I sit on the black bench, my hands gently poised above the field of monochromatic keys. Golden rays of summer sunlight illuminate the room in hazy shades of comfort. As my fingers begin to run across the piano, the bench shifts in weight: a silent presence joins me. I momentarily pause to look down at him. Deaf as he was, he somehow still listened along to my practice.
When I stumbled through sight-reading in October, he was there, meowing loud enough for the neighbors to hear. I’d lightly scold him before resetting my hands and trying again. He was there when I completed a Liszt piece in January, stoically sitting nearby. He’d walk around me on the bench, inconveniently switching sides. And again in May, as I nervously dressed for competitions, he watched me distantly from the cushioned armchair. He’d been there for it all, and I’d never questioned it or considered what it meant.
In early spring, he was still there. Still switching sides on the bench, still meowing so loudly. I didn’t know then that these would be some of our final moments together, nor did I think to savor the weight of him beside me.
Summer arrived quicker than expected. He had aged significantly, his movements sluggish and forced. I painfully watched him adjust his stride to match his fatigued body, watched him struggle to stand up. Each day, I lost a little more of him, until there was nothing left to lose.
At first, I didn’t feel much. The house was quieter, but I continued through my daily routines, unchanged. Thick clouds carried my mind, holding me aloft in undesired ignorance. Gradually, I noticed the little things—his empty food bowl, quiet and cold; the medicine unused; his fish plush, still on his bed. Each remembrance stacked upon itself, pummeling the clouds until they finally broke. I’d thought the memories would comfort me, that they would bring me solace and peace. I was wrong—I’d never hear his meow again, never feel his roughened fur, and most of all, the bench would remain still, never shifting in weight.
Today, as I walk to the black bench, I open the curtains. Orange-yellow afternoon sunlight, reminiscent of better days, seeps through. Yet the walls are illuminated without comfort. I sit again, and I close my eyes. Somewhere, I can faintly feel his presence, can still hear his distant meows.
The piano sounds the same, the notes feel the same. The rhythm, too. But it somehow feels empty, as if a piece is missing. The bench no longer shifts. He couldn’t hear a single note I played, yet he made the music matter. I once thought that musical perfection was everything, that practice, skill, and talent were all it took to be the best. I’d never noticed the weight on the bench next to me, never thought of the overly loud meows, never valued the presence that needed no words or hearing. Skill means nothing without someone to share it with.
My heartbeat slowed as the echoes of the slammed door faded. My mother’s stern voice traveled up the stairs. It was another typical afternoon between us, one that began with conversations and ended in pointless arguments. Over time I accepted that this was simply our fate, mother and daughter under the same roof but worlds apart. Still, I wondered why it was so hard for us to understand each other. We should have been closest, yet my mother treated my feelings as if they were alien to her. I figured there was no point in dwelling on it, this must have been how she’d always been.
One morning I was called down to help move old boxes from storage. We worked quietly until she relocated upstairs, leaving me unaccompanied. As I continued, I found a box much older than myself and unable to resist, I looked inside. I saw photographs of people I didn’t recognize, worn-out uniforms, and letters in languages foreign to me. But what caught my eye was a card. It was nothing extraordinary; soft yellow with “Come Celebrate” written in delicate lettering. Only then did I realize it was a birthday invitation from my mother. Without my noticing, she appeared in the doorway and was watching the card in my hands. Approaching me slowly, a faint smile tugged at her lips, as in a trance of memories. She explained it came from her sixteenth birthday and recounted that day.
As she told her story her voice shifted into something I’d never heard before, bright with a girlish happiness. I tried to picture her then, nervous and hopeful, wanting to be seen and understood. I listened carefully, taking in every word as if the nostalgic joy might vanish. When she finished, she headed toward the door, but before disappearing upstairs she hesitated and asked me to think about what I would want for my birthday.
As I faced my mother during dinner I silently imagined that 16 year old girl sitting in front of me. I imagined her complaining about having peppers for dinner or telling a story from school and despite never seeing eye to eye with my mother I found myself surprised at how similarly I had pictured her to be like myself. Over the next few weeks I observed my mom in a new light, I took notice of the actions she did and I saw them not from the stoic mother I had been familiar with but as the 16 year old girl who had never stopped trying to navigate her life. As I paid more attention I learned about her and also myself. I traced my clothing taste back to her, and even my love for cinnamon cookies, but more importantly, I recognized how I’d caged her within the role of “mom.” From that day on before the occasional argument we had, I pictured that young girl in front of me and remembered once that she’s walked my path before.
Eden Center, a Vietnamese shopping center in Falls Church, Virginia, lives among the sun-drenched memories of my childhood — there’s the waft of bánh bao, the neon lights of “open” signs and the sounds of karaoke reverberating from the inner depths of the mall. My family would go to the restaurant Rice Paper most often. I always ordered the same thing — a coconut juice and Bún Chả Hanoi, which consists of vermicelli noodles, rice paper and marinated pork.
Afterwards, when the sun dipped lower in the sky, we would get boba or red bean cakes shaped like fish. This was the place where I felt most at peace, swinging hand-in-hand between my parents, making silly faces with my brother, trailing behind my grandparents as they navigated the grocery aisles. At Eden Center, I never questioned whether being mixed-race invalidated my connection to my heritage.
Having never been to Vietnam, little me wondered if this was what it was like — rows and rows of pho and banh mi shops bubbling with energy, racks of ao dais and Buddha trinkets, a little community where one could do everything from buy custom made jewelry to get their dry cleaning done. As I got older, I realized that Eden Center was not an exact replica of Vietnam, only a microcosm that developed its own traditions, culture and crowd of diverse individuals. Similarly, my America isn’t my parent’s America. It’s completely and utterly mine, built from the experiences that only I can fully understand being mixed race.
I may never be able to speak Vietnamese fluently (or even proficiently) with the perfect intonation of a Northern accent, but I have a strong passive understanding for it, listening in on the conversations around me. I may not look fully Vietnamese, but I do comprehend the intricacies of the South Asian values my mom and grandparents taught me about family, wellbeing, humility and perseverance. Though I may never feel acclimated to the American traditions I watch my friends’ families taking part in, I do understand the complexity of growing up in a political environment that is constantly fluctuating. I may have grown up with a different background, but I have a deep affection for the old American films and music that my dad introduced me to.
Now I know that I don’t have to fill in one racial checkbox or another, figuratively speaking. The beauty of multiculturalism lies in its aversion to assimilation. Being two races shouldn’t force me to deduct one from my identity. Instead, being biracial allows me to exist at ease in the cultural sphere I’ve always known — Vietnamese and American. I am a constantly evolving amalgamation of the cultures I grew up with and am still learning about. Half does not mean broken in any sense of the word. It means that I am full — of tradition, novelty and the love of my family, ancestors and above all, myself.
“Your hair is really big. It looks like a sheep”
Slowly, I remove my focus from the spread of chalk melting into the blacktop. I meet the eyes of the boy standing behind me – with straight and flat black hair. Streams of the afternoon sunlight beamed onto my face from behind his shoulder. I squint; sunlight penetrates the hair enveloping my face as fast as his words can pierce through each layer of curls.
Thick and warm fur, plagued with insects and tattered with grass. The image of a sheep stains my thoughts as the day continues. We are sitting in our respective spots on the mat for Mrs. Daugherty’s read aloud, beads of sweat settle on my cheek as the pounding of my chest begins to slow down. My classmates recover from the activities of recess and my mind remains restless. Diligently, I am scanning each row of the mat in front of me. Amelia’s hair is dirty blonde and flows effortlessly down her back. Eric’s hair is parted to the side, the coarse black neatly dented by the teeth of his comb. Jude’s brown waves brush against his chin before they are constrained by a tuck behind his ear. My eyes dart from one sleek and polished head of hair to the next. I notice one thing all of my classmates have in common, and one thing only.
My lunchbox swings in my hand as I march off the bus, prepared to tame the beast that was my hair- to turn into a shining replica of my peers. My hand latches onto the light switch and the plastic stool bounces across the white tiles of my bathroom floor. I step onto the stool, met by a reflection of the black, lusterous mane I once loved. Heedfully, each curl is placed in between the 350 degree titanium, followed by a smell I could only compare to a lit match, synchronized with an unfamiliar cloud of steam. My curls now lay straight and stiff, the rounded silhouette a shell of life that can only be broken by water.
The smell of burnt hair follicles fill the bathroom like light satisfies the dark. Promptly, my hour as a hair dresser is disrupted by the smell of lamb cascading through the seams of the door. Instinctively, I pick up the scent like breadcrumbs.
“Honey, who did that to your hair?” My mother looks at me from across the kitchen, concern consuming her face as she stands over my favorite slow cooked lamb. Before I know it, I sink into her turmeric stained sweater.
A sheep would not come home with remnants of the sandbox falling through her dense hair, and she wouldn’t sit criss cross applesauce in front of Amelia for a fishtail. She snaps hairbrushes in half, she runs through fields while her rows of braids do not move an inch. She is proud and carefree.
As I step into the opera house, a chill threads along my arms, yet I scarcely notice. The seats, a royal red so deep it almost hums, stretch in precise, endless rows. Above me, the ceiling arches like the spine of a golden leviathan, filigree twisting into arabesques, silver catching the last stubborn light before it fades. The walls breathe color—crimson, beige, umber, gold—and for a moment, I feel as though I could drown in it, lose myself entirely. When the lights dim and the curtain rises, the stage exhales—and I am both awed and unshielded, a visitor in a world larger than myself, yet one I ache to disappear into.
I have always loved theater and film. The flicker of a scene, the sweep of a gesture, the weight of a single line—these are worlds I can step into, where I understand what ordinary words cannot capture. Watching performers summon stories to life, I imagine the lives they carry within them, the possibilities they reveal, and I recognize the courage I wish to claim in my own.
Yet beneath the awe, another voice stirs. STEM. Grades. Internships. The path prescribed for a first-generation daughter of Chinese immigrants. Their sacrifices, whispered in the quiet of our townhouse, press heavier than the chandeliers above. The rigid rows of seats, straight and unwavering, feel like the life others have drawn for me. And yet it is not only their expectations I carry. I have absorbed them, made them mine. Every hesitation, every decision, is measured against standards I have internalized—the proof of worth in scores, the quiet terror of failure, the belief that duty must eclipse desire.
Every possibility is charged with weight. Every choice is a test. And still—the pull of performance persists, threading possibility through the tension. Each actor whispers courage, rebellion, vulnerability. I see myself both beneath the spotlight and in a lab coat, a body split between duty and desire, and I feel the ache of wanting both, suspended between lives I cannot fully inhabit.
The orchestra swells, a single note suspended like held breath. I close my eyes and let it fill me. Perhaps it is enough to move forward, even imperfectly. Perhaps it is enough to choose a path that quickens the pulse rather than calms it, that honors heritage, internal expectation, and heart alike.
The curtain falls. Applause rises and fades. The room empties. I linger, seated, imagining the lives I could live, the roles I could explore, the person I might become. I am both student and dreamer, expected and aspiring, and in that tension—beautiful, bitter, and unrelenting— I discover a fragile, luminous truth, a life still forming, a stage still set, a story waiting for its lines.
Glacial rebound is the recovery of land that was depressed by large glacier sheets. Many of Alaska’s great cities are brought forth from the snow-fields now whittled down with time. These glaciers carved the complex peaks and valleys of the last frontier’s mountain ranges, plummeting 10,000 feet of ice to the tops of the sleeping giants we see today. But as centuries pass since Earth was frozen over, these heavy celadon blocks pour out of valleys and melt back into the sea. Giving way to the coastal towns. In the past few hundred years, though, it appears that ice-packed earth has begun to bounce back towards the sun. At almost 0.76 inches each year, the ground forgets a little less and heals a little more. Still molded by weight it once held, our mountains are the product of colder years; dizzy summits forged by ice still lie like piles of blankets sweeping across the shore.
The night before we left, all six of us piled under my duvet. Our last few hours together for the indefinite future, after years attached at the hip. Tied in knots beneath technicolor quilts; all we could bring ourselves to say was “I love you” and “I wish we didn’t have to go.” We melt into one another as we sleep. By morning, one by one, we spill out of the house, bodies still begging to stay intertwined. Slipping away until the bottom bunk sits empty again. My apartment, hollowed from the loss of five other sleeping figures, aches in the shape of the dent in my mattress still carrying the memory. The topography of my room bares their absence, draped in strewn clothes, an ecosystem weighed down with mourning.
Many essays written on the subject say that Alaskan mountains once carried so many tons of ice, scientists couldn’t predict how long until the coastlines would return to their previous levels, or what that would look like. Sometimes there are questions only time can answer. It is now known that certain areas of the tundran landscapes will take over 10,000 years to heal. It’s unsure what this could mean for the homes that have settled in the mountains’ curves. If the ground will rise up and push out the leavetakers who dig their heels in a land meant to be inhospitable. Will whole communities be swallowed up or eroded into the sea like the glaciers all those years ago? Does to move on mean to destroy the life that came before? What does normal look like after so great a loss?
It’s been a long time since I lay nestled between those girls or, let alone, seen their faces. The people who most molded the landscapes of my heart. Having lost the girls who I grew wild and weedlike with, the hurt left a dent in me. I will grow up, move on, get taller, but the rough grooves of my being stay cast by their love.
Home. Formally described as a place that one resides in permanently, mainly as a member of a family or household. Before I was even a year old, my parents began moving around. Traveling to Uganda was the first time my mom and I ever boarded a plane, I couldn’t even utter my first word when we moved, but I learned English through a British children’s show and even developed a British accent before my parents sent me to daycare, then I picked up an Ugandan accent, and before I could read my first sentence I was transferred from my home again and moved to D.C., a city where the teachers couldn’t understand me and I was stripped of the short-lived accent. Three-year-old me quickly adapted to the American scene and stopped pronouncing the “t’s” in words like water. The American accent stuck, but my residence did not. I moved abroad, and my American accent wasn’t understood. Everywhere I went, my mom would have to translate my English into English, but in her accent, or I would always have to repeat my words and make sure I enunciate the t’s. Although I’m grateful for the opportunities and the empathy that I’ve gained from traveling around, the multiple homes and multiple areas of belonging have made it hard to have a stable sense of identity. Every country that I move to, a new physical identity comes with it. In my home country, I am the white-washed girl who can’t speak her own language; in Vietnam, I was the black girl, and here, I am the introverted, shy girl with a name no one can pronounce. I have been one out of five of the black girls in my grade, and the five-letter, three-syllable name of mine, which shares the same alphabet as most English-speaking countries, has always been a problem for me. The one memory that constantly replays in my mind is a day during my freshman year of high school, when I moved back to the place my accent belonged, and when I thought I would experience the American dream. I was seated in my engineering class and on my 10-inch green stool with my two other friends. A girl we had just spoken to a week ago stopped at our table, and when she came by, she whispered in the other girl’s ear, “What is her name again?” thinking that I wouldn’t hear. My name is branded on me. In the grade book, my birth certificate, my passport, and even this application. So everywhere I go, I am someone else. I am Ah-Nee-Sue, Anne-Sue, Uh-Neh-Sue, and Uh-Nee-Sah. I take the identity of whichever place my name is pronounced, the white-washed girl, the black girl, and the girl with a foreign name that no one can say.
For more information on the Local Writer’s Showcase, please visit https://www.bethesda.org/bethesda/localwriters
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