Thang Nguyen 555

My nephew who left Vietnam a few years later, mentioned – during the course of our conversations- that he came by the house, saw my Dad living all by himself (we were apart for a good decade). And he mentioned something interesting: upstairs, in our bedroom, those beds were left just the way they were when we left back in April 1975.

My empty bed. My security blanket. And all the songs I loved so well…

Memories.

Came flushing back.

All the longing, dreams unrealized and interrupted relationships (relatives, neighbors and friends – inc. one x-girl friend).

I left behind more than just that empty bed.

My whole youth. My identity. My other self.

Years later, when I myself drove by the house (now occupied by who knows who), it wasn’t the same feeling as when we left it (see Fleeing).

From the look of it, it felt different.

I felt different.

One can never go home again.

We took “home” with us on that fateful trip.

At least, the essential parts i.e. papers, documents and pictures.

Had we got “cloud” back then, we could have uploaded everything, and while at it unloaded our burden.

The burden of those who fled for a new life. A new beginning and a new start.
Like an FBI witness protection program for informants: new ID, new re-location and new job.

I was no longer a student at that pre-med program. I answered not to my father for a decade.

New-found independence. New life of my own, all on my own and by myself.

Fresh snow and sudden start. Could have chosen to get high.

Could have gone down that slippery road.

Or learning the rope and learning the language (lingo).

The body language and the lab language (of TV production).

Acronyms in an Agronomy TV studio.

How was I viewed? Just blend in. For survival sakes.

For success.

To gain back what was lost.

In an up-hill battle to re-assemble the pieces.

Until the man I become no longer resembles the man I was.

Sleeping in beds not of my own, from dorm room to motel room, from apartment housing to rental housing.

20th-century nomad. Displacement and dislocated.

A man of sorrow but not of regrets, making all the mistakes but not being one.

All the movement, all started that morning, out of that unmade bed.

The bed that was left untouched “just the way it had always looked”, as my nephew put it.

I can see myself sleeping in it, that very night, hadn’t we decided to leave, or, failed while fleeing, then returned.

Things would have been the same as it was,..day after day…minimum subsistence, minimum interaction.

No fuss, no glory.

Just is stoically as opposed to “making it happen” as American like to put it.

There are no right or wrong answers. “Just the way it is”, as Cronkite used to end his broadcast.

I am sure I laid my pajamas somewhere upstairs. And it would still be there, unworn and just like the bed un- used, waiting, had I returned that night. To once again, sleep in that very bed, upstairs, of a place I used to call home.