Mom would always peel the mangoes and cut the flesh into finger-sized pieces. But instead of munching on those juicy mango slices, she loved to nibble on the mango seed. I always wondered why, even though it’s the least meaty part of the mango. It’s sometimes even stringy and fibrous.

Now, think of the story of Bambi, the famous Disney white-tailed deer.

My Mom is a bit similar to Bambi’s mother. While being chased by hunters, Mother tells Bambi to run, run, and not look back. “Faster, Bambi! Don’t look back!” she says. It was heartbreaking to see Bambi’s happy face when he arrived home, unaware of the danger and the tragic outcome of what Mother had told him to do.

Although much less dreadful, just like Bambi, I was unaware of Mom’s preference for mango seeds. One day, when I was older, I came across a comic strip on social media. In it, a mother peeled and cut a mango, then picked only the seed to eat. Her children, puzzled, questioned why she would choose the worst part of the mango. She looked at them, beaming with love, and gently said, “It’s my favourite part.”

My Mom has sacrificed a lot for our family. There’s a chair in our dining room that’s too high compared to the table, so one has to crouch to eat while sitting on it. She would always choose that chair, the worst chair in the dining room, and wave away our offers to switch. “Oh, don’t be silly, I like sitting on this chair,” she would say. Those are just a few of the countless things she did for us, from small to big, such as leaving her comfortable life in Vietnam to travel halfway across the world and settle in Canada so we could have a better future.

So always remind yourself: people who truly love you will do their best to sacrifice their convenience for you, even in the smallest ways. They would never want you to feel bad or suffer.

I realized that making others feel loved can be so easy yet subtle. Saying, “I’ve eaten enough, you take the last piece,” choosing the uncomfortable chair, giving them my favourite sweater to wear, or eating the worse piece of food.

From then on, I never questioned Mom for making those choices.

I started to sit on the bad chair as well.

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The moment you read those words, it immediately clicks—
you know what that smells like.
And yet, not all of us remember it the same.

Everyone, at some point in their life,
has experienced this in their own kitchen,
or their grandma’s, or their mom’s kitchen,
paired with the encouragement: “eat as much as you can”,
to grow up strong, to become someone important,
to travel far away from home.

Just so one day you crave
those cookies, baked with adoration,
that take you back to the time when you felt at peace,
surrounded by people who care.

It is a symbol of love. Of home.

Clean laundry, still warm from being dried.

The moment you read those words, it immediately clicks—
you know what that smells like.
And yet, not all of us remember it the same.

Everyone washes and dries their clothes differently.
Some hand-washed, by their mom’s callused hands,
gently hung on lines, baked by the power of the sun.
Some machine washed and machine dried.
Some entangled with their cat’s fur,
still lingering in the dryer,
left untouched since she passed away.

It is a symbol of love. Of home.

The ground after the first rain.

The moment you read those words, it immediately clicks—
you know what that smells like.
And yet, not all of us remember it the same.

It rains everywhere in the world,
on windowsills,
on cemented roads,
on open soil.

In Viet Nam, it rains almost every day during the wet season,
around May to October.
Sometimes, it rises,
flooding houses, roads, and schools,
parents driving children home on motorbikes
with water up to their shins,
motorbikes shielded by cars
through windy, stormy bridges,
country-wide donations of books and supplies
pour into Central Viet Nam, where flood hits the hardest.

It is a symbol of love. Of home.

But your smell,
not as sweet as chocolate chip cookies,
not as crisp as sun-warmed laundry,
not as deep as rain-soaked earth,

and yet,
warmer, gentler, closer.

you smell like love,
like home.

-may 7th, 2026. for my love-