There was no need to be afraid, he said.īut the story rewinds further back to just after Tet 1968. Under the big Texas sky he reminded me of God’s presence with us. At their home in the USA, Dad agreed to go outside for a walk. It was later diagnosed as a late stage disease, spread into the spine and as multiple tumors in the brain. He found his Vietnamese voice again while praying in the floor, with a new friend, diagnosed with HIV-AIDS. Or he was out talking with folks, laughing with them, recalling Vietnamese phrases long since pushed away by bits of Mandarin and Cantonese, by Karo Batak, by Bahasa Indonesia. They were in a bus on a pungent dirt road. Dad’s fight against the disease started with a cough that wouldn’t go away. They had returned with dear friends, Vietnamese orphans who had escaped Vietnam and had grown up in America, and with the orphanage director and his wife, who had led their escape. It was their first trip there after the war. I was taken back by Susan’s story to a moment when my dad was battling the cancer that came into his lungs when he and my mom were back in Vietnam. I went back to bed and fell sound asleep. He reminded me of God’s presence with us. Dad pointed out God’s creation-the moon, the stars.
When I called out to my dad and told him I was afraid, he took me outside onto our front porch. I imagined someone was standing outside my window. When I read these two paragraphs a couple of days ago, I was deeply moved. I didn’t know at the time what all of the racket meant on this Tết Nguyên Đán (Lunar New Year 1968). My dad had carried me and my two siblings into the bathroom where we hid under a mattress with my mom. One night while we were sleeping, machine gun fire and bursts of rockets erupted next to our house, right outside the window of my bedroom. If it was closer to dinner time, Mom would call us into the yard of the house protected by fencing of barbed wire. We watched from the ditch along the dirt road, the smoothest surface for us neighborhood kids to chơi bi (“play marbles”). The smell of tear gas would overwhelm the pungency of red earth.
I remember the ARVN field drills in Thủ Đức when I was 4 or 5 years old. There were protest marches in America against the Pentagon and against the President. The Communist party was strong and growing in power. The late 1960s in Vietnam were years of political upheaval. I have a similar story to start out telling. I didn’t know at the time what all of those signs meant but I watched as they slowly disappeared behind the layers of whitewash. My dad asked Supii, who worked at our home, to clean the wall. One night while we were sleeping, someone painted anti-British signs all over the front wall of our house, right outside the window of my bedroom. If it happened during dinner time, Mom put a sock over a flashlight and fed my baby brother by its faint glow. We sat in the dark until the siren blew again. The siren would blow and every light had to be turned off. I remember the air raid drills in Surabaya when I was 4 or 5 years old. There were protest marches in our city against Malaysia and against the British. The early 1960s in Indonesia were years of political upheaval. Susan, a friend and a fellow missionary kid, has written of a time of terror, a moment of fear, when she was four or five years old.