These Korean Watercress plants were one of my brother's many ways of saying "I love you" without actually saying "I love you."

By now, it's common global knowledge that asking someone "Did you eat yet?" is one of the same as saying "I love you" in Vietnamese culture (or Asian cultures in general). This truth is even more prevalent in my family, whose long lineage of Confucian scholars combined with many years of cultivated inner stoicism in order to navigate war and turbulence resulted in an inherited affinity to value "Act of Service" above all other more expressive love languages as a demonstration of love.

And my brother, being a natural math and science prodigy and an almost carbon copy of our emotionally discreet grandfather, is even more emblematic of this rule. Those who don't know him well would be perplexed at his overwhelming difficulty to verbally express terms of endearment.

But I do know that when I was a child, and every year on the Autumn Moon Festival (Trung Thu), when all the other kids in the neighborhood brought basic store-bought lanterns to the street parade, I would always show up with THE most unique, complex homemade lantern - one that my brother had spent the previous 2-4 weeks crafting with his engineering skills. One year, I had a lantern that could fold and transform into 2 different shapes. My brother built my lanterns to be the most impressive one at that parade.

And so one Sunday afternoon, my brother drove 2.5 hours from Virginia to abruptly drop off some cuttings of this plant with fern-like leaves and a delightfully herbal fragrance at my door. And ALL he explained, in his usual frugal-with-words way, was:

"This is Korean watercress. They are good for the typical health problems that run in our family," referring to the diabetes and heart disease that took both of our grandparents in their mid-60s. "Plant them in something that doesn't have holes."

And with a knowing sigh, I grabbed the plants from him, then without missing a beat, I asked:

"Did you eat yet?"