By Charlotte Soliven
Special to Northwest Asian Weekly
A girl on my cheer team says that her mom is her best friend, and I stifle a laugh, trying to picture my mother sorority squatting side-by-side in color coordinating outfits for an Instagram picture, the comments filled with her friends all claiming we could pass for sisters in an attempt at flattery. My mother is closer to an editor than a best friend. When she first read my poem, “Three Words, Three Times a Day,” she had stolen it fresh from the printer before I could reach it. I remember standing nervously outside the door to her, knowing it was far past my bedtime and I would need to read the poem in class the following day. To my surprise, the poem had brought my mother to tears. I watch in silence as she wipes her eyes with one hand and grips a pen in the other, scanning the page, annotating lines, crossing out words, rearranging stanzas. She hands the poem back to me, her cheeks as red as the ink in the margins. This is the anecdote I use to explain my relationship with my mother, seeing what I’ve accomplished and still believing I’m capable of more. It’s far from the relationships that my friends have with their mothers, but it’s filled with love just the same. That’s what I try to convey in “Three Words, Three Times a Day.” It’s a sentiment I think a lot of people can relate to.
Three Words, Three Times a Day
I will tell you I love you, but the words are silent. Before you can talk,
I will spoon feed you porridge,
sigh as you spit it out,
knowing in time you will learn.
How to say I love you, without saying a word.
When you ask for a “Lunchable,”
preferring plastic wrapped mystery meat
to my homemade thit kho
I will assume something got lost in translation. We butcher each other’s languages
and never learned the word for “Sorry.”
But outside your slammed door,
I love you is waiting in the kitchen
in a bowl of ripe mango.
When your first lover comes over for dinner, spewing words from a sonnet,
I will feel sick to my stomach.
His “I love yous” are far too sweet for my taste. When your love has soured,
mistaking empty words
for love,
I will bring you a tub of ice cream.
When you leave for college,
I will recite my recipes over the phone.
And though you’ve butchered it time and time before, remember, scorched pots and pans can be scrubbed clean
and there is always instant noodles.
When you can cook,
mostly fluent in the silent language
and longing to speak it,
arrive on my porch with a box of green papaya,
ask me to make your favorite dish
and I will pack you the rest to go.
When I am gone,
you will learn to love bittermelon,
sigh as your little ones refuse to eat it,
you won’t speak any Vietnamese,
but you will say I love you like your ancestors.
When your children don’t finish their plate,
you will tell them in time they will learn,
that millions of “I love yous” went into that meal.
I love you is every sigh and deep breath that follows.
I love you is a full stomach.
I love you is the home your grandparents left behind.
I love you is working so your children never go hungry. Remind them that even though they have never been to Vietnam, they have tasted it.
Teach them to hear the gift of
Three Words. Three times a day.
About
Charlotte (Lottie) Soliven is a junior at Liberty High School who grew up believing she could change the world. In her 16 years of living, she has done just that by fearlessly breaking Asian stereotypes with her inability to do basic mental math and her European-sounding name. Her other talents include being the lead singer in the band PB and Jellyfish, crying in public, winning plushies from claw machines, being the only cheerleader who can’t cartwheel, and relentlessly insisting that poetry is cool to the kids at Camp Yesler and her high school peers.
Soliven recently presented her poem at Seattle Arts & Lectures, and was recognized and featured as part of their Youth Poetry Fellowship program.