My friend’s father passed away last year. Having experienced the passing of my own father, I thought I could relate to what she was going through. My friend and I had gotten to know one another after our kids began elementary school. After meeting her for the first time, I was eager to find out where she was from originally. I had speculated her and husband were from Korea but it turns out they are from Vietnam. I was happy to start a friendship and was delighted when our kids had the same interests and became fast friends.
Over the years, my friend would cook for us, we’d trade cultural meanings and she’d tell me about her religion and beliefs. She’d even invite us to her family gatherings and include us in family photographs right along with Grandma and the 20 or so other relatives gathered. Our relationship has warmed my heart through the years. She is a kind, generous friend who I’ve come to admire for her work ethic, dedication to her children and her cooking.
Our city, is blessed with a giant company that recruits engineers to what would otherwise be an unassuming Midwestern town. As a result, we have an internationally diverse community. I say we are blessed in the fact that my children have come to know kids whose parents hail from different parts of the world including India, Indonesia, China and yes, Vietnam. Getting to know people from other cultures is sometimes hard to do without traveling which is why I am so thankful our town is filled with folks from different areas of the world. I feel that being exposed to different cultures will help give my kids a more realistic sense of the world as well as give them better perspective in their own lives. My goal for my children is 1. that they will study abroad and 2. that they will have a global perspective. I have the best intentions but as I’ve recently learned, sometimes the best intentions don’t always work out.
So when my friend came over to tell me that her Dad passed away, I was determined to do something for her like she’s always done for me. A grand gesture. I remembered while admiring my husband’s flowers and landscaping around our house, my friend said how much she liked a stone rabbit that I have proudly displayed in our shrubbery. I told her the story behind the rabbit. It was a gift from three beloved co-workers after the death of my father. They lovingly bought me the statue as a remembrance of my father and hoped when I looked at it, I would be reminded of the good times my father and I shared. Bingo! I decided I would get my friend a garden statue in the hopes that she’d enjoy it as a sort of remembrance of her father.
It wasn’t until several months later when my family was traveling that we stopped at a mall that sells garden statues like mine. My daughter and I carefully looked at all of the statues, determined to find the right one. We settled on an owl and the shopkeeper wrapped the package with ribbon. After all owls are so ubiquitous in American culture today; bags, bed sheets, towels, phone cases, shirts, book ends etc., I was delighted with the statue and was sure my friend would be too. That weekend, I went over to my friend’s house to deliver the present. We settled in her kitchen and she shared with me a banana dessert she had been preparing. My friend then opened the package I brought. She unwrapped the statue and looked at it and then she quickly re-wrapped it. I thought that was strange. She didn’t admire it like I would have if someone gave me a present like that. I know I would have taken it out of the wrapping and placed in on the mantle of my fireplace to admire. She did none of those things. She didn’t react the way I had expected. I was perplexed but with most things, I quickly forgot about it.
It wasn’t until this summer when my friend asked my husband if he wouldn’t mind helping her and husband plant some flowers in their front yard that talk of the owl statue came up. One weekend we accompanied her and her husband to a garden store to pick out flowers. We followed behind them in our car. As we were driving to the store, my friend and her husband took an unexpected and longer route. We thought maybe they forgot where the store was or maybe they thought their way was faster. We puzzled over why they didn’t take the direct route but we didn’t say anything to them at the store. We spent about an hour picking out flowers and shrubs. My husband painstakingly explaining the pros and cons of each of their choices.
On our return home, my friend and her husband took the longer route home avoiding the direct thoroughfare that leads to each of our homes. We puzzled it out. My husband reckoned that there was something that they were avoiding. As our car moved down the street we passed a home advertising Psychic services with a bold neon sign. We thought about it and my husband wondered if the presence of a Psychic would be what our friends were avoiding. I didn’t think so. We passed further down the street and stopped at a stop light on the corner of a small cemetery. We take that street almost every day so that we hardly ever notice the cemetery anymore. In the back of my mind, I remember my friend talking about how her culture is very superstitious. For instance, they don’t do things on certain numbered days, certain colors mean certain things and they avoid passing by cemeteries. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten that.
Back at her house, while we were arranging the newly bought flowers, my friend mentioned to me that the owl I gave her was broken which was why she didn’t have it displayed in the front of her house. Later that night I got to thinking about the plausibility of the owl being broken. There were no little pieces that could easily break off and it was made of stone. I felt like there was more to it and that my friend was being nice and rather than rejecting my gift, she made up that it was broken. After thinking about how my friend and her husband avoided the cemetery based on superstition, I decided to look into what owls represent in Vietnam.
Late one night, I looked up the meaning of owls in Vietnam on my computer. The first twenty or so websites that came up all had the word “death” in the tag line. As I clicked on a few, I read that to the Vietnamese, the hoot of an owl is a deathly omen to anyone who hears it. Disgusted, I closed my computer. I felt like crying. I had wanted to give my friend a gift that would evoke happy memories of her father. Instead, I made the biggest cultural faux pas imaginable. I felt terrible. Since it was late at night, I typed out an email to my friend. In it I explained that I had not known that an owl was a bad omen in Vietnam and that if she still had the statue, I would gladly take it back and replace it. Always gracious, my friend indicated that she didn’t believe in the superstition even though her culture did. She said I shouldn’t worry about it and she still insisted the owl was broken. A few weeks after my email apology, my friend showed up at my door with the owl and said that I should keep it and put it in my yard. The owl wasn’t broken, it was perfectly intact.
Reflecting on what I now refer to as my “owl incident” I berate myself for not having better cultural awareness. Before I became a mom, I traveled and lived abroad. I also worked for several years in higher education as an International Programs Advisor, responsible for welcoming international students to a medium sized, private, Midwestern University. I handled all of the logistics of student arrivals, communicated with students in their home countries, helped with immigration and visa issues, and even gave workshops on being culturally aware. After all of my experiences working with students from over 30 different countries, how could I be so culturally insensitive?
I had assumed that my experiences were similar to that of my friend. I could have taken the three minutes it took me to read about owls to know my friend better. My experience is small scaled and thankfully my friend is very forgiving. But, my example highlights the danger of assuming that you know someone or that you know what their experiences are. With all the things that are going on in our country and the world today, perhaps some of our problems could be solved by literally getting to know people better. Understanding that not everyone has the same beliefs or has the same background as you do but that we are all individuals who have hopes and dreams. That each life is valuable. And that yes, some people and cultures have superstitions.