Author: Sandee Gertz

The first thing you need to know about me
is that I’m Vietnamese and in my house, love was never loud.

It didn’t echo down hallways.
It didn’t sound like “I’m proud of you.”
It didn’t look like hugs before school.

It sounded like oil popping in a pan at five in the morning.
It smelled like garlic and rice before the sun came up.
It looked like my mom already dressed for work while the rest 
of the world was still asleep.

When I was younger, I didn’t understand that.

I remember standing outside my elementary school, 
watching other moms kneel down to fix their kids’ jackets, 
kissing their foreheads before they ran off to class. 
I would adjust my own backpack straps and walk in quietly.

No hug.
No dramatic goodbye.
Just, “Have you eaten yet?” (in Vietnamese)

At the time, I thought something was missing.

Middle school made it worse. Sleepovers at friends’ houses 
where their parents said “I love you” before bed. Family movie nights, 
Instagram posts with matching Christmas pajamas 
and long captions about “my whole world.”

I would scroll and think, why doesn’t my family look like that?

But social media never shows you the silence 
after the camera stops recording.

What it didn’t show was my mom arriving in America 
with two suitcases and broken English.
What it didn’t show was her working double shifts.
What it didn’t show was her sitting at the kitchen table late at night, 
calculator in hand, whispering numbers under her breath.

My mom left Vietnam with no guarantee of success. 
She left her parents. Her siblings. Everything familiar.

And I was upset about hugs.

That realization didn’t hit me all at once.
It hit me in small moments.

Like coming home one afternoon, dropping my backpack on the floor, 
and smelling fried rice before I even turned the corner into the kitchen. 
On the counter sat a cold bottle of Mogu Mogu my favorite.

No note.
No speech.
Just food.

She walked past me and said, 
“I saw this at the store and thought you’d like it.”

And I just nodded.

Another morning, I was running late. 
Hair half done. Shoes untied. Annoyed at everything.
She slid a plate toward me and said, “Eat first.”

I said, “I’m not hungry.”
She looked at me and said, “Eat.”

That was it.

No “because I love you.”
No long explanation.

Just rice. Just fruit cut into perfect slices. 
Just a lunch packed anyway.

For years, I mistook quiet love for absence.
But Vietnamese love isn’t loud.

It’s practical.
It’s consistent.
It wakes up before you do.

It works overtime.
It buys you things it never had.
It asks, “Have you eaten?” instead of “How do you feel?”
Not because it doesn’t care,
but because feeding you is caring.

And one day, it clicked.
Love in my house was never missing.
It was just speaking a different language.

A language of sacrifice.
A language of survival.

A language that sounds like early alarms and grocery bags 
and tired eyes that still stay up to wait for you to come home.

I stopped comparing my family to picture-perfect captions.

I started noticing details.

The way she always cuts fruit for me without asking.
The way she saves the better portion for my plate.
The way she never buys things for herself but insists I should.

That’s love.
Not loud.
But steady.

And maybe that’s even stronger.

Now, when she asks, “Have you eaten yet?”
I hear what she really means.

She means, “I care.”
She means, “I’m here.”
She means, “I love you.”

And I finally learned how to hear it.

So yes , the first thing you need to know about me 
is that I’m Vietnamese.
And because of that, I learned something early:
Love doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
Sometimes it smells like garlic at five in the morning.
Sometimes it sounds like oil in a pan.
Sometimes it looks like sacrifice.

And now, my job is simple.
To work hard.
To go to college.
To become the best version of myself.

Because she gave me the best version of herself.