Memorial Day Metrics

Reflecting on Memorial Day, and what makes a country strong.

Thinking this Memorial Day of those who fell in service of our country's various missions (including the 58,000+ who did so defending the flag on the right, under which I was born), and the loved ones they left behind.

Whether or not each mission achieved its military objective, the unquestionable success of the military members killed in duty that this holiday honors is evident by the fact that our nation stands, and has for almost 250 years been strong and resilient enough to absorb millions of immigrants and incorporate thousands of small ethnic enclaves within its borders, like Eden Center in northern Virginia, where the two photos above were taken today.

Now, the defense of the ideals broad enough for our country to continue on this course of openness and inclusion is up to the rest of us - the civilians - performing our civic duties at the ballot box, in the courts, in our nonprofit and business organizations, our schools, and beyond, in our daily and regular social intercourse and interactions with each other.

I will concede that my perspective as an admitted refugee is biased; I have a vested interest in claiming space for myself and the cultural heritage my parents worked so hard to preserve - all the yummy food and millennia old traditions. It boggles my mind that there are actually people who would give up all the polyglot cultural gems that make us what we are today. Sure, all the photos in this post are of Vietnamese food - because I spent time this long weekend with great aunts and cousins in Northern Virginia. But are any of us ready to give up pizza and Italian food, Tex Mex, soul food, all of the other things brought to these shores by all of the other waves of arrivals? It's all of that, ALL of it, mixing and remixing and existing (mostly peacefully) side by side that makes us so great, so worth the sacrifice, isn't it?

This Upper Eastside Life (aka WWG-G-MaD)

What would Great-Grandma do, or think, of my recent ventures out and about the neighborhood?

On this Where We Were Wednesday (yes, just made that up so I could publish a catch up post), we have the photos from our companion Instagram posts "Blume, Blooms, and Botaniste" and "WWG-G-MaD" to provide a lookback at a fun evening Tuesday last week and a weekend in "the life" (this past weekend, to be exact).

Cụ Bà loved oranges. Ông Nội loved watermelon. Papa Rooster loves cookies and snacks.

Let's go in reverse chronological order and start with this past weekend, with a vase full of flowers from the Mother Garden for my great grandmother's giổ (death anniversary). She died over 75 years ago, in a very different time and world. What would she make of...

...Her great granddaughters graduating from Ivy League colleges? Her daughter-in-law's younger sisters (all but the baby, who was a mere 4 years senior to Papa Rooster) stopped their education at 8th grade, which was quite common in the first half of the 20th century in Vietnam, and their father was highly educated for the time.

The ivy in this planter off Park Avenue or thereabouts, as I walked home before driving out to the Mothership, is exactly like the kind I used to draw back in high school; it was a motif I was pulled toward, even before heading to college, and that college led to jobs, and law school, and a life I was able to build mostly myself.

Earlier that day, on Madison Avenue, it was the Saturday of gallery walks, of abstract art...

Plume Chaser happens to love doughnuts. This work had a price tag of $45,000. I texted him the photo and teased it was just a bit above my budget; he said he would have chastised me if I ever spent so much on such a thing.

... I must have been hungry.

In addition to snacks, Papa Rooster very much likes lobster. This isn't the depiction of one, but the piece was uncannily like a cooked crab, with the same coloration as our meals whenever Papa Rooster gets to call the shots.

And I respond to vivid colors.

This one reminded me of Sissy, who has gone full into her jigsaw puzzle hobby in recent years since the ease of getting new ones from Buy Nothing.

The gallery visits were broken up by bits of nature.

Mama Hen would have appreciated this sweet topiaried shrub in a planter on Madison Avenue.

And some of the art subjects themselves were natural. 

Asked Plume Chaser if he would have preferred this instead; he finds blue jays annoying, with which any gardener would agree.

Including by a Viet artist. How far - literally, figuratively - we've come from where, and when, GGMa died.

Back in the Jardin this same past weekend, a flower with a name that reminds me of travel by sea came into bloom - armeria maritima...

Though far we've come, still, we are not completely severed from the motherland - the rains left lush chickweed, and dandelion greens, also tía tô (perilla - so begins the battle for control of the planters) and kinh giới (Vietnamese balm - less ubiquitous than the tía tô), which I had dressed and tossed with chili lime cashews for lunch. And that was all I had for that meal; perhaps why I was drawn to food art at the gallery walk.

And from Madison Avenue gallery walks to talks at a Fifth Avenue synagogue... Could Cụ (Great Grandmother) ever have imagined her great granddaughters there! But how could we pass up...

JUDY BLUME!! Sissy and I were in the same (very large) room with THE Judy Blume! Who didn't read a Judy Blume book in their youth? Well, any Gen X'er, anyway. Got us tickets to see her right in our neighborhood (the chi-chi-er part, the southwesternmost edges of our neighborhood, far from where we plebes dwell in Yorkville). And Judy Blume (as she tells it, all the kids have always called her by both names) was delightful, and energetic, and still so sharp for age 87! (Far sharper than Papa Rooster, who is her age.)

And afterward we walked to find dinner, past St. Vincent Ferrer Roman Catholic Church on Lexington Avenue, with its most lovely rose garden out front. Just like a children's photographic picture book version of "Sleeping Beauty" we had growing up, of dolls as the princess and prince and witch, posed in settings with lots of vivid roses in the background castle garden.

We ended the night with a wonderful vegan meal at Le Botaniste - clean, delicious, ethical, reasonably priced - a nice bow-tied ending to an outing in the nabe.

I chose a half portion of African stew and zucchini soup, with a vegan brownie.

Sissy had a pasta with vegan Bolognese, the same zucchini soup, and a chia pudding with berry topping.

Atop the Boardwalk

Returning to the Jones Beach boardwalk.

It's not quite the season yet, so there was only a smattering of folks by the time we arrived at our usual beach for the first time this year to walk with Papa Rooster's brothers, who are in town visiting him.

The uncles arrived yesterday, and there was a mad scramble to whip the Mothership into some semblance of host-worthy state (ship shape was a forgone aspiration). At my BigFin employer, the five-day return to office policy has become effective, but with exceptions previously granted for work from home up to one day also left unchanged. So I logged in from the Mothership for business hours, but was able to help the sibs with the last push for a good six hours after that. We wrapped up just in time for their slightly flight delayed late evening arrival.

Back at Jones Beach, there is much construction underway to restore the Art Deco structures and add facilities, closing off certain portions of the boardwalk since last year.

We walked as the sun began to set and the moon began to rise, witnessing both at the same time. Those astronomical bodies seemed to mirror the arc of Papa Rooster and Mama Hen, with the closing of the days they could drive there together on a whim independently, and the rise of reliance on their baby chicks for transportation and mechanical aids for mobility, as they both pushed walkers over those planks for the first time - Papa on account of the stroke, Mama finally being forced to acknowledge that her knee has rendered her less able to walk than she generally cares to admit. 

Experiencing the boardwalk we've enjoyed for decades in that way was as stark a change as the construction-altered path we traversed.

Both uncles, though, seemed happily surprised that Papa is in a much better state than they had thought. So there is that.

Hope, Heartbreak, Home Hauling

Snippets after the rain.

Our rainy spell has made the lilac lush and vibrant with buds ready to bloom.

And the time outdoors seems to have encouraged the olive tree and the Thai lime to regrow tiny wisps of leaves.

But on the other hand, the once flower laden blueberry bush...

...has been drastically deflowered, with little to show for it. Hopes of fruit lie at the bottom of the planter.

And amid the hope and heartache, the snails just go about their business, leaving their snail trails.

Cinco Por Cinco de Mayo

Highlighting recent encounters with fauna - feathered and furry.

In the Jardin, we've had visits from some fine feathered friends.

Striking mostly-white pigeon.

House finches, I think.

Morning dove.

And then there was a different set that I met in Central Park yesterday - the Other, back from his last (most recent, and final one for his current stint) deployment, and his wild fauna crew in the Rambles.

Red tail hawk.

Squirrel.

May the Fourth Be With You

Leaning into the life force of the world.

Getting out and living is so easy when the Force just sweeps everything and everyone up in beauty and vibrancy.

Half-Century Mark

50 years after the fall of Saigon.

50 years ago today Saigon fell, and that changed the trajectory of my family's life, and marked the beginning of the Viet diaspora. We were actually supposed to get off the ship we had boarded a few days before (because 6-week-old Sissy was dangerously ill, sleeping on an open ship deck; another infant - older than her, younger than me - had already died, and had a burial at sea - tossed overboard), but once South Vietnam fell, the ship wouldn't stop and headed out of newly Communist Vietnamese waters. Drinking water was rationed, so the first word 13-month-old me learned and spoke was "drink."

An article about our family and our American sponsors was published in a local paper close to 7.5 months later, when we were relatively safe, after the refugee camps, after the rebuffed attempt to settle in Tunisia, after temporary holding on an American military base. A photo shows me on Papa Rooster's lap, looking out at the camera, in serious toddler mode; Sissy is on Mama Hen's lap, chubby and cute, hand stuck in her mouth, being cooed over by the president of the ladies' auxiliary club that spearheaded our resettlement. Papa Rooster clipped out the article and put it into an album. He also has the centerfold photo essay published in a national magazine one year later marking the first anniversary of "Ngày Mất Nước" (the "Day the Country Was Lost"), where he happened to spy his platoon mates sitting among a large group, on the ground, at a jungle re-education camp.

If today you know what phở or bánh mì or cà phê sữa đá or summer rolls are, or have used the bottle of sriracha with the rooster on the label and the green cap, it is because 50 years ago people who lost a war and feared (rightly) retaliation against them by the incoming Communists fled the only land most of them had ever known and became refugees, leaving their families and ties and place in the world.

Bitter Chill

The irony that this inauguration should fall on the day that MLK, Jr.'s birthday is observed is lost on few who witness this transition with trepidation.

View out the door to the Jardin...

...and then on to the park, where miniature snow people and many pigeons were taking a view of the river.

That today's outgoing Executive branch pardons were contemplated, then determined necessary, is chilling. That the incoming pardons were granted was disgraceful.

What I was able to do today: Not be counted in viewership. Mother Nature graced us with snow; I went sledding with my bestie, my Sissy. 

Joy and connection are a new form of protest, the strengthening of bonds and community to battle the misinformation and divisiveness that they hope to achieve. Taking refuge in this storm, practicing some self care, pacing my outrage. This will be a marathon.

On this holiday celebrating the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is helpful to remember that he reminded us that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Storing up my reserves and strength to help keep that arc bending.

Vegetarian options aplenty at Effy's! Including seitan shawarma!