Sometimes, my longing to return home to Vietnam is such a painful yearning that it wakes me up and makes me cry.
In my dreams, I can speak Vietnamese fluently and sonorously. In waking life, I speak Vietnamese, but it leaves much to be desired.
The first time I returned home to Vietnam, I felt certain that I would be able to pick up the language quickly, and become fluent in no time. If I had stayed there longer than I did, I might have. However, the year that I spent there was a gift, in any event.
When I arrived at Noi Bai Airport, I came face-to-face with the new Vietnam - a Vietnam that was shockingly unexpected... In my polaroid imaginings of Vietnam, I pictured a world I had left behind 30 years before. What awaited me, instead, was something unbearably shocking and beautiful.
Banana trees dotted here and there and lush, green rice paddies with solitary oxen and farmers tending them were frequent scenes that glided past my hungry vision as the taxi driver swiftly and, not so carefully, drove us through the highway. These were the idyllic scenes I expected to see on my return home. What I didn't expect were the changes that have shaped the country and its people since the end of the war, particularly since Doi Moi, or Renovation, in the 1980s...and the very different rules for driving to which I was unaccostumed.
The juxtaposition between the crazy ride and the idyllic scenes was so surreal (not to mention the fact that I was actually back in my country after all those years away) I couldn't stop shaking my head in disbelief.
Now, I can look back and laugh.
The taxi driver was driving in the middle of the highway, frequently looking back and grilling the novel curiosity that was me, while cars, driving in the opposite direction, all looked like they were ready to squash us like bugs if we didn't get out of their way. I almost had a heart attack! I kept telling him to watch where he was driving. "Are these Vietnamese crazy?! Don't they know how to drive?!!" (Anxious thoughts running madly around an already over-stimulated brain.)
"Listen, Mister, how about you watch where you're driving, instead of renegotiating the cab fare, again? ...Aaaaa, watch out!!!"
Change is a constant. I am coming to accept that maxim, but it doesn't make it any easier when one finds oneself standing between the end and the beginning of a time, even as one recognizes the possibilities latent in such a change.
Vietnam has changed so much, and seems to have adapted to the modern age quite well. But one thing about Vietnam that hasn't changed is what it means to me. Vietnam is a symbol of loss and of hope. Sinking my feet into the white sand that my DNA recognized as home, I fleetingly caught something I had lost long ago - my spirit and my place of belonging.
I will never have the experiences of the Vietnam I could have had if I had lived there my whole life, but the one I had during my year of living there was so heartbreakingly moving and transformative that I long to go back -- to continue my transformation. Or, maybe, to just see where life leads next.
...One day.
Or, perhaps, time, with its mysteriously unfolding ways, will lead me to affirm that home is not a place, but a state of mind (of being and of grace) that can be entered into whenever I remember that I am worthy. Then, my longing for home will be no more than the realization of a longing for the joy of being with my longest living companion - myself.
...Perhaps, one day.
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