

“When I told him I’d go back for a college degree in my thirties, I was scared he wouldn’t let me because I didn’t have any money saved up and didn’t want to be a burden. I thought of dropping out many times because I can just go back to the family business and make money again, but your grandfather sternly told me, ‘Your tuition money is not your concern, it is mine. I said it is okay to go back to school, so why are you worried. Just study. I can take care of you.’”

Very clearly, my grandfather was the head of the household. He made every important decision, and was above all else, structured. He didn’t like it when his kids think they can outsmart him, leading to decisions that I wonder if he regretted as he grew older.

My dad’s eldest brother once sold a piece of the land, my grandfather’s land, to a younger sibling without his permission. Once my grandfather found out, he flew into a rage and demanded his land back. That resulted in my uncle, the wrongful new owner, going no contact with the family ever since. He never came back once, not even for either parent’s funeral.

A lot of our family traditions were undoubtably started by my grandfather as well.

I remember us all gathering at exactly 5:30pm every single day in the family worship room to say our prayers. It was a short ceremony, but it happened like clockwork. Every Lunar New Year, we would meet up, including the ones who lived far away, to do our traditions together. Grandkids well-wishing the elders, starting with my grandfather and going down the line, receiving lucky money. His children would do the same, except they would be gifting the lucky money back to him, perhaps feeling lucky to get another year with their father. In many of our old family photos, you’d see me in pigtails and an áo dài, sitting on one of his laps while my cousin sits on the other side.

To me, my grandfather was a simple man with simple needs. His favorite meal is fried fish, warmed rice that’s a little overcooked, served with boiled morning glory and the soup water that it was in. He had the same routine every day and he always sat on his deckchair at the end of our long driveway, gazing out the gate for any intruders like it was his full-time job. He set the rules. They just had to follow them.

But when he passed away, it seemed like all those traditions dissipated with him.

My father became the designated head of household after his two eldest brothers passed away and because his third brother was mentally handicapped. But whenever he tried to maintain the same structure my grandfather once did, he is met with disdain and contempt from his younger siblings. Cliques started to form between these mid-lifers and anything that were used as a glue in this family began melting, with no way to solder back on. The care that once existed to the household disappeared. Even the jackfruit tree isn’t the same anymore, it bears fruit like a chore; no longer sweet. The family worship room slowly turned into a family gambling room, where our ancestors’ altar is seen facing a full-sized casino table. It is now used to cater to the gambling addicts in our household, my dad included at times. This harsh reality is why I can no longer go home feeling like a kid again, instead, a feeling of dread looms over me at just the thought of going back. It is as if anything from that family that lives inside of me has been perverted to the point of no return, and the smiley faces of relatives who used to care for me as a child, who used to be my “village” and called me different pet names all the time have now been replaced by jealousy, stone-cold glances, radio silence, isolation from the real world and battles about my grandfather’s will.

I am now twenty-three, which makes it twelve years since my grandfather’s passing, and the distance between my family members has only grown larger as the siblings grow older. Everything is about the will, even if it is not.

My father was lucky enough to have made enough money in his twenties to buy off a plot on that land, where he built my childhood home. I will forever have the house I grew up in, a privilege that is not shared by a lot of the family. Whatever land they live on now is part of that undisputed will, the division of which never satisfy everyone. They want more, they don’t think my dad or one of my uncles deserve this plot, they think a cousin should be written into the will because of his “contributions” to the family, they don’t listen to legal advice, they hold information behind a paywall even though there is nothing there.

Petty playground stuff among mid-life folks.

The effect trickles down to my generation, too.

My sister, six years older than me, is a semi-successful corporate lawyer in a prestigious finance company in Vietnam. She, like I, cares about the family, albeit differently. She has used her connections at my father’s behest to get our family’s will consulted by the best estate lawyers in the country. But a stubborn, unemployed uncle would often spearhead a hate campaign against her every time. He thinks he knows best, despite having no formal schooling or lived experience, calling her efforts “tacky” and that “a grandchild shouldn’t meddle”. The hate grew larger as it is followed by my cousins, who often remarks,

“Why would I listen to her? She’s so cocky, flaunting her success and wealth. Meanwhile I’m over here jobless, she should be helping me instead of trying to take away our land.”

Despite feeling disgusted by their opinions, I can’t blame them for how they feel. It has always been a battle of the siblings. To see another sibling not only doing well for themselves, but their kids making their own marks in the world is an unbearable thought to some of the siblings whose children has gone no contact with them. It is a projection of their own insecurities and a constant reminder of what they lack.

Perhaps the idea that if they don’t get the will sorted out, the government will seize the land after some time, and when that happens, it will be in God’s hands. They don’t want to listen to logical reasoning of the people they hate because, once again, they want to be the ones who thought of that idea first. It is a miserable way of life. Over the years, they have developed a semi-symbiotic relationship with one another like parasites, sucking off any ounce of positivity from one another. They stay cooped up within the parameters of the land and don’t socialize with anyone aside from each other. Their main form of entertainment is taking money from each other by way of gambling in the family worship room, and they make sure to exclude my family from any “family dinners.” It is poetic in a sense, cultish in another.

This story has no real ending.

Perhaps I can conduct research on how this affects their mental wellbeing and development, but at the same time I like keeping my distance and being an observer. I am thousands of kilometers away, doing God knows what in who knows where. But I do wonder if they mention me at times. Or, do they keep me locked up in a chamber in their brains like they do my sister, every day passing by looking over the bars, cruelly smiling at the little child they once loved.

 

 

 

 

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