dear love

rub my back in slow circles as the end of the party nears, the voices of friends and family in the past 3 hours, let them all trail off for a second, as I take it in that you must love me.

dear love,

I haven't met you yet. I'm still a figment of your imagination. The soft thunder in your heart, a deja vu on your night drive home, that someone someday soon will sit next to you, and chatter on about how warm and gentle and wide your hand is next to hers, tickling your knuckles softly until you laugh. I want to feel that stretch of night in between the appearance of each warm orange golden streetlight. I want to feel your full presence in the darkness, hear you breathe softly, hear you smile, and I want to wrap my whole shape around your arm. Here, I can be safe, and here, I can be small. The long, windy drive home isn't mine to think about, but ours to share.

I want to be small bean, always.

I just want you to look at me, and just know, that I'm your small bean, and understand the full extent of what that means, when I look up at you and pause. And stare, anticipating all the small bean activities.

I am someone and I am something that you've promised yourself to, all too happily. All too easily.

dear love,

I don't want you to just love me. Because, maybe I'm older now, but I get it now. 

Love isn't enough.

But true love is.

And when true love isn't enough,

then I want you to choose me.

I want you to choose me the moment you wake and even when you're asleep.

Maybe it's borderline crazy, but can you just, obsess over me? Be so obsessed that every time you walk past something I like, that you remember. Or if you see the back of someone that remotely looks like me, that your heart skips. 

Be so obsessed, that you sleep holding onto me all night. Well, lol, accounting for body heat, at least 3 hours back to back, so that even your unconsciousness is holding me. And I still feel your hand wrapped around my tummy in the morning. Protect small bean's tummy. Haha. Sigh. God, I'm silly, aren't I? Wanting a small piece of the man I haven't even met yet?

I may meet you with a bit of my guard up. I may meet you fully ready, or when I don't even want you.

But today?

I'm still writing my story, because I want to write that story so bad.

I want to write the story that I could tell our kids and our many, many grandkids about who I was on my own. I want to write the purest story about myself, the before-I-met-your-dad story. :D

I just know that right now, I really like me. Not the me that I am for others all the time, but the me I am for myself. 

Your wife, your mom, your grandma, your mentor, really liked herself for a night in Marietta, Ohio. She sat on the floor of her bedroom, on the beautiful flower mat next to her medium-hard bed, replaying the same ballroom Cinderella waltz to write love prose to.

Your daughter, your sister, your wife, your mom just got back from a work friend's small and lovely birthday gathering. Nearing the end of the party, she proudly shared her dad's amazing journey from the fall of South Viet Nam to the States as a boat person. How he started out wiping car windows at gas stations to becoming a businessman. How her mother was a slave in the city when she met the man who drove all over Saigon at night, handing out food and clothes to homeless folks. How after seeing that, did she say yes to meeting him. 

And I felt very proud in those moments, that I can pull from so much, and that I come from so much. And I can make so much with everything I've got already. 

How the very same day, I spent 2 hours in my favorite restaurant with my work friend, diving into every conversation topic imaginable. How I rushed to my favorite retailer after to buy a collection of gifts for Kelly, the birthday bean. How I've been in the middle of painting a waterfall. How I've been walking all the way to the river and back from my apartment, stopping at the exact point where I called Ivanna when I learned that Saundra as much as Tyler, wanted me to be a part of Peoples Bank, that fateful March, exactly a year ago. That in this very same week, I haven't really eaten lunch alone. Every day for the past week, I was lunching with someone new. I'm working on my charm, is what I want to say haha. That or, people just keep accepting my lunch invites. And they keep coming, you know? These invites. Like, it's such a pleasure to share a peaceful lunch with someone new every day, and learn what's on their mind and what's important to them and why. I'm soaking the awe of just getting to know so many ways of life here, at Peoples Bank. I know it's merely a sample of Ohio and then, of the USA, but it's the best feeling, I tell you, the emptiness of an hour that I get to spend, walking all over our bank and saying hello to folks new and old. 

It's almost impossible for me now, to imagine a day where I didn't get to spend a full hour greeting everyone I care about in an establishment. 

Wouldn't it be a crazy thing to be in a position where I can really peek into everyone's lives and how they do their work but then also can advocate for changes to their job processes so that they can do better work? So that they can feel like they were heard and important to the bank? Wouldn't that be so crazy? Like, the person you go to if you want to make your clients happier, or your processes more practical and less manual?

And engage with all requests in the most respectful and insightful ways. Heh. Maybe. I think at the core of it, I just so much love talking to people. I really do, but not without letting myself think strategically, which I love just as much, if not more.

And every third day, I'd stop by our retail brunch at headquarters and just bellow my hellos. From retail to insurance to commercial, I'm a face that comes by and makes you laugh. Michael and I, gosh, we joke too much when I'm there. When I taught him "gg no re", he fucking flipped out, hahaha. "TTYL IYKYK," he responded, half bewildered that all the younger folks are going crazy.

"Good game, no replay!" I echoed across our bank building. "The heck?!" he laughed.

So it's little moments like these, little side quests I give myself like initiating lunch invites or Saturday alunches (afternoon lunches) or needing to finish a waterfall painting that make me feel like Ngoc again. Like the moments where I get to share with someone and make them laugh as hard as I can, or make them smile during an otherwise mundane work day, gosh, they make me feel like the world is a better place already. With another smile and laugh to add to the hour.

It thrills me, to earn someone else's joy.

And it concerns me too, silly readers, that I can be such a people pleaser haha, but you know, I'm not an absolute people pleaser. I make sure to tell everyone, at all levels in the business, that "it sounds like a you problem" when it sounds like a you problem, and feel myself laugh at my own joke, as they laugh along, amused and bewildered.

Well, THAT was a tangent.

Thank god that I have at least another 45 years to perfect my jokes.

 I can't believe the Earth has spun a complete circle since I first started this blog episode.

My, god.

There's so much to be in this life. I want to be a good person. I want to be healthy and ridiculously funny and always keep people on their toes and well, and I want everyone I love to know that I love them. 

I want to advocate. I want to be a tough little bean. I want to be braver, perhaps even more brave than leaving my family to do what I want. 

Though I've moved my life out here to Marietta in this time, I'm not truly brave yet.

I want to be so brave that I can live in the silence of my own head. No music, no podcast, no beautiful view in front of me. Eyes closed, and the darkness so vast that it's empty but so empty that I can see everything that's happened in the past, everything that brought me here today, and everything that I will become in the future.

I want that darkness to not overwhelm me, but feel even like home.

The way out is in. As my Buddhist master says it.

And for the next chapter of my life as I take on the uphill battle to be who I want to be, I want to be fully present for every step of my growth. I want the Ngoc that knows she is Ngoc every moment that she is Ngoc. And I meet her briefly every day. Like today, I met that Ngoc, when she received calls from all sorts of work friends on a fundraising telethon for a local nonprofit, live on air. And for a second after I collected information from Jana, and then from Elizabeth, and even from Saundra, my boss haha, I felt a full complete second. Taking in the gigantic room, the heat of the phone in peoples hands ringing, the cameras trained on us. I felt the full second. 

Like, wow. Ngoc is doing something you didn't know she could do.

Like, wow. Ngoc is crazy. All the yeses in life and one of them brought her here. Heck, here lies my own awe. Here lies no lies at all when I say that I smiled at myself non-stop, at my own determination to become brave. All roads lead me to the same place as long as I am me. Isn't that incredible? 

And that's the Ngoc that I want to be for the next good 45 years of my life. A Ngoc that smiles at herself kindly.

And that's the Ngoc that is in me already, ready to greet me, soon and someday. Yes, I'm dissociating a little bit, even if this started out as a love poem.

so dear love, and yes, love, I'm still speaking to you, dearest. Will you call me honey? Haha, too cheesy? 

Will you call me your little bean?

When you choose me, you will feel the fullness of everything that I've been all my lifetimes ago and all the lifetimes I have ahead. 

You will be another witness to my life, like a friend, like family. That's a big responsibility, Mr. Witness.

When you choose me, I need you to figure out how to handle me, like the way Selena's boyfriend handles her. We'll talk about that later sometime.

I need you to figure out how to celebrate me for who I am, every changing second and for every evolving me.

It has only been 7 months but gosh I have changed, like an island in the South Americas that was there but then the ocean swallowed again, because of climate change, and a new island appearing a mile from Denmark in the same second. Like the way Trump wants access to Greenland or access to Ukraine and Gaza. 

Maybe nothing is really new in my life.

Everything that I'm sad about, wishful or angry about, happy about, all those things were already meant to be. Because they're not me. I can't be mad at Trump for being Trump if he really does absorb Canada or Greenland just because he wants to or continues supplying Israel with all the weapons or erases day-by-day any trust people once had in our own democracy. I can't be mad about that.

Because he is he.

And it was always meant to be, because he is himself.

And I am myself, and because I am me, there are some things that only I can do. A miracle that I'm here and a bigger miracle when I truly live out my dreams and do what I do best.

For now, my eyes are feeling heavy and the waltz is still on.

Dear love, just, dance with me. You see how I think and lead my own tangents? So just, lead but don't control me, so that I can be small bean, as much as I can be with you, because for so much of my life, I was big bean.

I want to feel you smile when I press my face to your chest. I want to feel you recognize the enormity of your responsibility. And though you may not be everything to me, you are a piece of my everything.

I want to feel the full stretch of darkness again. Maybe we've parked by the beach and we can see nothing out there except for the white foam tips of the rolling waves. I want us to feel like we can breathe so clearly next to each other. 

I once wrote an episode on this blog about easy, peaceful love. I was just 20. 

But even then, I understood the assignment. And I still do.

I just want to rest the fullness of myself in your safety for the minutes we do share. And yes, I will find all that safety within myself, absolutely. But should you choose me, I need you to know, there is a lot to hold. There is a lot for you to understand. There is a lot of me to be gentle with and I promise when I trust you, I'll do my best to feel at home. And when I feel at home, I have a good habit of making all the moments after, feel just like that. Like home.

And your cheat sheet?  Acts of service. And, words of affirmation, haha.

I can't wait to meet you one day, for the first time.

Maybe you're good at reading rooms like I am. Maybe you'd know better than me what we'll be to each other. Maybe you're heart stoppingly handsome >-< and heart stoppingly kind. And your voice might be so healing that my tummy oozes over wahhhhhhh~

okie, no more romancey feelings. I was inspired tonight by the sweetest couple at the birthday gathering tonight, because dang it, I love love <3

So for when we meet, feel free to stare. Ask for the next dance? Give me time to consider you and trust you and nod, "Yes," and yes, you may take my hand gently, guide it to your lips briefly, before leading me to the dance floor. May the lights dim and the orchestra live on. 

The music is here and the story we'll write when we do, I want you to whisper it into my hair. I want you to want me to whisper it back too, nervous but hopeful. And even as I twirl away from you unsure, tug me back firmly. Let me see if I can be bigger than my fears, show me that you know how to handle me and that you have every reason to keep holding on.

Because I'm what?

Because...

I'm small bean.

Episode 98: trivia at the Har Mar

Skip to 15:30, the song I wrote this episode to. :)

"What is there to do? In Marietta? On a Sunday night?" you might ask.

And I shall reply quickly, "Why, of course, trivia at the Har Mar Tavern. $2 bucks a person. One heck of an hour."

You need to sit in the main room, so the other teams can maybe see the four fingers you raise up to signal and mouth loudly across your own table, "Four!" as if four fingers wasn't enough a giveaway.

And of course 7 is the sum of any two opposite sides on a die. Right?

"What has a heart that doesn't beat?"

Do you wanna guess that one? Really?

Well, Austin knew it. "Artichoke."

I banged my head against my palm, "Argh! Why, of course!"

She laughed sweetly, and Kelly was always the final lady for things no one else knew. Her encyclopedia has probably touched it, and for all the marketing knowledge she may have, she's sooo good with numbers. Austin shined with the movies section, knowing who was who at the Oscars in what year and what boot Oprah may have helped popularize in 2003. Uggs?!?!!?

I was no help on, not even the romance portion. "What color was the house in The Notebook?"

I guessed blue but that wasn't right, rather it was white with blue shutters. :(

And of course, you've got to order a drink at the Har Mar. Take in all the sounds of different trivia teams already knowing each other, fighting each other for weeks, even years in the same alliances. Discover with joy that there's an actual team named "Grandma and Grandpa" and are actually a grandma and grandpa. DANG IT, MARIETTA IS SO CUTE. FREAKIN---

And you've gotta, maybe, sound out the big ass sign at the very back of the bar after you've sipped 75% of your raspberry beer. The sign spells "HOPEULIKIT".

I rolled my guesses out loud, the beer in my belly was warm and made all the lights dance and my mind that is too often reading, now slow. I leaned my cheek on my palm, as I blurted out, "Hm... hopefully you like it? Hopeful? Hoping. Hopeful you like it. Hopeyoulickit. Omg, oh!"

The poor couple next to me laughed into their hands, "Now she gets it! Don't worry, I blushed hard too when I realized," the kind gentleman remarked. 

And so I blushed hard as well, as Kelly and Austin laughed on. Haha.

We made a good trivia team.

After it was over, we talked about possible future plans. What local Floyd or Beatles cover band is coming through the Peoples Bank Theatre for $40 bucks a person, maybe? 

Yes folks. I'm in the town where we're lucky if we get the cover bands. And how does that make me feel? Well, I feel really cute. Like, I'm in one of the cutest, slowest places on Earth. Laugh at me all you want, but dang it, it's little endearing things like this that make me feel like I'm in a movie town. 

Marietta has really changed me. It's really shown me how a different and small community can feel, even to an outsider like me. The exchanges at the bar amongst different folks, folks smiling at Austin, Kelly, and I as we took a little selfie at the bar. It's the kind of softness that I feel safe in.

So yeah, I actually feel safe in a bar in Marietta, and boy does that say a lot. It says a lot. 

I know I benefit on some level as a lighter-skinned woman in this town. I don't know what others' experiences have been, but so far, the people of Marietta have treated me kindly.

And have constantly surprised me with all the possibilities of ambition and hopes and dreams and definitions of happiness that I never knew about. Such sweetness.

For all this softness and welcoming, I am still very far from home. Because of the recent unbecoming of my dad's health, I will very soon be back in Houston long-term to take care of my Dad. I've thought deeply about my decision and it is my love for my family and the needs of my family right now that is my compass, and well, it's a decision that my heart is leading. So I can't be wrong.

I've always said I wanted to love my loved ones better, every day. And for the next chapter of my family, I can't imagine leaving my mother on her own. We're a team. And we'll always be a team.

Yen, Mom, and I. Yes.

I just know that I really love Peoples Bank.

It's grown on me so sweetly and softly and in all the ways the word, "Sweet" can be used, it's done just that. I am so glad I jumped on board when I did, even when it didn't make a lot of sense. Even when I knew how far and hard it would be, I still swung on, thinking myself an adventure character.

But so far, Marietta hasn't been much of an adventure. It's been a conduit for something else, within.

Like my Buddhist master always says, "The way out is in."

The way out is in. The way for me to take on my fears, be bolder, be braver, be more sure than ever before, be more at peace, find absolute happiness. All of those answers were never out there. They were always in here. 

Not in my head.

They are all in my heart. I know it's a cliche, but it's true. 

My heart knows what it wants to do in its free time, on the slowest of Saturday afternoons in a town that is as quiet as it is green. And for all the quiet time that Marietta has provided me, I've gotten to actually hear myself think. I could hear myself want what I want out here and why. I could hear myself reflect, not escape whenever I wanted to, because there's literally no where to escape to in Marietta, so the only way out of all my issues was... truly, in. 

So after months of getting better at listening to myself, my heart knew what it needed to do when I saw my father slurring through a promise that he will be okay, over videochat, just before 911 came. 

My heart knows a lot, and some of that knowledge is pure instinct, from my ancestors, all those before me. They are surely people and spirits who know much more than I do, what I need at times, and I feel such deep, deep joy the moment when I know that I'm aligning so fucking much.

And that feeling came to me so deeply this past Friday, over lunch with my supervisor, and I said it.

I told her what my heart needed to be okay. "What would really be so helpful right now is an expedite of the PDA program. I know it's a year but I really would benefit from being home sooner to take care of my family and then finding that long-term placement that would be remote or hybrid. I'm open to either and well, I do need to be in Houston for that foreseeable future, but Saundra, I also need you to know that I will always want to honor my family, but I also want to honor Pebo. Pebo has given me so much and I truly want to do so and give back how ever much I can."

And I was ready for any answer, but I certainly wasn't ready for all the love I'd receive from her. Instant understanding and love.

And again, all the more reasons for my deep freaking attachment to Pebo. Haha, gosh. Little Pebo.

It's truly such a warm, cozy little place nestled in the sweetest town. I'll smile often should I ever be in my 60s, and reflect to my grandchildren where I was, when I least expected it. That it didn't start out fully sweet and happy, but it grew that way. A slow burn, safe love.

Your little Viet grammie was in the smallest town she's ever been. In one of the most healthiest, stable relationships of her life -- the relationship she had with her work and workplace.

I kner. 

Such a career-oriented woman. But that's because I have to be. There's no more space in my heart right now, with my family as it is, and my hunger, gosh, even as I discover the sweetest, simplest of things to bring the biggest of smiles to my new friends and co-workers, but gosh, is there a sizeable hunger in me.

That's probably what Chuck saw too. And I hear it in my own voice, greater by the day.

This fire to do good. To do well. To do well enough to take care of my family, no matter the hardship. Emotionally and financially. And to one day impact, meaningfully, the communities I get to touch.

This is my time. To do my part.

"I want to honor my family," I said to Tyler, the new CEO of our bank, as the bulge of a tear edged on my eye. I gripped my knees slightly, leaning forward. 

"And I want to honor Pebo," I finished. Embarrassed but honest. Dang it, Ngoc. Honest as ever at the wrong time, I almost chided myself until I looked up to face Tyler. Surprised.

His reddening eyes, and the bulge of tears in his own eyes surprised me, until one tear fell off and he had to wipe it quickly. After listening to my story. My father's first and last first class flight to Viet Nam. How it felt to see my Dad in that nursing home. I was speechless.

"You would honor Pebo, and you would honor me, if you would honor your family," he responded just as surely. "Please honor your family first. Thank you for being here but it would break my heart if you did otherwise. So please, do what you need right now. We will figure out a plan together. Anything you need."

I didn't know how to respond except cry harder.

And laugh cry for the fact that Tyler and I cried together.

"Tell no one else, that this happened," he joked. And I laughed cried again. 

Gosh, I didn't even keep my promise on that but that is to say, this is another reason why no matter where I am in the world, I will do my best to honor Pebo, at all costs.

This is another reason my heart is for another. This is another reason why I can't fully prepare for any second or third case scenarios right now without feeling like I've lost something I won't find anywhere else in the world again.

And this is why, I will do what others might not be able to do, if they were in my place.

Which is to stay loyal and bring honor to an organization, best I can, for all the goodness that they've shown me and been to me. For all the goodness that Marietta and its people have surprised me with, like the bundle of flowers on homecoming, that Austin brought to my door the day I got back from Houston after knowing my situation or the bundle of chocolates that Lisa from the mail room mailed to me just because she liked my energy or the fact that Gina Houser of all people chose me to lead the document generation project or the fact that my landlord loves me, I think, to give me a new recliner the moment I dreamed of needing a recliner for my place -- for all these reasons some places start ending up feeling like safety. Like sweetness.

Gosh.

And I'm thick in it. 

Thank you for everything.

I've even gotten used to capturing the stinkbugs all around my place. Crazy, the things you can do when you're in love. Like staying loyal and aligned and happy. :)

Your girl, no longer as teary, just soft in her new recliner,

Ngoc

the true god

The only true god to exist 

is not the pope, not the parent, not even the Sun. 

There is an hour for thirst.

An hour for dying.

An hour to swing there, unswept, uncut, unfallen.

With the polished, imperfect Midas and Mierdas touch, 

the cold experimental glare

or the indented palm gripping the water bucket,

god is

the gardener. 

To have a vase home, or be uprooted,

be let live, somewhere unfound in Canada as the firmest tree,

or the pink hydrangea in H-E-B for a Vietnamese family,

mercy is given by one and many.

One and many gods, the gardeners,

give no answers.

Just outcomes. A constant temporary home, 

the unknown next home,

the brief relief of settlement.

Of place. Of being

a star fruit tree that barely 

survived

a weak winter.

How hopeless. 

How fruitful. 

How dependent.

How thirsty.

With the bare memory of your existence,

or the full need for your survival,

mercy is not hope, not love, 

not even peace.

Mercy is relief

and where god

is the gardener.