Tet I: E’s Recollections

Rice Paddies - now blooming in green

Trying to talk about his recollections of Tet with our eldest, E, as he is pacing around the roof terrace of the house we moved into this week, after about a month of not having a permanent roof over our heads, due initially to The Rat House (which will be expanded upon in another blog), a border run to Kuala Lumpur and then the inability to find anywhere we really wanted to move into. Until last Friday. Now we have views across the rice paddies (recently exploded into a verdant green; the type of green you only see in Vietnam). E has claimed the roof terrace as his own; a sanctuary where he can come and pace and be with his own thoughts, away from the pranking of his younger brother, and free to think about his favourite thing in the world, Lego. As I’m writing this, he is carefully explaining to me the sets he wants to get, the special Lego Island he wants to build and how many mini-figures will be needed to populate it, as well as more technical matters such as the economy of Lego base-plates. No matter how much I might remind him that we can’t possibly commit to such a build whilst we’re living this ‘rootless’ part of our lives, E continues regardless — it’s a comfort blanket, a North Star to look to that brings him home. “When we get back to the UK…” a lot of his conversations regarding his Lego World Building begin with, and as much as we encourage it, it also tears me a little — it is a verbal reminder of how children believe unconditionally that their parents (and grown-ups in general) know exactly what the plan is, and what is going to come next, when in reality we are very much finding our way into this new part of our lives, with no long-term plans beyond the next border run. Living three months at a time, it is a real-word test of actually doing what all those cushions, mugs and posters proclaim (‘live in the moment’, ‘don’t worry’, ‘life only happens once’), whilst also trying to stave-off the stress of everyday worries; finance, mainly.

E lost in (Lego) thought

(In the background whilst I’ve been writing this, E has been constantly monologuing about all the Lego builds he is going to do; he’s talking about a rollercoaster now, which apparently he’s going to wish for for Christmas. Thank Christ it’s only March). It’s also interesting to see how his mind works so differently to his brother’s. I want both E and e to be more involved in the blog, to get their opinions about things and have little snippets from them, but asking E about Tet (his recollections about it rather than any knowledge gleaned) and the neurodiverse mind funnels it to a very specific point:

E: “They had it up so loud [the music] and it’s not just that but the songs weren’t that good. I don’t mean to be rude. Finding food was a nightmare as a lot of restaurants were closed because they went to see their families.” [Talking about the streets that are full of flags and Vietnamese bunting]: “Do you like those?” “Yeah… I mean, they don’t bother me.”

Flags fluttering that it’s Tet-time

Or maybe he just genuinely couldn’t give two shits, it could be that. (He’s now dissecting scenes from mega-shark movie The Meg, which he’s viewed with his brother multiple times, enquiring why some scenes don’t work when you apply real-world logic to them).

I continue to write, and let him wander/wonder-off back to his Lego dream-world.