{"id":23615,"date":"2014-05-14T00:30:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T07:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dvan.org\/?p=23615"},"modified":"2018-10-14T21:59:38","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T04:59:38","slug":"legacy-kindness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dvan.org\/2014\/05\/legacy-kindness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Legacy of Kindness"},"content":{"rendered":"
As we celebrated Mother’s Day earlier this week, Christina Vo reflects on the influence of her mother in her life and those around her.<\/em><\/p>\n Have you subscribed to diaCRITICS yet? Subscribe and win prizes!\u00a0Read more details.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Our mothers\u2019 impact on our lives cannot be quantified by the years they are physically with us. My mother died twenty years ago (I have lived more years of my life without her than alongside her), and yet I am still learning from both her life and her death. Her legacy of kindness and generosity of spirit have carried on well beyond her 46 years of life.<\/p>\n For many years, I focused on what I lost when she passed, namely a loving, doting mother who was unbelievably kind and caring. We lost her energy, her spirit, the very glue that held our family together. Only after she passed and a cold silence overtook our house, did I understand how vital and integral she was for our well-being. We were left with a gaping distance between us; my father, my sister, and I each coping in our separate and distinct ways.<\/p>\n Recently, though, I have starting to reflect more on what I gained by her presence for the 14 years she was by my side. My mother was a dynamic woman, who possessed a unique ability to make friends wherever she went. She befriended salespeople in the children\u2019s boutiques and houseware stores that she frequented, often receiving a hefty discount simply because she was kind. She was the type of woman who wrote thank you cards in response for thank you cards, and cooked large meals for my father to bring to his coworkers.<\/p>\n She never learned to drive when she immigrated from Vietnam to the States in 1976, so she collected a medley of friends to shuttle her around town. When we lived in northeastern Tennessee, one of her closest friends was Edna, a woman 20 years her senior who tended a garden and lived in our neighborhood. They came from two vastly different backgrounds: Edna was a southern woman, born and raised in the state we called home; my mother was Vietnamese but spent her childhood in Cambodia. The two women became fast friends, despite their differences. Edna drove my mother to the farmer\u2019s market every Wednesday morning in exchange for my mother\u2019s home-cooked meals. She instilled in me a sense of openness to people around me and the notion that anyone could be your friend, regardless of how different they might seem from you.<\/p>\n