Con Yêu Dấu <my dear daughter>—

I've mulled over and over again how one day there will come a time when you exist within my skin, expanding. There will be a time you come to recognize my voice confiding secrets you may never hear again.

I never had the words to reach my mother. Or, perhaps, I never dared to speak the words that could have reached her. Maybe there were never any words that would have.

I called her "mẹ." The word looking identical to "me."

It reminded me of how much I was, how much I am my mother's daughter, how sometimes I only see "me" in mẹ—I hope that you'll be able to see yourself outside of me. This is why I'll teach you to call me má, which also means "mother." It also means "cheek." So when you are taught to turn the other cheek, you'll remember to come home to me, not be me.

I never miss my mother despite my reflection epitomizing echoes of her. My ears mimic her past words, mirroring our previous disagreements. All I ever overhear are the ways I now resemble her. I know her words found belonging with my being and will find its way washed up to you one day.

The chiến tranh <war> in Việt Nam caused your ông ngoại to flee by một chiếc thuyền <a boat> among others just as lost. Your bà ngoại followed shortly after having her mother's business seized by the government.

I never heard those stories and neither will you.

What I have heard are stories of bà ngoại gnawing all the meat off the xương <bone> because there wasn't an opportunity to be wasteful. How, at times, all her meals were cơm and nước mắm portioned out by the spoonful, learning to eat every last grain not knowing when the next will come; the fish sauce's pungent scent becoming poignant with how her children will never understand what it means to need something, only to exceed.

She reminds me of hardship and pain involved in turning her back against her home to get started in the United States but never about how, làm sao? Làm sao mà má hiểu cho con biết? Con có thể hiểu tí nao không? <How am I to understand for you to know? Will you be able to understand even a little bit of it?>

That struggle? I know it means love. An unspoken love that's been expressed only through silence <yên lặng, im lặng>—and through pain <nỗi khỗ đau, sự đau đớn> that they have tried to shield from their own children.

Yet I would rather you learn how to grow your anger. For when you feel let down by me, you'll still be able to get up every morning because you'll know everything you've heard is all I know to be true.

Yours truly,

—má con, your mother.