You know that weather app that comes with the iPhone? I think my mom added a Medford tab to hers because a couple days ago, out of the blue, she nagged me about wearing my puffy winter coat and an extra layer of pants since the temperature had dropped to below 10℃. I did not, but I told her I appreciated her concern. Her reminder did, however, make me feel a little homesick. This time of year invariably brings my thoughts closer to home than usual.
As I was scrolling through Facebook and musing on my seasonal homesickness, I came upon a post written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen is the author of "The Sympathizer," a book about a North Vietnamese mole in the South Vietnamese army and the subsequent life he leads as part of an exile community in the United States. Nguyen is an immigrant himself. In his Facebook post, he talked about how people claimed he wasn’t truly Vietnamese because he spoke the language imperfectly. He then described his intrinsic ties to Vietnam, including an image that stuck with me for days: a father telling his child to eat rice.
My own family moved around a lot due to my parents’ work, so I could relate to having people say that I’m not truly Vietnamese. When I was in elementary school and we lived in Washington, D.C., my parents would tell me and my sisters that we had to communicate in English to learn the language. Outsiders thought it was hilarious: We would speak in English and our parents would reply in Vietnamese. For my mother, English was a bit of a struggle. Thus, when she speaks English to me, I can feel her effort to communicate in a language that my sisters and I prefer. My mother is also quite unemotional in Vietnamese and always tells me she loves me in English, which tugs on the heartstrings.
After reading Nguyen’s post, I asked a few friends where they consider to be home.
Melanie Becker: "Home to me is the summer camp I went to as a kid and worked at last summer. I’m from Parkland, Fla."
William Hsu: "Taipei is home for me. As for where I’m from, I guess both Taipei and America?"
Nivi Nath: "I was born in India, but my family moved every three to four years, so I’ve lived in India, New York, Arizona, Minnesota and Connecticut. There’s a sense of familiarity when I go [to India], but I wouldn’t necessarily consider it home ... There are parts of every place I’ve lived in that I consider home."
As for me, Vietnam isn’t really home either. Maybe my home isn’t even a place but a group of people — my family, my closest friends. Regardless, as Massachusetts grows colder, I’m glad to have half of home here with me and the other half keeping tabs on me through iPhone temperature apps and messaging media.
