“Autumn Weather Report” | Brynn Nguyen | Nonfiction

Autumn Weather Report

Brynn Nguyen

September 16

The white oak warns me that my hair is going to fly before the wind even hits me. It seems that the greenery is the preferred target of the wind, and then my notebook, and then me. My paper rustles in reaction to the sound of the green leaves whooshing around me before dropping down gently.

A tree is made of many different branches, leaves, and twigs, but it moves as one being at the behest of the wind. And this tree isn’t alone. Accompanying it is an entire forest leaning to and fro. Their bending bark forms look like seaweed reaching from the bottom of the Minnesota lake my dad used to take us to when the weather was favorable. The weather those days was similar to that of today: warm with a blast of wind that would cause the surface to ripple so that I wouldn’t be able to see the fish underneath. If the trees are seaweed, and the wind is the current in the water, then what are we?

Perhaps we’re the broken beer bottles that cut my brother’s feet, or the dropped sunglasses, phones, and fishing poles that are now submerged in the sand. Not born among these seaweed trees, but here because we dropped in and decided to stay, like how my father dropped his only two children and decided to stay in Vietnam. Just for two years. We’re here resting in the damp grass, judging the weather and squishing the bugs that come near. Perhaps it’s ignorant of me to believe that the trees are warning me to watch out for the wind when they may, in fact, be pushing me to leave. Maybe I am not welcome. Maybe they yearn for me to go.

Or maybe the trees aren’t seaweed.

Maybe it’s simply a windy day.

September 24

Speaking with my father on the phone, he commented on the blue sky above. “It looks like a beautiful day,” he said in a way that’s meant to make me feel good. He was right. It did appear to be a beautiful day, but what he could not observe was the cold bite in the air that was both crisp and painful. He could not observe the goosebumps on my skin as I hurried to my physical therapy appointment at the University hospital, passing students in winter coats. What my father could not observe was that those pretty, wisp-like clouds were maturing into an overcast that would rain a few hours later. An overcast similar to the sadness I feel when I think about how my father can’t even observe the young woman I am growing to be. I need to stay for another two years. I am no longer the ten-year-old I was when he found his new home. In her place, the spitting image

of his ambitions, chasing after the life he created that didn’t include his little girl. No, my father observes what he yearns for the most. He observes the blue Minnesota sky because Ho Chi Minh City is muggy with pollution. He observes the bustle of campus—on a Friday, the slowest day of the week—because it’s illegal for him, for anyone, to engage in such activities during the pandemic. I wonder what he misses more: the idea of Minnesota or me.

I recall him saying, long ago, that he misses Minnesota. I recall him saying, recently, that he wouldn’t want to move back here. The explanations for why he was still missing school recitals and birthdays finally stopped once my brother and I understood what life in this family would be like. It was an unspoken conversation, but one that ended in a conclusion. My mom still asks when he’s going to start raising his children. My dad says we are no longer children. Since my brother moved to Hawaii, where the weather is consistently seventy-three degrees (today being no exception), my dad has talked about visiting the US often. Never me: period. Never my brother: period. But sunny Hawaii, with its ocean breeze, rainbows, rough sand in your shoes? He yearns for that. It’s bright enough to see the fish darting under the water, but not hot enough to leave your skin darker than before you went outside. He yearns for that too. My brother is lucky, my dad would say. The weather in Hawaii is beautiful today.

I suppose Minnesota, while beautiful, isn’t beautiful enough for a visit. September 29

The weather is a liar. The sun beats down, making you think that it’s the middle of summer. I’ll see you soon. You can call its bluff when you look at the trees. No, you won’t. Their leaves drying out, shriveling up, becoming duller as the days pass. Not as vibrant as they were merely days ago on that windy afternoon. We haven’t spoken in days. Yet even as the plants whisper, it’s time for the cold to set in, the days grow warmer.

The weather is a liar, though some aren’t fooled. The people still wear sweatshirts and sweatpants as they walk to class despite the weather, but others want to reject the chill. I yearn to be fooled because the second I put away my summer clothes— the clothes that go so well with today’s blue skies and gentle breeze, the clothes that I once wore when I would visit my father or when he would visit me—is when I must accept that winter is coming.

For now, I’ll let the weather lie to me. I’ll let him lie to me too, but I can’t lie to myself. The day’s eighty-five–degree weather will inevitably plummet to a lonely, heart-chilling thirty degrees, causing the Minnesota lake to freeze over before we can even declare that it’s officially winter. They are no longer children.

September 29 is a cloudless day. The kind that leaves beads of sweat collecting on your forehead. Yet if the last ten years of my life have taught me anything, it’s to know when summer isn’t coming back.