Eye-catching

This salon is called Hair Mechanix. It’s where I get my hair cut. I haven’t been in it for a while, and I didn’t go in today, but I did get outside for an eight-block walk, which is an improvement over yesterday. I had a bit of a relapse. Probably did too much socializing with Patricia, too much walking around on Sauvie Island when I was just three days post-positive. 

I’m better today. 

The extra is a peek in the window at Mary Nguyen, the delightful racconteur and skilled hair stylist who cuts my hair. I was going to wave to her, but she was absorbed in her phone and didn’t see me. She’s high-energy, and she keeps up a steady stream of conversation from the moment I sit down in the chair. Her family sent her to the USA to make her way and send money home. Her family and her husband’s family are still in Viet Nam, and she, her husband, and their three children go home to visit twice a year. Covid set them back, and her mother, who never shows any emotion, couldn’t stop crying the first time they visited in 2021. 

Mary loves telling stories of the people back home: how her mother cooks for days before they arrive, and what she cooks. Mary tells her children to eat what they are given and not to EVER ask for hamburgers. How her father is appalled at how little Vietnamese the children speak, even as he showers them with love in his own way. The auntie who loves to gossip about other young folk who went to the USA and never send anything home and never come back to visit. How guilt plays out on both sides: the American crowd feels ashamed of their relative wealth; the Vietnamese side feels ashamed of their relative poverty, though they feel sorry for the American side, not being reared in their culture. It’s an exploration of cultural relativism every time I get my hair cut.