The other day, I rushed home to have lunch with my Mum, Dad and long-deceased ancestors. The meal was prepared in honour of my mother's parents whose death anniversaries fall at around this time. If we were in Vietnam, we'd honour each of my grandparents on the exact dates of their passing. In Australia we've adapted our schedules and beliefs and created some new ones.
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As I sat down for the feast, I took this photograph. It's a picture of Australia in harmony, bringing together the multicultural, British European, and Indigenous sources of our national identity.
Let's focus on the food. At Vietnamese death anniversary banquets, the living must show restraint because the ancestors - as revered guests to our world and homes - dine first. Since I was a child, I have waited with my tummy grumbling for my parents to deliver prayers and offerings, accepting that the food will go a little cold. When the incense sticks have burnt down in the glass to rice-level we know that the dead have had their fill. Only then, can we tuck in.
Generally, Asians appreciate the gift of fruit. Days ahead of the banquet, my Mum sources a range of nature's gems that please both the eyes and mouth, and which she calculates will ripen at just the right time. Recently, she has taken to securing the fruit in plastic bags with brightly coloured ties to ensure that they don't end up in a grandchild's lunch box. The dead come first, but it is not a contest because fruit is to be shared and symbolises vitality and renewal.
It's worth pausing and paying attention to how harmony abounds.
So too there is meaning in the fried fish topped with tomato soy sauce, the yellow vegetable curry, green and golden mung bean sticky rice, and coconut corn pudding. "It's what your grandparents liked to eat," Mum said, explaining why she chose those dishes. A couple of times while she was arranging the food I heard her utter to herself and her parents, "When you were alive you didn't have enough. I suppose I'm sorting that out now."
Like all of us, my ancestors and their appetites are the products of momentous forces. To be Vietnamese is to be a fusion of indigenous, Chinese, French and American among other culinary cultures and communities. These dishes are also Southeast Asian because they don't discriminate between salty, sweet, sour and chilli. What's important is to get the balance right.
Through the care that my Mum puts into achieving this balance, she cultivates and passes on the tastes of those who came before to those who come after.
The spring rolls deserve special attention because they were prepared a day earlier by three generations of Vietnamese Australians. My father, who survived his second stroke with limited mobility, poor depth perception and double vision, rolled most of them. When my son, who is also of Irish and English stock, said that his grandfather was a spring roll making "machine", my dad replied, "Yes, and each one is exactly the same." We all had a good chuckle. I'd like to think that the ancestors laughed too.
It's fair to suggest that Mum, who is crouched behind Dad in this photograph, is a victim of tradition. After all, men commonly welcome ancestors home with offerings that women have put immense and often unrecognised effort into making. According to orthodox Confucianism, only blokes carry the family line. Rather than this being a reason to ditch ancestor worship, it can be advanced by calling out its injustices and addressing its inequities.
With this in mind, it's worth noticing the impish self-assurance on my mother's face. My father may well be front and centre, but it's my mother who is quietly orchestrating the affair. Perhaps this has always been the case in their partnership, but it is even more so now: now that Dad needs round-the-clock care; now that his cancers seem to have settled in; now that Mum wakes several times a night to help him to the bathroom and with his insomnia which was brought on 45 years ago by our escape from Vietnam.
I asked Mum whether she believes that our ancestors are still with us. "When you face life's obstacles, it helps to believe that there's something there and someone looking out for you," she replied. "Especially if this helps you to believe in yourself."
In the background of this scene there is evidence of more recent influences on my family. The bookcase on the left has also been assembled by three generations of Vietnamese Australians. It came to us flat-packed and with language-free instructions along global production chains, symbolising a widespread fondness for streamlined aesthetics, reliability and value.
Beyond the glass doors there are two blue kayaks stacked under a weathered ping pong table. The kayaks are from our coast shack where we have neighbours with houses and boats named, "Dunworkin'", "Pier Pressure" and "A wave from it all".
An Indian Australian friend who was visiting the coast once said to me, "I've spent my whole life striving to achieve security. They seem to spend their lives trying to have a good time." His observation was made with wonderment for the Australian leisure class.
While perhaps not immediately apparent, the solemn rituals, commitment to regeneration, practical spirituality and sheer joy captured in this picture are informed by and overlap with Indigenous peoples' connections with Country and their appreciation of how the precious instances and the people with whom we share them, always were and will be.
When so much attention is placed on the divisions between us, it's worth pausing and paying attention to how harmony abounds.
The (delicious) traditions I'm grateful for this Harmony Day
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20.03.2024
The other day, I rushed home to have lunch with my Mum, Dad and long-deceased ancestors. The meal was prepared in honour of my mother's parents whose death anniversaries fall at around this time. If we were in Vietnam, we'd honour each of my grandparents on the exact dates of their passing. In Australia we've adapted our schedules and beliefs and created some new ones.
$0/
(min cost $0)
Login or signup to continue reading
As I sat down for the feast, I took this photograph. It's a picture of Australia in harmony, bringing together the multicultural, British European, and Indigenous sources of our national identity.
Let's focus on the food. At Vietnamese death anniversary banquets, the living must show restraint because the ancestors - as revered guests to our world and homes - dine first. Since I was a child, I have waited with my tummy grumbling for my parents to deliver prayers and offerings, accepting that the food will go a little cold. When the incense sticks have burnt down in the glass to rice-level we know that the dead have had their fill. Only then, can we tuck in.
Generally, Asians appreciate the gift of fruit. Days ahead of the banquet, my Mum sources a range of nature's gems that please both the eyes and mouth, and which she calculates will ripen at just the right time. Recently, she has taken to securing the fruit in plastic bags with brightly coloured ties to ensure........
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