You said that the traditional Vietnamese blouse (áo bà ba) is closely associated with your grandmother. Whenever she went out, she wore an áo bà ba. She chose different blouses depending on the occasion. The newest ones were reserved for weddings and funerals. The worn ones were for going to the market, and also for carrying a thermos of porridge to visit Uncle Năm, who had lost his only tooth. The patched ones were for going to the fence to cut grass for brooms to dry and bundle for sweeping the yard.
At home, or on hot days, Grandma would wear a jacket with pockets. Those two small pockets held her whole world . A bottle of medicated oil, applied from early morning until bedtime, its scent already announcing her arrival before she even saw her. A tarnished silver coin reserved for scraping the skin (a traditional Vietnamese healing practice). A toothpick broken from the incense sticks on the altar. Her savings, rolled into a bundle and tucked into a plastic bag, sometimes tied with a flimsy rubber band. Grandma carefully secured the pockets with a safety pin, keeping her money close at hand.
I knew you when your grandmother had passed away. But in your stories, she's still present. Seeing the woman selling sticky rice cakes and glutinous rice dumplings passing by, you swallow hard. At memorial services, your grandmother always brought back a few sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, their rich coconut filling, or a sweet, tangy banana-flavored glutinous rice cake. Now you can't find that sweet taste anywhere. At the end of the month, when you get your salary, you remember your school days, when your grandmother would occasionally rummage through her pocket and slip you a small wad of money, carefully saved from the crabs and fish she caught in the fields, rain or shine, and from the bunches of bananas and vegetables she frugally accumulated.
On the day Grandma passed away, you packed her belongings and found the same old traditional Vietnamese blouse you bought for Tet (Lunar New Year), the one she'd asked Grandma to wear for the new year but had kept for herself. Even when she was buried deep beneath the earth, the blouse never once smelled of her sweat. You kept the patched blouse Grandma used to wear, carefully wrapped in a bag. Every now and then, when you miss Grandma, you take it out and sniff it, just like you used to hug it while sleeping when Grandma was away. You said that you knew Grandma was all alone. You had no father; your mother had remarried and moved far away, so you grew up alone with Grandma. Grandma was both your grandmother, your mother, and your father.
You feel a pang of nostalgia; while others crave this or that, you yearn for a traditional Vietnamese blouse (áo bà ba), how strange. Every now and then, when you miss it too much, you run into those Southern Vietnamese restaurants, watching the waitresses in their áo bà bas walking by, and it all seems so strange and unfamiliar. Sometimes, you go back to the Mekong Delta, visit a traditional music and dance hall, admire the colorful áo bà bas, listen to the clear, sweet voices – it has nothing to do with the faded blouse and the gray hair bun on your head.
You asked me if I ever made a roundabout trip, going to a faraway place to buy a bunch of vegetables, while a piece of meat I just bought from the market hung on my cart. It wasn't because that place sold fresh vegetables or any rare delicacy. It was because the other day, in a hurry, you saw a woman in a traditional Vietnamese dress sitting and sorting vegetables with her carrying pole. You told yourself you'd stop by again next time, to relive those faded memories through that old, worn-out dress…
Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nhan-dam-thuong-ao-ba-ba-185250802182353088.htm
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