"Tran" completes the HAT

This here is one of my favorite moments during our five days of Christmas in Portland. These are my grandfather's hands (dad's dad). His name is Tran Lam (or, Lam Tran, in the American way), but all he remembers is Tran, the family name. And so he writes it repeatedly: Tran, Tran, Tran.

The name Tran is the only thing we have left from my great-grandfather (dad's dad's dad), who was a merchant from China, whom we believed to have married great-grandmother as a second wife. Great-grandfather died when grandfather was three years old, and great-grandmother was pregnant with another son. So there is really no memory of a father in grandfather's life. Because great-grandfather was Chinese, his entire family lived in China, and we had no connection or relations with the Chinese side of the family. After great-grandfather died, great-grandmother raised two sons alone, with nothing.

It is beautiful, and sad. It strikes me that when asked to write his name, Ong Noi (vietnamese for dad's dad) writes his surname. It is the family name that is most important, and most valued. The heritage, patrimony that he received from great-grandfather. Not this individual name, not the "I" but the "we" of a family, a community. He remembers the title that calls all of us together, whether or not we wish to be called, and his memory of it is still strong, even if everything else is beginning to fade away.

I recently posted some rantings about my name. It isn't hard to realize that I've been too fixated on establishing my identity as first person me, as the individual, as HAT. But, I've always taken for granted that Tran is a part of me and have never dwelled much on the family name. It is the easy part of a rather differently spelled name that I carry with me. Seeing Ong Noi write his name, I am reminded of my connectedness to other Trans. It's not so much the H-A part but the Tran part that makes a complete HAT.