Lunar New Year, or Chinese New Year. Or that one holiday you don’t know anything about but support awkwardly anyway. Lunar New Year is supposed to be a season of celebration but for me it’s just a culmination of all of the aspects of my culture that I can’t appreciate. That culture, the Vietnamese community who travelled by sky and sea to get to a foreign country, a country who was simultaneously bombing their home. A community who survived and part of which even thrived in this distant land. A community trying their best to balance assimilation and culture like a tightrope. Lunar New Year is the hallmark of our achievements and an acknowledgement to our sacrifices and those we left behind.

Every year during this time my mother’s eyes turn red rimmed and her laugh sounds choked out. She spends more time in front of the altar staring at the pictures of relatives that have passed. She holds my hand tighter as she realizes that she’ll leave me, as her mother left her, one day. 

Every year during this time my father’s anger spikes and his eyes turn glazed with the effects of alcohol. He takes advantage of the holiday to drink with his friends. He avoids my eye contact and his laugh sounds cynical. I am a stark reminder of what he left behind over thirty years ago. 

My mom’s younger sister left for California; her younger cousin drove to New York. Her family in Vietnam had long set up the appropriate decoration, passed around red envelopes, and all of the kids were in their best clothes fit for church. She yells over the phone in excitement seeing it all, but soon her volume is just desperation, begging them to not forget their sister on the screen. She wants to go home and give her dad a hug. I cry on her behalf behind locked doors and turned off lights.

My dad’s family in North Carolina are singing karaoke, trading over the top expensive gifts, bringing out the liquor reserved only for special occasions, and his nieces and nephews, now grown, beg him to visit. He can’t say yes. He longs for North Carolina but calls Minnesota. His sons sometimes answer, sometimes the phone rings and rings and rings. Do they remember what day it is? Do they remember him? As he hugs me tighter, I can barely breathe over the stench of a father’s grief.

Lunar New Years is just another holiday that amplifies the feeling of isolation for immigrants like me. Could it be better in the future? Well, I’d hoped so, but here, now there’s weight in my chest where excitement should lie.

The thing about being an immigrant is that no matter where you arrive, you have left something behind: family, friends, cultures,…, comfort.

And there’s no knowing when you’d be able to come back. 9 years since the last time I’ve seen my only living grandparent. The next time I go might be to attend his funeral.

Phone calls home remind me that even though I look like them and speak well enough to understand, there’s an invisible glass wall between us that makes my syllables trip in hesitation. Was that disrespectful? Did that joke translate? Are they laughing at me or with me?

Jokes about my American accent are funny for only so long before I notice they make it every time they can’t understand me. 

My attempts to get rid of my Vietnamese inflection in English as a child led to my lack now. A metaphor lives here, but reality weighs heavy, demanding to be seen purely as it is.

To become what my parents wished for me to be, I lost who I was originally. 

The kicker? I’m still too asian to blend in. Too exotic and oriental to not be a specter. Who do I go to with my troubles other than my keyboard, now?

I don’t deny my privilege, being able to come to this country after the war was a gift in its own way. I just don’t want to feel like this anymore. Like I have no home, no true family, no truth. 

Lunar New Year becomes another day to fake a smile. Pretending I’m okay with lying to my friends and family about how I’m doing. Another lie, another lie, another lie. 

I’m okay. I love this holiday. I love my family, and they love me.