chuc mung nam moi

stevie wonder -- "superstitious"

asian people are very superstitious. while it is the american way to work hard and diligently for everything we want and let things come as they may, asians don't like leaving things up to chance. therefore, every stone will be upturned and every possible jinx safeguarded against.

especially this thursday, february 7, 2007, at the start of the new lunar year, there are important things to do and not do if you want this year, the year of the rat, to bring you lotsa good luck.

for instance, clean your house from top to bottom before new year's eve, then make sure to put all the cleaning supplies away! don't wash your hair on new year's, either, because it's believed you'll wash all your bad luck away (although i'm not sure i'm completely sold on this; if i go a single day without washing my hair, i go crazy!). wear red for especially great luck. and don't offend the spirits by talking smack, using foul language, getting into fights, or talking about death.

i'm 27. but i'm not married. that means i can still receive good luck money in those red envelopes just like all the other young kids in the fam. :oD

but the main event of the start of the new lunar year consists of praying to ancestors and making offerings. my family intends to cook or bring a whole boatload of food to my grandparents' house on thursday, and each dish will be offered up to the shrine that my grandparents maintain in a room that is completely dedicated to the ancestors. in this room are pictures and remembrances of all the people in the family who came before us and whose spirits now keep vigilance over us, the living, today. there are also pictures of buddha and a lady goddess.

generally, you are supposed to pray a couple of times a day to your ancestors, but prayers will be especially important on new year's day. and there will be the scent of incense, which i find to be the most reassuring scent in the world, wafting around.

we have to offer the food to the spirits first. because they have no physical form, they partake of the offered food by inhaling its essence. and once they've had their fill, the food's brought back to the main area, and we can all dig in. it's bad luck to eat food that's intended for the spirits before it's been offered to them. like, really bad luck.

all this may sound like irrational gibberish.

but i'm here to assert that it's not.

and i don't say that because this has been a part of my lived experience my whole life. i say it because i have huge respect for this. the way i hear it, the spirits are your life-line, and you are, in a way, theirs.

the worship of ancestors is patrilineal. when a woman marries, she stops paying tribute to the ancestors she grew up worshiping and instead must pay homage to the ancestors of her husband's family. only this past year did i realize the implications that this had on my mom. she was very close to her grandmother on her dad's side. this grandmother, my great-grandmother, was left behind when the city of saigon fell; she knew she was too old to try to escape and so she insisted that she get left behind. it was a harried, desperate time, and the decision to run to escape the communists was made rather instantaneously -- as soon as word reached the city that the communists were coming.

when my mom talks about that, about leaving her grandmother behind, i hear the sadness in her voice. they were just very close. the grandmother died within a year or two after my mom and her family escaped out of vietnam to the united states. it breaks my heart even now, because my family here was never able to see her again.

it was only last january that my grandparents and mom could return to vietnam and visit my great-grandmother at a cemetary. it was an especially poignant moment to be standing there and look upon my great-grandmother's tombstone. i remember it quite clearly: my mom started recounting stories about her relationship with her while my grandmother started setting up offerings on top of the grave -- food, incense, and fake money that we burned.

there's such a sense of continuity when it comes to ancestor worship. you never forget who comes before you. my great-grandmother was a source of consolation to my mom while my mom was growing up -- and continues to be to this very day.

in vietnam, we also visited graves of other family members -- my great-grandparents on my grandmother's side, distant aunts and uncles. i do not want to recount what we did because it feels sacrilegious to do so. suffice to say, it was a time of reunion, a time for re-establishing connections, and a way to show remembrance. that trip to vietnam changed me in so many ways that are just so inexplicable.

you know me. i'm agnostic. i'm a relativist. i'm totally secular-minded, so completely absorbed in the here-and-now rather than the sweet eternal ever-after.

nonetheless, i know that when the time comes, i'll be carrying on the traditions, too. i will remember those who came before me and make sure that they continued to be honored in life.

i've got no brothers. just two sisters. my dad is the last in his line, the last one to carry on the surname. there is some worry that, if my sisters and i never have kids, there will be no one to remember the ancestors in his line. in fact, an aunt (my dad's sister) has suggested to my mom that perhaps they should consider adopting a boy who could take on our family's name.

i think that'd be a great idea, but, um, that's not likely. *ahem* at all. like, ever.

and so you know it falls upon the responsible child -- i.e., me -- to start thinking about and planning for the future. i will not have my family be forgotten.

it's not that my sisters and cousins on my dad's side of the family don't care. i think they just don't really think about these things.

and like i say, i'm the responsible, conscientious, goody-two-shoes one. so it must be me.

not that i'm superstitious or anything. ;)

anyhow, chuc mung nam moi! happy new year!