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I photographed her at Chuong Market over a year ago. At her late '80s, she still have to sell merchandises to keep her head above water.

I understood Vietnamese ladies are diligent until their last breath, but she was too old to even open her eyes. I prefer to call her "mother" with due respect. I wish she is doing well. I want to say "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY" to her. Each time seeing her face, I could not resit to flashback an old song — a song I sang since school years in Hue where I lived only a few blocks from the author:


A mother's heritage


A thousand years of Chinese reign
A hundred years of French domain
Twenty years fighting brothers each day
A mother's fate, left for her child
A mother's fate, a land defiled

A thousand years of Chinese reign
A hundred years of French domain
Twenty years fighting brothers each day
A mother's fate, bones left to dry
And graves that fill a mountain high

Teach your children to speak their minds
Don't let them forget their kind
Never forget their kind, from old Viet land
Mother wait for your kids to come home
Kids who now so far away roam
Children of one father, be reconciled

A thousand years of Chinese reign
A hundred years of French domain
Twenty years fighting brothers each day
A mother's fate, our fields so dead
And rows of homes in flames so red

A thousand years of Chinese reign
A hundred years of French domain
Twenty years fighting brothers each day
A mother's fate, her kids' misdeeds
Her kids filled with disloyalty.

("Gia tài của mẹ", a song by Trịnh Công Sơn; English translation by Rich Fuller)



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