A Special Relationship
I had grown accustomed to seeing the familiar book lying on the kitchen table—the words “Naturalization Test” in bold white font standing out against the patriotic red background. The book which should’ve disappeared weeks ago made its reappearance. I let out a disappointed sigh as the realization sunk in. My father had once again failed his naturalization test. I was surprised when my father sheepishly asked me to help him study for the test (was he really going to try again?), but I reluctantly agreed.
At the age of twenty, I play a strange role. I am both child and adult, both student and parent. I am my father’s bridge to the outside world. I am the translator, the navigator, the babysitter. I am the one who fills out tax forms, and the one to go to the bank. With my father and I’s roles awkwardly reversed, our relationship was distant like the age gap of forty years which divided us. I knew very little about his life: his deceased dreams, his burdens, his motivations—because I had never truly tried to understand him.
When I was in high school, while my friends went to the movies after class, I spent my afternoons watching my dad rake his head for answers on the practice questions—sometimes the wrong ones—but he was slowly improving each day. It became a habit for me to throw in random pop questions from the practice books while we got ready in the mornings, while we ate dinner, and while I did my homework in the living room as he watched TV. The bare walls of our cramped apartment were soon filled with colorful post-it notes, and flashcards lay strewn on the floor. As I raced home from school one day, I realized that I began looking forward to our study sessions.
Looking back I can say that I learned more than my father did during those study sessions – not about civics, but about him. Our conversations often drifted from the presidents of the United States to my father’s youth in Vietnam. I eagerly listened to him tell Vietnamese fables that his father used to tell him. I shared with him my love of K-pop and origami–which we enjoyed together in our free time. I noticed that through the course of our study sessions, our dynamic had slowly begun to change. We were peers now, united in our joint mission to tackle the naturalization test.
Through those conversations, I gradually learned to view my father as a multifaceted person–with dreams, feelings, struggles, and history. Now I know that he failed his naturalization test multiple times because of his hearing impairment—which he was ashamed of telling anyone. I learned that as a teenager he wanted to be a pilot—a dream cut short by the start of the Vietnam War. I now know that his hunched back and calloused hands are the result of years of hard labor to give me a better life.
Even though my dad never ended up passing his test, our relationship grew. As a sixteen-year-old, I spent my afternoons as a teenager helping my father study. Now as a twenty-year-old, I spend my afternoons from my college dorm on Facetime calls helping him pay bills online. Nothing has really changed!
As I came to value those afternoons spent with my dad in our tiny apartment studying and endlessly teaching him where space button his on his laptop, by spending more time listening to each other talk rather than studying, I gained a new appreciation for the strange roles my father and I had been forced to inhabit as immigrants. I used to mourn the loss of my childhood, but now I am proud of the maturity that I have gained. I resented the extra responsibilities that I had to bear at my young age but I’ve come to appreciate how they brought my father and I closer. I was jealous of my friends who were able to have a father who could help them with their homework, but now I cherish the special moments between us, stored in the piles of flashcards and worn out sofas. Most importantly, I gained an unusual but meaningful relationship with my father, who I now see as my confidant, peer, parent, and friend.
Uyen Chu (she/her) is a junior at Tufts University studying Psychology and Japanese. She was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and has been in Boston for the past 10 years. Her research and organizing are centered around the experiences of Southeast Asians in higher education, specifically first-generation and immigrant students.