Happy Belated International Women’s Day! (‘Twas March 8)
What is that you say? You’ve never heard of International Women’s Day? You haven’t received bouquet upon bouquet of glittery flowers wrapped in puffy tissue paper, just for being female? No one has wished you “lucky, success, and always beautiful,” and told you that they hope you will someday find a husband?
Where ARE you????
Obviously not in Vietnam.
Joking aside, if there is one business thriving in the Vietnamese economy, it’s the flower business. The Vietnamese LOVE giving flowers for all occasions--and they are the most obscenely garish arrangements I’ve ever seen. They look like something out of a New Jersey wedding in the early 80s...and I kind of love them.
But enough about the foliage...Now about the ladies:
I think one of my biggest surprises during my time here, and definitely my greatest joy, has been the relationships that I have developed with the Vietnamese women I work with. I of course have had close relationships with other women in my life, but to be honest I’ve never experienced that “sisterhood” so prevalent in teen movies about traveling pants and books by Candace Bushnell. I have a few close girlfriends and some very close sisters/mothers/aunts/cousins, and part of those relationships is female-based, but really I think they’re mostly people-based, with a female flair.
This is so different from Vietnam, where I’ve never felt more connected to the women around me simply for just being another woman. Women here relate in ways that I myself have never experienced in America. Contributing to this is the fact that, for really the first time in my life, I’ve looked for a support network in an outside group of women--and amazingly I’ve found it.
Shortly after I arrived in Hai Duong I was working in the English office when my friend Thanh, who I hardly knew at the time, said out of the blue, “Madeline, I think you are brave to come here. When I was in University I could only see my family and boyfriend once a month. I felt like I was going to explode. You feel like that, yes?”
Before that, I don’t think I realized that women here would understand what I was going through. Since then, I’ve been to my female friends’ weddings, met their children, heard about their husbands, and learned to open up about my own life.
When I arrived, Thanh was just 3 months pregnant, so it was fun to get to know her as something so important was changing in her life. About a month before she had her baby she was quite frankly huge, and appeared even more so because she is so small in her un-pregnantized state. I came into the English office one day and all the other women were laughing with Thanh. I asked what was funny and Mrs. Thu said, “Thanh looks like a turtle, do you agree!?”
I smiled and said maybe just a little. Mrs Thu went on, “Sometimes I think, what will it be like when Madeline has a baby??!!” She then proceeded to impersonate what she thinks I will look like as half turtle/half pregnant woman, much to the amusement of everyone else in the office.
It was a little jarring, but I let out a chuckle and tried to mask my surprise/horror...
A few weeks ago, I visited Thanh, her new son Bao Nam, and her daughter Thu. As I sat on Thanh’s bed, with Thu climbing on me and repeating my name over and over--“Mad A Ling”---I just watched Thanh and this new, perfect little person and was in awe of her life.
When Bao Nam had fallen asleep, Thanh told me that she had wanted to ask my mother some questions when she visited in December, but she hadn’t had the chance. I asked if the questions were about teaching, but Thanh said, “No, about being a mother.” Thanh then got a little sheepish and said, “Old women in Vietnam give a lot of rules after you have a baby, and I just wondered what your mother thought.”
“What kind of rules?” I asked.
Thanh launched into a diatribe of all the things that were unhealthy and shouldn’t be done after having a baby: Showering, washing your hair, doing dishes, going up and down stairs, cooking, cleaning, sleeping in the same bed as your husband, having visitors, etc, etc.
I told Thanh that I didn’t know about any of those rules, but it sounded like some smart Vietnamese women had created them so they would finally get a break from all the hard work they have to do here. She laughed and agreed.
When people ask me what the hardest part of living here is, there's no hesitation before I reply, “Missing people.” At the end of the day, rats, electricity, traffic, my recently stolen bike...are all nothing compared to that small but constant ache you get when you’re away from people that you love.
But in the next breath I always have to say that the best part of living here has been meeting new people. In the end, regardless of location, life really just boils down to relationships: who we care about, why we do, and how close we get to be to them.
I feel so blessed to have developed real relationships with women here. If I do someday take on a turtle-like resemblance, I know who I will call.
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