Was the day my family came to Boston, MA United States of America. This year, they will be celebrating their 25th anniversery here.
I walk into the house just as the sun is setting. An amber light comes through the southwestern dinning room windows and sprawles across the maple wood table, piled with slices of raw squid, beef and shrimp ready to be communily cooked in butter. Around the table sits my Dad, my Mom, my Uncle Phoung, his wife Long, my aunt Lua, my aunt Gam and her husband Kim. My Grandmother sits at the head of the table. My little cousins sit in the kitchen - as long as they can sit still - and eat while watching Alladin. I come in after hours of playing basketball. I shake hands with my uncles and kiss my aunts and my Grandmother - still beautiful with her long silver hair in a bun and youthful smile.
The table is sprawled with drinks and plates, platters of mint, rice paper, cucumbers, lettuces and a special pinapple dipping sauce.
I shower and come back to join them. We toast to my weekend back home. My uncle Kim slaps me on the shoulder and ask me how work is going. My Aunt My Lua asks me how come I keep coming back to Boston alone. Where are the girls you are suppose to bring home, she says. My Dad talks about how my Aunt in Vietname is now a doctor, and how my uncle here is a teacher and how nice it would be to have a lawyer in the family.
We laugh over stories about My Dad's boss and his midlife-crisis-Harley, the Vietnamese couple my Aunt My Lua is boarding and how they lack the drive, old stories about my Uncle Kim and his first experiance with pizza. We toast to our sucesses, talk more of family and then international politics and local politics. I tell stories about DC and my perspective on MA's new health care bill, of inequality in higher education, and we toast to our fortunate place in this world.
Pretty soon, I'm playing games with the youngest member of our family - 2.5 year old Emma, drawing pictures for her 6 year old, older brother, Nicky, and making faces at my little 10 year old cousin Vivi.
My friends from High school come over later and sit down at our table - like family. We eat more, drink and toast more and talk. My Unlce Kim tells stories about the unbelievable struggles and coincidences of life. My Uncle Phuong talks about practicality and his students and My Dad asks about the friends that are not sitting around the table with us.
Twenty five years later their lessons are still their lives.
