How's Your Mom Doing?

Observations and assessments of an aging parent

Hello everyone!

It’s Mother’s Day weekend and I want to pause the tofu train to check in about your mom and parenting. Share a tidbit or two in comments.

Many of us are living in a phase of life where we’re in between. Our elders, and sometimes our friends, are passing. We sense our own eventual precarity.

Whenever I catch up with close friends, we ask each other, “How’s your mom [dad]?” Hopefully, things are alright. When they are not, we say a little prayer and/or send our regards. We may never get to meet our friend’s parents but feel like we know them because we know our friends.

Here’s an update on my mom.

For most her life, Clara Nguyen Thi Tuyet voluntarily lived in my dad’s shadow. They were a modern couple, but she also fully realized her role as a Vietnamese woman: she dutifully supported her husband and raised a family. She financially pulled her weight by working. She cooked or oversaw 95 percent of our meals.

When I visited her last weekend, she pulled out some 1990 photos, including this one taken when my brother graduated from pharmacy school at the University of Southern California.

My brother was smart but wayward, so when he applied to pharmacy school, my mom called the school admissions office and befriended a staffer to make sure that her son had submitted all his materials on time. The glee you see is partly relief.

Mom looked at the photo and said, “We were young and beautiful!”

She’s still gorgeous, especially when she’s doing what she enjoys — cooking. A snippet from her kitchen when I visited last weekend:

What was all the daikon for? My brother requested dưa món, a garlicky preserved daikon and carrot pickle from central Vietnam. I make a small batch with 2 pounds of vegetables. My mom prefers big batches. She told me to buy 10 pounds of daikon. She also told my sister to get 10 pounds, thinking my sister wouldn’t come to visit for weeks. Ha.

Last weekend, my sister and I converged on my mom’s house. Mom got to prep 20 pounds of daikon! She was a dutiful parent. We are her dutiful children.

Mom’s hands are somewhat arthritic from decades being a tailor, but her kitchen efficiency and skills inspire me. Those jade bracelets? They’re her permanent jewelry.

When my dad passed in late 2021, Mom thought she’d soon follow, but she didn’t succumb to the “widowhood effect”.¹ She keeps going, surprising me and possibly herself too.

Here are a few things going on in her life.

Driving

In the 1970s after we got to America, my dad, an old fashioned man in certain regards, didn’t want my mom driving him around. She fearlessly drove in Saigon but my dad drove himself or was chauffered.

Fast forward to 2020 when Dad was in hospice, my brother encouraged Mom to drive again. There were a few frustrating starts but she took to it. Her strategies:

• Avoid driving during busy times of day

• Leave plenty early to make sure you get to an appointment

• Always avoid left-hand turns!

Since January, she’s been studying to renew her driver’s license. She spends 2 hours a day on that project. “I paid a little extra to get 3 tries. I may not pass the first time,” she said. I bet she will.

Cable TV and YouTube

Forget Netflix and streaming for a moment. Seniors are keeping the cable TV industry alive because many over 65 are still subscribing². My mom regularly tunes in to watch Judge Judy, Law and Order, and Jeopardy!

She also finds interesting Vietnamese-language YouTube programs that aren’t the usual Paris by Night variety show thing. Mom recently binged on an interview series of Vietnamese Americans who recounted their wartime experiences in vivid detail, revealing the corruption, betrayal, and fear of that period.

Cooking, television and the iPad keep her engaged when she’s not chatting on the phone with someone.

Hearing Aids

Mom lost part of her hearing during Covid-19 and didn’t fully regain it. I’d read that losing hearing can lead to depression and cognitive decline³ so for the past few months, we’ve been discussing hear aids with Mom, gently encouraging her to consider them.

At first, she was resistant. My dad lost his hearing and didn’t like wearing hearing aids. Her lady friends complain about them too. They’re big and ugly.

But last weekend, Mom reported that she had her hearing tested and it has profoundly declined.

“The ENT doctor’s office is requesting hearing aids for me,” Mom said. “Maybe the technology is better.”

Badass vs. Hardass

Nowadays, Mom describes her daily meals as solo and sad. She had 63 years with Dad and our family, which meant lots of complicated menus and big cooking projects. Her freezer is packed but she only has one person to feed.

When I visit, I load her fridge up with fresh produce and we cook. She also mines the local supermarkets for deals, like five-pound bags of carrots (she likes them roasted and sauced like this recipe).

She cooks seasonally, putting up favorites like candied kumquats. She has so much that she gifts them to me to gift my friends. If you want Mom’s recipe, her mứt quất (candied kumquat) recipe is at my website.

She loves to inventory her freezer, pull something out that I brought her, and ask me to do something with it. Most recently, it was frozen beef pho broth and a 1 1/4-pounds of pork shoulder.

“How about pho today?” she said. “Your pho broth is in my freezer.”

There wasn’t any frozen pho meat but I did have chicken thigh lingering in the fridge. So, I made chicken meatballs from The Pho Cookbook (she keeps my books near the kitchen) and added pan-fried tofu to augment the bowl. We didn’t have bean sprouts and I suggested subbing slightly microwaved thinly sliced cabbage.

That’s how I’d put an impromptu bowl together at my house. Was she down for that? My tweaks were unconventional and my mom has always been a stickler for tradition.

I was ready for her to say, “That’s NOT now how we eat pho.” But there was no response. 😬

After lunch, Mom said, “You were clever to make the meatballs. Pho is about the broth and noodles.”

Yes it is. You can put different toppings on pho and it’s still legit. Phew. 😅

As for that pork shoulder, we featured it in bun rice noodle salad bowls for dinner that night. I applied the marinade from the rice noodle salad bowl recipe on page 197 of Vietnamese Food Any Day. My mom broiled the pork, boiled the noodles, and readied the veggies. I made nước chấm sauce.

Close to serving, we needed to make an executive decision. I had prepared a southern-style pork marinade, so now we had to decide how we’d eat it: southern style with big, pre-assembled bowls, or northern style, immersing the cooked pork in a big bowl of diluted nước chấm and then assembling smaller bowls at the table. What did she want?

Pausing for a second, Mom said, “Northern style.”

I saw an opening and pushed a bit further. Northern bún chả (grilled pork and rice noodles) doesn’t include peanuts but I like peanuts. Can we have them anyway?

“Ok,” she said. I couldn’t believe my ears. Clara Nguyen Thi Tuyet was being flexible. We had fun in the kitchen that evening. It was a good family meal. We divided and conquered our one-dish meal.

Replacing the Old

My mom’s biggest recent surprise is a story of two pots. One of them was an ancient, beat up 4-quart soup pot. Its base undulated from decades of use. It has caused food to burn because it’s unstable.

“When the nice American lady gave it to me in the late 1970s, the pot was already used,” Mom said.

I got up the courage to buy her a new one, all the while fearing that she’d just put it in the garage because she likes to “save” new things and wants to use old things till they fall apart.

I presented her with the tri-ply stainless steel Viking pot. It had a glass lid. She quietly set it aside.

Afraid that it would end up in the garage along with other kitchen gifts my siblings and I have given her, I washed and started using the pot.

“This is a great pot. Not too heavy, not too light. It’ll heat up evenly and hot. You can easily monitor the cooking through the lid. It’s sturdy too,” I said, sounding like a salesperson.

No response. I blurted out, “You’re going to live for a while so use something new. We shouldn’t wait till you’re dead to use your new things.”

That made her laugh.

A little later, she. slipped into the garage and brought back a new ceramic nonstick 5-quart Dutch oven that we’d chosen at Target during the pandemic, when she got a senior gift card for getting vaccinated.

“Remember when we bought this? It has a pourable spout and lid for straining things,” Mom said. She washed the new pot and used it to boil noodles.

I was still doubtful. How serious was she about replacing the cruddy pots? She’d set them by the door to be discarded.

For someone who feels like she has accomplished all that she set out to do in her life, that she is ready to go whenever the Lord calls her, my mom is doing just fine.

Happy Mother’s Day to you and yours.

1. More about the Widowhood Effect in research studies here and here.

2. Subscriptions to cable TV by age, per Statisa.

3. Hearing Aids, cognition and affordability, from NYT. (gift link)