March 13, 2026

by Dr. Plastic Picker

I’ve been reading medical /pediatric Vietnamese. It’s a publication from the State of California for the Vietnamese-American population. It’s been good for me. Practicing reading, and writing again and listening to myself. Language is complicated. And I’m at a place I realize how complicated Vietnamese is when we are 50 years removed from the Fall of Saigon, when an entire people were spread across the world. And then now with social media and reconnecting, language becomes even more complicated. Word orders. How does one use loan words from other languages, or change them? What social class one is from and how formal one’s language is. What regional accents does one has. And language itself diverges and merges when populations split and reform. I don’t really question any of this anymore. I just now what feels right and reading and thinking and writing down vocabulary feels right, and it’s good for my brain.

We are at the first quarter of college admission season for our youngest, and I wanted to remember two phrases she mentioned to me. She formed at the end of our senior year with AP test looming and still maintaining top grades, a Shakespeare book club to review Hamlet with a few select classmates with her beloved English teacher. She is loving Hamlet and they are reading King Lear right now. Her father was a Shakespeare concentrator in college, so this seems right. One of her childhood friends and classmates called her a “Shakespeare mog” which is a compliment. Her reading is eloquent in class. And she was recounting to me some of her friends’ musings about life and adulthood, and I thought it was incredibly sweet and innocent their conversations among friends. And she told me, “Mommy. My friend group – we are ponderers.” I wanted to remember that.