The spring is oncoming, and that just remind me all about my old home Vietnam. During the middle of January, we will celebrate Vietnamese traditional holidays. You might not know the name of it so Vietnamese we called: “TET holidays,” which means new year for us. It’s been more than 2 years. I don’t remember…
Dripping sand, cement, worn-out painted walls; Cats eat rats, rats eating cockroaches and cockroaches eat everything. Her grandma’s unique cooking, the screeching cry of her brother yelling for his favorite toy. Smoke from the inebriating charcoal, her mom shouting for her to clean up after herself. That is what the 10-year-old Sharon imagines when she…
“Home”… Oh, what a sweet word it is! This one word brings all the emotions, memories and love. After all, home is not just a building made of bricks and cement, but it is where everyone lives together in harmony with each other. It is a place to share, care and love. Here people make…
A small, square slab decorated with beautiful flowers around it, always grabbed my attention in my early years. It was hung above the entrance door of my home. I always admired the beautiful colors and often asked my grandmother what’s written on it. She used to tell me that it was written “Home Sweet Home”.…
Cape Porpoise, Maine, 2007. The first snow has come. But why, I wonder, do they always speak of snow as blanketing, as if comforting, warm? Underneath its smooth spread surface I can only imagine a seering cold. On Saturday the ducks hunted for their lunch in icy shallows, pecking algae through a film of ice, advancing spectre.…
If there’s something my Italian heritage has taught me, it’s that food brings people together. Not just to eat it. Making pasta is a family assembly line, taking an entire day of talking and drinking wine while hands busily fold and seal tortellini. You make lots and you invite the neighbors. Food is tradition and hospitality, love and gift, shared enterprise and social do.
Pruning leads to growth. It’s so counter-intuitive, but the power of this truth continues to astonish me. I see it in the lacecap verbera twisted through the arbor lattice. I pruned it a year and a half ago and now it’s fuller than I could have imagined. I see it in the apple tree buds, twice…
Kindred 