Hugging the coconut tree in Miền Tây

When I was little, my mother had just bought a plot of land that someone was letting her use temporarily to build a house. I remember walking out and hugging the coconut tree I loved best — the one with the tastiest fruit, closest to the house, right by the front door, the one whose coconuts I'd be first to pick up when one dropped (low-hanging fruit, hahaha). I hugged this tree that was now mine, and it would be mine forever. Once I'd hugged it there was nothing else to do — coconuts don't fall, and if they do, you'd better get out of the way. I scanned to see if any were about to drop and then moved to stand somewhere else. The coconuts were fresh and green, not about to fall. If I hugged it too long there was nothing to look at, if I hugged it too short people would call me weird. So I turned around and leaned against it: what if I just told myself I must never forget this memory? What memory? This one, right now, standing and leaning against a coconut tree. Too hard — I can't even remember my homework, how am I supposed to remember this? Wait, why is it hard? It's just one picture I'm trying to hold, why can't I? Like a single photograph should be enough. I don't even need to remember the whole tree. Just this one image in my head — let's see how long I can hold onto it.

A few years later, I thought, wait, didn't I have something I was supposed to remember? The one thing I'd promised myself, with no one forcing me — unlike the teacher forcing me to study, my father's must-do-this-must-do-that, my mother's this-this-this, my sister's that-that-that, my brother's the-other-thing. Okay, I still remember. It's been what, over thirty years now. Rough estimate — I took the picture but forgot to log the date. Today I still remember it, my friend. I remember the whole circle around the house: the jackfruit tree, the fishing pole, the pond where I learned to swim, the houses we built ourselves, and I still remember the coconut tree. There was the guava, the mận rose-apple, the yellow star-fruit (lekima), the chùm ruột gooseberry, the sơ ri cherry, the hồng quân date, the so đũa, the kapok (bông gòn), the bình bát custard-apple, the longan (nhãn), the passionfruit vine (nhãn lồng), the rice plant, the cockfighting grass, the wild rice, the touch-me-not, the mango, the tamarind, the white bông trang, the red bông trang, the bodhi banyan, the native jujube (táo ta), the lá cách, the fig (sung), the native mulberry, the silkworm mulberry, the rubber tree, the bamboo, the slender bamboo, the reed, the thorny pandan, the pandan, the pineapple (khóm), that plant I still don't know the name of whose tuber looks like ginseng, the ô môi, the sim myrtle, the water lily, the reed, the lao, the water hyacinth, the mouse-duckweed, the duck-foot duckweed, the tiny duckweed... every single one of them has a story, from the day it grew up to the day it died, or the day I said goodbye to them all at age eleven... I thought I'd list a few plant names, then thought each one deserved to be recorded just as much as any other — am I really going to list all of Miền Tây?

When I forget a name, Gemini helps me out if I can describe the characteristics, or if a plant is too hard to remember I can just Google "types of Miền Tây childhood plants" and there they are...

And for the harder stuff, I tell the Coding Agent to create an Agent to do it for me. It can do it all.

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