🧧Lunar New Year, 2016

   “Hello, Mẹ,” I groggily answered Mom’s FaceTime call as I languidly dragged my luggage through the Hobby airport. My ears were still ringing and my head was imploding, just regular side effects from the weekly early Monday morning flight that was my work commute. Nothing unusual in the life of a young, overworked consultant.

  “Chúc Mừng Năm Mới,” Mẹ sent her Happy New Year greeting in an optimistic voice, as one should when one is wishing others a new auspicious beginning. “Are you doing anything for Tết today?”

  “Oh….,” I stalled for two seconds before formulating a response in hoping that she didn’t detect in my guilty tone that I had completely forgotten about the most important holiday in our culture…again. “I would love to but it’s Monday, you know,” I stuttered, my head still foggy from the oppressive Houston humid air. 

  “I might go to the store after work to get some flowers,” I absentmindedly promised with the most earnest intentions, as my brain split its attention between the phone conversation and the spreadsheet I needed to finish as soon as I arrived at the office.

  “Okay, make sure you at least get some flowers for Tết,” she entreated with a defeated sigh.

  I left work at 7pm that night, went back to the hotel, ate my cold salad, worked out, worked some more then fell asleep in a flowerless room.

🧧Lunar New Year, 1991

  My eyes opened with childlike anticipation. My tiny 4-year-old feet rushed downstairs, fueled with sparks of unbridled excitement. It’s the first day of Tết!

  Our 360-square-foot house, like every house in the neighborhood, was decorated with pots of vibrant yellow Mai flowers, red tulips, pink chrysanthemums…all the colors that sing the chorus of Spring.  Sweet treats were abound. Greetings of “Chúc Mừng Năm Mới” and joyous laughter echoed all throughout the neighborhood.

  I gleefully slipped on my new pink dress and white shoes. Of course our first stop of the day had to be my grandparents’ house, where I would be collecting red envelope money in exchange for wishing the elders good health and a prosperous New Year. 

  As the adults continued their chatter inside the house after lunch, my cousins and I gathered under grandpa’s mango tree and played. Mẹ couldn’t pass by the opportunity to capture a photo of me and my younger cousin Mai Si in our coordinating pink dresses next to grandpa’s matching pink Dahlia flowers that he had carefully picked out just for Tết.

  The crisp Spring breeze was so gentle, she had not the heart to reveal that this would be our last Tết with Mai Si, before the cruel summer’s Dengue fever took her away to live on the Moon forever.

🧧Lunar New Year, 2017

  “Chúc Mừng Năm Mới, my niece,” my aunt Sue’s sweet voice flowed like a soothing river from my voicemail. I missed her call of course. I was busy with work.

  “Tomorrow, I’m cooking Phở for Tết at my house. I would love for you to come. If you do, could you please bring over a couple pots of flowers so we can put them on your grandparents’ altar?”

  I obliged with irritation. “Flowers are such a waste of money. But she IS my only family who lives close to me. And she IS cooking. I guess bringing flowers is the LEAST I can do.”

  I showed up with a pot of ordinary yellow chrysanthemums and red roses. They were what I could half-heartedly find at Giant’s. But strangely enough, as soon as they were placed next to my grandparents’ altar, with the incense smoke enchantedly weaving through each delicate petal like a mother Dragon protecting her vulnerable young, those flowers that minutes ago had seemed mundane in my eyes magically woke up and they were as vibrant as the flowers that once greeted me on New Year Day with boundless wonder. 

  And just like that, the atmosphere of a harsh Maryland winter day felt a TINY bit more like the gentle Spring breeze of Tết.

  “Huh…I guess the flowers DO make a difference,” I admitted to my overworked, cynical self.

🧧Lunar New Year, 2021

  My friend Jo watched me with childlike fascination as I intensely focused on arranging a bouquet of purple, yellow, and red flowers from Giant’s into three vases. We planned on making homemade spring rolls afterwards to celebrate Tết. 

  “Ân, do you mind me asking why the flowers are so significant for Tết?” Jo asked with the inquisitive curiosity that I love about her.

  “I don’t know, to be honest,” I shrugged. “But it’s the LEAST we can do.”