I've commented in the past that there are way more similarities than you would think between Jewish mothers and Vietnamese mothers. Well, I'm starting to learn that there are a lot of similarities between Jewish mothers and Vietnamese wives too. Recently I fell ill with either food poisoning or the stomach flu; I'm not sure which one it was but it was absolutely brutal for twenty four hours. While sick, the caring and nursing of me by Huyen was right on par with how my mom used to take care of me when I was a child. In fact, I could basically hear my mother's voice coming from Huyen's mouth a few times...minus a couple of nouns which were interchanged -- specifically the noun "rice."
There was one moment where Huyen said to me, "You need to eat rice to feel better!" I looked at Huyen and said, "Rice? I've never eaten rice to feel better in the past." A little while later I had some homemade soup (with rice in it) and did feel quite better. It wasn't exactly my mom's chicken soup (although she offered chicken but I wasn't in a meat eating mood) but it definitely did the trick.
