It's a Thursday night, and I'm at my uncle's house in Portland, Oregon, FaceTiming with my aunt and my 23-year-old cousin. They're cooing at my other cousin, the 4-year-old sitting right now to me and watching "Aladdin" on the television, trying to get him to look over and talk to them. They giggle, chatter happily, and the noise is loud and familiar and warm.

Then, my older cousin asks me, "Maddie, what are you doing on January 28th?"

I pause for a moment, pretending to flip through the calendar dates in my mind, when I really know exactly what day that is. "I don't know, I don't think I'm doing anything for Tết."

Just that small, tiny word, sounds too harsh in my mouth. Clunky, the "t" too sharp, the tone probably all wrong, doesn't sound right at all. I wonder if my embarrassment is evident, if my face is red, or perhaps if I sounded stupid.

Thankfully, my relatives don't mention it and continue on with the conversation. They talk about the Lunar New Year, talk about the snow. They tease my little cousin, telling him, "Hôn Maddie, hôn Maddie," which I don't understand until he leans over and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

I smile, tuck the word away in my mind, into an ever-growing file of words that I may need to remember some day. I can remember it, maybe, but I have a feeling I'll never be able to say it. That's sort of how it goes. Vietnamese both comforts and scares me.

Comforting

My father on the phone, talking to his parents, his voice getting louder and his words blending into one another like music. Such a pretty language.

Sitting in my grandparent's kitchen, listening to them speak, familiar, warm, happy voices even if I can't understand a word.

Listening to music, mouthing along with the words, learning the words for "love" and for "I," trying my best to sing along.

Scary

My heart beating fast when someone tries to talk to me in that language; how I can do nothing but gape and think ... think fast. Try to pick out the words I know, if there are any, try to picture what the words look like, if I'm hearing right. When I am asked to speak, I cannot. I can only stand there and smile, look uncomfortable. When that happens, I feel like I am very stupid. Xin lỗi, I am sorry. I am dumb.

I can read Vietnamese better than I can understand it, and I can understand Vietnamese better than I can speak it. When I try to speak it, I stumble. All the words get mixed up, the tones rising and falling in all the wrong places. It feels like marbles in my mouth, all jumbled up and wrong. When I was younger, I loved to sing, but couldn't sing very loudly because I was so afraid of singing a wrong note in front of people. Now, it's the same with Vietnamese. I love the language so much, but I'm so afraid of speaking it wrong, I'd rather be silent.

To be honest, it's like that with any language I study. I took two years of Spanish in middle school, quietly. I took three years of French in high school, quietly. I'm taking German in college, quietly, quietly, ich bin ein Dummkopf. But Vietnamese, it is the worst, not just because it's tonal which makes it harder. It's because it's the one language I really care about.

I call myself a "half-blood" because I don't really know if "Hapa" is my word to use. Anyway, half-white, half-Viet, so I didn't grow up speaking Vietnamese like my older cousins. I knew the numbers 1-10, một, hai, ba ... I knew Grandma and Grandpa were called bà nộiand ông nội. I knew that I, myself, am Vietnamese, that I wasn't Chinese or Japanese or anything else like that.

I repeat that to myself: I am Vietnamese. Someone once told me that it didn't count, being only half. It's something I struggle with now, not speaking the language and not looking entirely Vietnamese either. Trying to tell myself that it does count, that not being able to speak it doesn't make me any less.

Maybe, if I had tried a little harder as a kid, if I had been a little more interested, I wouldn't be like this now. I go back and forth between hating myself for not working harder on my Vietnamese as a kid, and being sympathetic knowing that when you're a kid, just learning the nuances of one language is hard enough.

At any rate, now I'm not even sure if I can say my numbers correctly. I know how to tell my grandparents and father I love them, "Con thương ba, bà nội,ông nội." But I can't say it correctly. I might never say it correctly.

With this in mind, I should say this — you will never, ever, hear me tell someone to "learn English." Just thinking about it makes me angry, the audacity of someone to say "you're in America, speak English."

Learning a language isn't easy. I've been working for years to be able to simply say thank you, "cảm ơn." When you don't understand, you cling to what is familiar: translations, people around you who can interpret. It's scary to not understand.

And when you do finally understand, there's a sense of pride in it too. About a year ago, my dad told me, in Vietnamese, to make my grandmother tea. And to my surprise, I understood it. I nearly jumped out of my seat to do it, so excited because I understood. I carry that memory with me, those two and a half seconds where I could understand without being told.

So when I see someone struggling to speak English, I want to help them the way I would want to be helped with my Vietnamese. With patience and not judgment, not making them feel stupid or ashamed. Knowing that it's OK to not understand, that it's OK to try and be wrong.

I feel like I'm not the only one who feels this way either. In America, the land of immigrants, we're considered a "melting pot," where all cultures can supposedly come together and find common ground and work together to create something new. But there's nothing wrong with being proud of your separate cultures too.

To anyone struggling in the same way to connect with their heritage, I applaud you. It's not an easy feat, but it's worth it. To anyone struggling to fit in with another culture that's unfamiliar, I'm so proud. Every day, we learn more and more, and each step we take is a little bit closer to connecting with the people around us.

Just keep trying. Just keep trying.

I work through Rosetta Stone, I read books. I love to sing in Vietnamese, because even if the language is different, music still remains the same. And maybe, with each note, I get a little closer.

Thursday night, I ask my older cousin through FaceTime, "I know I'm not saying the Lunar New Year correctly. How do you pronounce it again?" She says it for me: Tết. Not said with a hard "t," more like a "th." — like a whisper at a beginning of the word. I repeat it back, Tết, Tết.

Later, when my uncle's house has gone to sleep, and everything is dark, I lie awake in bed and stare at the ceiling, repeating it over and over. Tết. Tết. Hoping I am still getting it right, the "th," practicing. Whispering. Like it's a secret that, someday, I might be able to share.