295. Fruit Sugar Daddy

While teaching in Vietnam, Stephanie made a new friend- her neighbor Van. He offered her lots of kindness and fruit during their time as neighbors. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny and It’s Going To Be Okay.

Today’s okay thing comes from Stephanie, who sent us an email:

My fruit sugar daddy is moving this week.

In case you’ve never had a fruit sugar daddy, let me explain.

In August I moved into an apartment complex in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to start a new job  teaching English at an international school. Like any big life transition, this took some getting  used to. Nothing dramatic, or traumatic, but the usual, expected amount of adjustment that  comes with getting settled into a new home, in a new country, at a new workplace with its own  set of expectations and procedures and interpersonal dynamics, and doing this alone as a single  person without a local community—that all felt like plenty, even if nothing was actually wrong. For the first couple of months, I vacillated between “this isn’t okay yet, but it will be” and “oh  my god, what am I doing here?” But every morning, when I walked from the elevator toward  the exit of my building, heading into out another sunny school day, there was Van*.

* Pronounced “vun” (rhymes with fun), not like the vehicle

Van was—is—an older Vietnamese man, maybe 70, who lives on the ground floor and has a habit of keeping his apartment door open while he lounges, neatly groomed but shirtless in the heat. The first morning when he saw me passing by, probably on my way to a faculty orientation, he jumped up from his breakfast, took one look at this new foreigner in business  casual with a backpack and correctly guessed: “Teacher?” When I said yes, he smiled, took my  hand in both of his, and began to lead me inside. I stopped halfway through the door, not sure  what was going on, but also not wanting to enter someone’s home with shoes on, which is rude here. Van let me there for a second admiring his intricate wooden shelves decorated with shining vases and a small altar where incense stood ready to burn. And when he returned, he  handed me one ripe dragon fruit in a plastic bag, cold from the fridge. I thanked him, charmed,  and continued on my way.

And then the same thing kept happening. Van would see me passing by, usually first thing in the  morning, and wave me over while he rummaged in his fridge for a piece of fruit—sometimes a green guava, or a crisp, bell-shaped rose apple. One time he handed me an ear of cooked corn,  still warm, which I gave to a student who had skipped breakfast. Between his limited English  and my nonexistent Vietnamese, our exchanges were brief, but he made sure I knew that these  small gifts were because I was a teacher—no funny business. As the weeks wore on, I realized  that Van lived alone, but that his open door and friendly nature had made him a sort of  apartment grandpa. Kids would stop in his doorway genuinely excited to say hello, not because  their parents told them to. Occasionally I saw him offering fruit to other people, too—a mother  with a baby, or another foreigner who was, like many of us here, probably also a teacher. But he  always had a piece for me.

When he ran into me outside of our complex, walking home with a heavy bag of groceries in the afternoon heat, he motioned for me to hop on the back of his motorbike and ran me home before going on his way. When I came home one day to find that my electricity had been cut and a pink notice slipped under my door, I knew Van would be there downstairs and would try  to help me, though I wasn’t actually able to explain the problem well enough for his help to be  useful. It was enough to know that I wasn’t alone.

Last week, Van stopped me to deliver a new message: that he is moving to a new home,  somewhere outside of our complex. Over the past few days, through his open door, I’ve  watched his belongings gradually disappear, the shelves of trinkets and ornate light fixtures  spirited away so that workers could clean and repaint the unit into its original generic state.

I am going to have to start buying my own fruit. And while I know I will miss Van, his leaving has  reminded me to appreciate how his small gestures of welcome and kindness made my transition here feel a little bit more okay, a little bit more like home.

May we all have a neighbor like Van. May we try to be one, too.