陳白菊 《 Mom 》 美國

        My mom was like an angel.  She  was soft-spoken and well-liked by everyone.  In contrast to my father,  who had a fiery temper at times,  mom  never yelled at us.  Mom loved  her  mother  and  her  sisters  and  she  was  also  a  very  generous  person.   My grandmother and my aunts were poor so every time they visited, Mom would give them money and would send me to the best  noodle  shop in town to buy their favorite noodle soups for them.  On New Year’s Eve,  Mom  took us to  Grandma’s  house to help make bánh tét (sweet rice cake wrapped in banana leaves) for New Year celebration. Grandma did not have  electricity,  so we worked by the oil lamp.  My sister and I helped to clean the  banana  leaves  while  Mom  and  Grandma  wrapped  bánh tét.  They  talked  while working,  their  voices  were  soft  and  rhythmic.  I  didn’t  understand what they talked about, but their soothing sound made me drowsy. I slept while waiting for Mom to finish.

        One day,  Mom  fell  sick.  I’m  not  quite  sure what her illness was. Her condition grew worse and worse.  By  the  time she was brought to the hospital in  Saigon,  all  the good doctors had left the war-torn country.  Neither  Dad  nor  my  sisters  told  me  how Mom was doing, probably because they thought I was too young to know. It’d be best to spare me from worrying about her, they thought.  Mom  died  the  following  week.  She was only 45.  At her funeral,  a very big brown butterfly landed on the altar.  We’d never seen such a big butterfly before.  It  stayed  there  for  a long time and kept coming back for a few days.  Stories  have  been  told that the butterfly is the spirit of the dead and we truly believed it was Mom’s spirit. She couldn’t leave us and wanted to stay around.

陳白菊 (Laura Tran)