Turn your voice
into a book.

Your bà nội (grandma) doesn't say “I love you.” Not out loud. Not the way you hear it on TV or at your friends' houses. When I was your age, that used to bother me. I thought maybe she didn't feel it.

I was wrong about that.

She just speaks a different language. One that comes out of a pot on the stove, not her mouth.

Here's what I mean. When I was small, your bà nội would be up before the sky turned blue. By the time I shuffled into the kitchen, half asleep, there'd be a bowl waiting for me. Pho some mornings. Rice and a fried egg on others. Soup with bones that had been simmering since who knows when. She never made a big deal about it. She just slid the bowl across the counter, said “ăn đi,” which means eat, and went on with her morning.

For a long time, I thought that was just breakfast.

It took me years to figure out that it wasn't.

Your grandparents grew up in Vietnam. They came here with almost nothing. New country, new weather, new language, new everything. They worked jobs they didn't love so they could feed me and clothe me and send me to school. Nobody had ever said “I love you” to them either. Their own parents didn't. Their grandparents didn't. That's not how love was shown where they came from. You showed it by waking up early. By buying the better fish at the market even when money was tight. By making sure the rice cooker was already on when your kid came home.

I didn't always get it as a boy. At school, my friends' parents would hug them at pickup, say sweet things, slip little notes into their lunchboxes. I'd come home to a quiet house and a hot meal. Sometimes I felt like I was missing out on something.

Now I know I wasn't.

I was getting all of it. I just didn't know what it looked like yet.

Here is a thing I want you both to keep with you, San and Ari. Love is not always loud. Some of the biggest love in your life will show up without a sound. A folded shirt. A full gas tank. Someone making your lunch the way you like it, three hundred mornings in a row, and never once mentioning it.

When you grow up, you'll meet people who are very good with words. You'll also meet people who can barely get the words out, but who would walk through fire for you. Try to learn the difference. And try not to mistake quiet for cold.

I try to do both, by the way. I tell you out loud, because I missed that when I was small and I don't want you to. But I also try to do it the way your bà nội did. The bowl on the counter. The shoes lined up by the door. The thousand little things you'll probably never notice. That's fine. You're not supposed to notice. That's kind of the point.

One day, you might be sitting at our table and the kitchen will smell like ginger and broth, and your bà nội will be fussing at the stove, barely looking at you. I want you to know what's happening in that moment. She's telling you. In the only language she has for this.

And if you ever doubt it, look at the bowl in front of you. It's been there your whole life.

I am so thankful for her. For both of them. I don't think I'll ever catch up to what they gave me. But I'll spend my life trying. And when you're older, maybe you'll do the same for someone too.