I started this blog in my late teens. I didn't feel like an adult then, and I sometimes don't feel like one today. It's strange how far you can come in life, while obtaining all the trappings of an adult life, and still feel so small and behind at the same time. Maybe you don't feel like a fully independent adult until you parents finally pass away. We all revert back to our infantile self when we return home for the holidays and ask our mother to make our favorite dishes (often with a pout). If that's the case, I truly never want to grow up.

But time doesn't slow down. And I wish I could have the time to spend more time with my parents. It's one of those things that become more and more urgent as the day passes. My time will come soon enough, but not before theirs. I hope I will be able to make them smile a few more times before then. 

If we had stayed in Vietnam, I would probably still be living with them now. The family unit becomes and extended family community housed under one large roof. Aunts, uncles and little cousins all clamoring about. Everyone with a place, and responsibility, never alone. I think about the community that my parents lost when they immigrated here. How that loss must have felt. How scared they must have been, and utterly alone they must have felt having to also care for my brother and I at the same time. We had some help from family once we arrived, but it always felt like a burden. Something about how helping family out in the states is viewed as a burden whereas in Vietnam, it's just what you do. 

My brother lives less than a mile away from me but I see him only a handful of times a year. I wonder what makes us so prone to not prioritize each other. Maybe it's because our time isn't as imminent. We'll prioritize each other soon enough.

But time isn't slowing down. Not for any of us. 

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