Artist and the van that carries dreams/ creative writting

 The dream on 03/17/2023

 I had a dream of my mother driving a big van with me inside. The road was ink-dark.  The van did not have a headlight, and my mother kept driving.

I was scared. I wanted to find a way to turn the headlight on and I could not. We drove pass a toddler and a child. A toddler was seen inside a baby walker. Both children were in the middle of the freeway. For some reason, we did not run over even though they were on the way.

We kept driving on and on like this for a long time.  Again, the road was dark. Some time I saw smoke from the horizon. Then the car got stuck in the alley and stopped by itself.

We both got out. I saw a girl lying down in front of the van. I was not sure why she was there. I was not sure if she was dead or sleeping.

Mother and I walked pass the alley until we saw a bright light fill up the enormous space that showcased a fancy mall and the library. Both of us walked up and down the stairs. We saw a lot of people sitting, chatting, and drinking coffee. We tried to get back to the van. The place was huge, so we thought we would get lost.

Then I woke up.

The day before, my daughter, Bánh Xèo told me that she would like to go for an MFA program after BA.

I did not say a word. I just know. Yes, she does. 

 

 

My mother told me that she always wanted to be an artist from a very young age.  

She was born in South Vietnam. My grandfather was a skillful carpenter and poor. My grandmother was from a rich family who owned lands and rice fields. My grandmother, followed her heart to marry the one she loved, disowned by her family.  My mother had a big family with five other siblings. 

In 1954, when Vietnam was split into two entities at the 17th parallel, my mother was sent to the North by her parents, who were Communist sympathizers. She was told that she would go to school. My mother recalled that she loved to go to school so she agreed. She was 9 years old at that time. She did not understand either Communist or anti-Communist ideology. She did not know about the war or the splits. With the dream of going to school in mind, she left her family to go to an unknown place up North and did not see them back 21 years later. 

So, she went, studied for three years in China, and trained as a propaganda artist in Hà Nội. Propaganda artists got assignments from the government. When my mother had time to do art on her own, she did and that was what my mother did until she died. Art was her life, spirit, and soul. When she could not create art, she knew this was time for her to go. 

She told my little sister Mưa right before she died," I wanted to stay longer with my children and grandchildren. But my body told me this was time. Let me go. Please do not put me back in the hospital." She went peacefully shortly after that. 

She trained me to be an artist like her when I was 5 years old. I did not go to art school after graduating from high school. Artists did not make money and we were poor. I did not want to follow my mother's steps. I wanted to make money to help my mother out. She was disappointed but understood. 

But like my mother, I love to study. I love to go to school. I went to university but quit at the beginning of my third year when I was employed by Vietnam Airlines.  Helping my mother at that time was more important than going to school. She was sad but went along with my plan, which I did not know what it was. Deep down, both I and my mother understand how bad I wanted to come back to school. 

I married and moved to the US. With my husband's help, I had opportunities to go back to school and oh mind. I went to school for 10 years straight. What kind of husband supported his wife to go to school for a long time. He was. Beyond that,  he wholeheartedly supported me to be who I am. Yes. 

I have become an artist. I was surprised that I was comfortably good and happy at being an artist.

I carry my mother's blood through my veins. I run away from art but art somehow always finds a way back to me

Now it was my daughter and her cousin’s case that proved the same.

My daughter was trained as a swimmer and wanted to be a soldier, like her brother. She went to West Point to be a swimmer and soldier as she planned to do. Things were challenging at school. She kept herself afloat as a swimmer, not a soldier. Being a soldier is not her material. Being a leader is not in her element. 

This girl was tough. She soldiered on at Westpoint for two years. Then. 

She went to Hawaii University to join their varsity swim team and picked up art as one of her majors.

Her works are adorable and serious at the same time. This girl knows how to combine serious human emotions into her daily life stories. Her designs were simplified down to solid and basic forms. Yet, the voiceover of her art colorfully conveys and explores feelings and emotions through complex lenses. Her stories provoked audiences to think and created a platform so others could discuss various human conditions in much deeper levers. 

At the same time, my niece, Noel, as her mother nicknamed her, is studying at the university to be an architect.

When Noel was in high school, she was to be good at math and chemistry. She planned to study chemistry when she went to college. Mưa, my sister, and her husband spent time, money, and energy to help Noel to achieve that goal. In the middle of her senior year in high school, she told her family that she wanted to study architecture.

Mua told me. Noel follows Bà Ngoại ( Grandma) ’s footsteps. 

I did not say a word. I just know. Yes, she does.

Noel studied art to create her portfolio and entry exam to architecture school, which was highly competitive. She did not have difficulty doing so. She is now a sophomore at Ho Chi Minh Architecture University.

Like my daughter, Noel could spend hours drawing and painting and was happy to be alone in the studio.

 Like me. Like my mother.

My mother’s blood is running strong through three generations.

Back to the dream I shared from the beginning. Things start to make sense and reveal the truth.

In the dream, my mother was driving a van in total darkness. She kept driving and never stopped until she reached the light of the library. The car stopped itself. She followed her gut and listened to her heart even though she did not know where to go.  The van is a vessel to carry her dream and take her to her desired destination. She carried me along with her. Two children on the road were my daughter and my niece?

I am still puzzled about the girl who lay down in front of the car while we stopped. I will keep this interpretation open as I know dreams work in layers. I am sure about the bright light and library we went into.

I seriously thought that I did not want to be an artist from the beginning. Turns out, I did not have a choice because art is me and I am art in-separately. It is inside my body and blood. This is genetic. The rational mind has nothing to do with being an artist. The heart and guts do. 

Now I can say to my children, listening to your heart and guts, your dreams will come true. 

Everything else will be ok.  

Cậu Bạch 's postcard and my dreams /creative writing

 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?