During the COVID, we stayed at home. I focused on doing the project that I called "COVID special" That were about 10 hand-made books using recycled materials such as newspapers, magazine images, my old sketches and drawings, our children's postcards and notebooks, and so on. This "COVID special" was done in the period of 2020 to 2023.
I sorted out my mother’s things to see if I could add anything to my projects.
One postcard from Cậu Bạch, my mother’s long-time friend from Hà Nôi appeared in front of me.
He and my mother were art students and classmates at Hà Nôi Fine Art School. After graduating, he was employed and became an artist working at
the government bank. His main job was to design the image of once-beloved President Hồ Chí Minh to imprint into banknotes.
He loved
my mother. My mother told me she could not love him as a lover. Both got married and have
families of their own but stay connected. They remained friends until my mother
passed away in 2011.
Cậu Bạch’s love for my mother was romantically boring yet enduring, I would say.
I remember meeting him two times. One at our apartment in Sài Gòn when I was little and another time, when I was 22 went to Hà Nội to attend training provided by Vietnam Airlines, where I worked back there.
The guy rode his bike
from his hometown, Hà Đông to visit me at the hotel in the middle of Hà Nội. We
were in the lobby, and I felt extremely awkward. Later I told my mother that I did not
know what to say. And she nodded, "I know."
Cậu Bạch was tall with curly hair. His eyes were a little bit crossed. He looked like a nerd. He was honest and reserved verbally. When he talked in his monotone voice, his face would look flat and unemotional. He would ask boring questions to keep the conversation going. If he were in the crowd, he would blend in quickly and no one would remember anything about him afterward. If he were in school, he would be the first guy to be picked on and bullied.
Yet, his countless letters and postcards for
my mother painted a different story. He tirelessly poured his soul, his love, and his energy into writing. He had so much to tell my mother and the only way to
do was write a letter to her. He could write a three-page -long letter asking how my mother
and her children were doing. He could share how he; his wife and his children were doing. His letters were boring and authentically sounding like his face. But I gave this man a credit.
He faithfully wrote to
my mother for 30 years.
Besides sending letters, he sent postcards on special occasions such as the Lunar New Year and birthday to my mother. Cậu Bạch was one of the most loyal people to my mother I could think of.
After my
mother passed away, my sister, Mưa, called him from my mother’s phone list to inform
him. Mưa told me that she was surprised, "his voice was cold receiving the sad
news". I told her that he had a monotone voice.
Mưa recalled that he briefly said, “ Yes, thank you.” and hung up the phone. Mưa said that she did not understand why because we all know how much he loved my mother.
I understood. For years, my mother’s friendship with him functioned as the life support to keep him alive. When she was gone, his heart and soul were gone with her. He has nothing else to say, to feel, or to mourn.
When I brought my mother's belongings to the US, I intentionally looked over and got rid of everything that related to Ba Minh, which was not a lot anyway. I intentionally chose not to have anything that may remind me of him.
I believed that Cậu Bạch's postcard quietly tapped into my psyche and slowly brought back memories of Ba Minh, my trauma, and other unsettling things through my dreams.
The New Year postcard he sent with a short note mentioned the names of my mother and three of us children’s names dated 1986. That year I was 15 years old.
1986 was the year that my mother recovered from her illness and went back to teaching art. I started to go to high school. I started to bike to school by myself. My mother allowed me to grow my hair long because all of my head lice disappeared last summer after I graduated from junior high. My social life expanded with new school, new friends, and new relationships. That was the year my mother bought a color television for the family for the very first time. Things started to look good and feel good for my family.
I glued Cậu Bạch's postcard onto one of my collage hand-made books.
After that, dreams started happening.
I have been having deeply personal dreams leading back to my small apartment in Cao Thắng, where I lived for 27 years. I saw so many people go back to the apartment with me in my dreams. I had dreams that helped me to confront my own trauma that I never wanted to talk about. I had dreams that related to Ba Minh and his son that I never wanted to talk about.
The postcard that led to my memory of our first TV gave me hints and clues about some sort of public communication that I need to address and process?
All came up unconsciously night after night. I faithfully recorded the dreams in detail as best as I could.
I knew eventually my personal dreams could help me find the answer to questions and solutions for several unfinished businesses in my past.
I will continue to write and analyze my personal dreams. I know dreams work in layers. The more we write about it, the more the dream will reveal on a deeper level.
From these dreams, I have opportunities to unpack my past, process what happened to my inner 12-year-old child, reconcile stuck relationships, and open up for internal healing to occur. The creative workshop that I participated in the last five weeks this year was also starting from recoding these dreams.
Who would think that my healing journey started with Cậu Bạch 's postcard in 1986?
